Technocracy; n. derived from the Greek words kratia (meaning ‘rule of’) and techno (meaning ‘bad European dance music’)

Europeans have always had an inexplicable affinity with techno. In the 1980s and 90s they had the UFO Club, the Love Parade, Paul van Dyk. Nowadays they’ve got Mario Monti and Lucas Papademos - their love of minimalist electronic beats matched only by their love of minimalist fiscal policy.

The first wave of European techno was a product of its time – advances in electronic instrumentation in the 1980s made musical experimentation possible, and this new direction (I presume) sounded modern and fresh. However I think there’s now broad agreement, amongst all but the heaviest of drug users, that it was rubbish.

The neo-con economic policies of austerity and liberalization were the product of a similar time, coming to prominence in the 1980s as a response to the economic crises of the 1970s. As with European dance music of that era, history has shown that these policies were, for the most part, a very bad idea. (see Argentina).

Yet these are the very same ‘economic solutions’ being offered up by the new-wave European techno-crats. If Einstein’s definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over and expecting different results, then the only conclusion to be drawn is that Mario Monti et al are insane. Or that they are the heaviest of heavy drug users.

As Paul Krugman said, possibly more coherently:

…the trouble with the alleged technocrats we’re supposed to rely on isn’t just that they’re uninspiring — it is that they have been wrong about everything, again and again…in Europe, the “technocrats” have consistently ignored their own economic models …calling for fiscal austerity and higher interest rates when their own analyses say that unemployment will be high and inflation subdued.

What I think Krugman is trying to say is that European leaders are in a ‘trance’ like state, refusing to accept that their policies just aren’t working. (Krugman would probably also add, with some justification, that attempting to crowbar trance music into the ‘techno’ analogy is probably stretching it a bit too far.)

Possibly more worrying than the economic repercussions of this new wave techno is the repercussions for democracy. Whatever your views on Papandreou and Berlusconi, they were at least democratically elected. In Papandreou’s case, his ultimate downfall was triggered by having the temerity to suggest that, in the birth place of democracy of all places, the people should have the final say over a decision which would dramatically affect their lives.

To borrow from Krugman again, “we need the right ideas, not the right sort of people”. At the same time as Monti and Papademos were being installed as Prime Ministers of their respective countries, Mario Draghi became the new President of the European Central Bank. All three have previously worked within the European machinery as well as leading financial institutions, namely Goldman Sachs. Given their backgrounds, it’s perhaps not surprising that there’s no new ideas or changes in policy direction coming from these “technocrats”. It’s pretty hard to view their ascent to power as anything other than a financial coup d’état.

If only Europe could heed the words of noted social commentator Marshall Mathers III – “Let go, it’s over. Nobody listens to techno”.

Why I’m supporting November 30^th strikers

I don’t have a pension. I don’t work in a sector where I’m likely to get one any time soon. And I wholeheartedly support everybody planning to take strike action on November 30^th.

People in the public sector are being attacked on so many fronts. Over the last year, thousands of workers, mostly women, have lots their jobs or had their hours dramatically cut. The young have been hit hard – cut out of college education by the scrapping of EMA, outpriced from university education and now unemployed in the millions.

Those who are in jobs have seen the greatest insult – government pension plans will force everyone in the public sector to work longer, pay more and receive less. Can it possibly be right that a PE teacher will still be out teaching rugby at the age of 66? In net terms, public sector workers will lose the equivalent of a day’s wages every month. Nothing about this is fair.

Tory politicians have said that taxpayers don’t want our money spent on public sector pensions. Well, I do. In fact, I only want my taxes spent on fair pensions, job creation, free education and decent healthcare. Instead, the government is haemorrhaging cash on illegal wars and dirty deals.

For these reasons, I fully support anybody who chooses to go on strike in November.

The Egyptian Twitter Revolution?

Much has been written about social media’s role in the Arab spring. Few but the most hardline technodeterminists genuinely believe the existence of Twitter, Facebook and the like are solely responsible for the mass uprisings.

However,  a view persists that these tools played a fundamental role. Several news sources, the BBC and Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) among them, proclaimed social media’s impact in Tunisia’s so-called Jasmine revolution.

Let’s look at a couple of facts:

- Twitter activity abou the Jasmine uprising peaked on 15th January 2011 - the day after Ben Ali was deposed and a full three weeks after the protests began. The peak broadly correlates with Western Media’s interest in the Tunisian uprising. Stats here.

- The Sidibouzid hashtag that CPJ flags up as being critical in the revolution was only created on 27th December 2010, ten days after Mohammed Bouazizi set fire to himself and the day the protests reached the capital, Tunis.

Both these facts suggest there was no Twitter revolution in Tunisia. It was utilised primarily as a broadcast medium for westerners to follow events.

But what about Facebook?

This is rather more difficult to assess as Facebook does not make its data public. Tangential evidence suggests Facebook did play a significant part.

In 2008 there was another uprising in Tunisia in the mining town of Gafsa. Causes were similar - lack of employment and frustration at the corrupt regime. With an election pending Ben Ali took no chances, shutting down Facebook and sending in his forces. And the strategy worked. Ben Ali crushed the uprising and went on to win the election.

So what was the key difference?

In 2008 there were 28,000 Facebook users in Tunisia; in 2010 the were 2 million. By shutting down Facebook in 2010 Ben Ali risked politicising a fifth of his population, many of whom may have been apolitical to that point. However, by allowing users to post emotive videos, share links and formulate strategy online he allowed what he sought to avoid; apolitical citizens being politicised.

The sheer volume of Facebook users put Ben Ali in an impossible position. And this may indeed be social media’s strength - its latent potentiality. The vast majority of content being passed around on social media is in no way political but the dense interconnectivity of social media facilitates means messages can and do spread quickly if the offline environment creates the appetite for protest.

David Cameron’s call to ban social media during riots fell into the same trap. Such a move would irritate people who previously had no reason to protest, likely swelling the numbers involved in any uprising. In this sense, social media’s stength may well be in its numbers.

On December 1st West Papuan people will celebrate their independence day. They will probably be brutally suppressed by the Indonesian police and military, acting on behalf of the Indonesian military elite and the multinational businesses who regard West Papua as theirs.

The tribes of West Papua have suffered horrendous human rights abuses and land approprition since 1963. Anyone who resists having their land taken from them is regarded as an enemy of the Indonesian military and the multinational corporations they work with.

One of the last bastions of overt colonialism, supported by the covert colonialism of multinational imperialism, West Papuan people have been exposed to the rampant human rights abuses and willful environmental rape that are unchecked and lawless under the conditions created by military occupation. The Indonesian military controls West Papua not any civil administration. The military are in charge of the rampant logging, the mining, the flow of money from Jakarta, the unregulated heavily polluting mining and every thing else. The military are also there to make sure no Papuan people cause any problems for multinationals that want land and that people are cleared swiftly and effectively from their ancestral land. The polarized example of what is happening to West Papua is a profound microcosm of the whole world being under vicious attack from multinational business and their vanguard the state militaries of the world.

Protesters in Wamena last month.

With the fall of Suharto in 1998 and the independence of East Timor, Papuan people were allowed by Jakarta to organise a conference in 1999. Much to Jakarta’s horror the delegates from all over Papua re-affirmed their status as in independent country under occupation, That their national flag first raised on Dec 1st 1961 was their national flag and that they stood by their official deceleration of independence on Dec 1st 1971. In Jakarta military uniforms had been swapped for suits but the same military elite families still ruled and an immediate crackdown was launched against Papuan people who refused to be subservient to Jakarta’s brand of military imperialism. The repression remains the same today as under Suharto 30 years ago. Political activists such as Buchtar Tabuni and Filep Karma sit in jail cells for peacefully protesting against what has happened to their people. Today  Papuan pro-independence groups have more support from grassroots level to the intellectual elite than ever before.
The more the Indonesian military continue to oppress and murder people and the more that the multinationals with impunity appropriate land from people the more resilient and strengthened the Papua people become in their demands for justice. A new generation of students has emerged armed with laptops and knowledge to continue their parents long fight for self determination and environmental justice and protection. They along with the other Papuan leadership are fighting an environmental battle against exploitative multinationals and a political battle against the mainstream western imperialist philosophy of land control and statehood.

5000 people on the streets of Manokwari on November 8th. When the Indonesian military report that those who want freedom are just a few people in the jungle they are either deliberately lying or they do not know what they are talking about. The desire for freedom is almost universal and found everywhere mostly concentrated in the cities.

The environmental battle is about their land. Like all people around the world who live close to their land their whole lives revolve around its careful management. The multinationals that commit murder and threaten the very existence of people who want to remain connected to their land see no value in protecting the health and productivity of land. All they see is dollar signs in the form of natural resource extraction and tribal people in the way. This pits the multinationals in a fundamental conflict with people who live their lives closely attached to their land, in West Papua and elsewhere. All over West Papua land is taken from tribes, the military is brought in to clean the area of indigenous people and the multinationals move in to take what they want, pollute without restraint and give Jakarta a wedge of money.

Peaceful demonstration in Wamena.

This Wednesday, Dec 1st, 1000s of people will take to the streets across West Papua and raise their Morning Star flag, (illegal under Indonesian law) to shout in the faces of multinationals and those who justify state military terrorism, land theft, denial of human rights and merciless natural resource exploitation. All of the Papuan traditional and indigenous movements and political groups will demand an end to colonialism, imperialism and land appropriation by multinationals and their state orchestrators. They will demand their own right of self determination of their lands and resources that are presently decided in distant business offices and will stand in solidarity with all oppressed people across the world who want to live in harmony with their land but are prevented from doing so by a small elite of unrepentant but powerful people who have the weapons to steal and oppress and the philosophy  to believe that they have a right to do so.  Papuans believe they cannot live without their land and don’t want to be disconnected and removed from it, that land is the peoples land, there for the benefit of everyone not just a few.

In solidarity with West Papuan people and their right of self determination a demonstration will be held outside the Indonesian embassy on Wednesday. Fore more information please contact the freewestpapua groups.

12.00- 14.30. Demo outside Indonesian Embassy, Grosvenor Square.
14.30- 15.30. March along the streets of London.
15.30- 16.00. Handing in of petition at downing street and foreign office.

Faced with the twin crises of the global economy and the global climate, politicians and economists worldwide have embraced a ‘grow and hope’ strategy: let’s just get back on the noble track of economic growth – the process of endlessly getting richer – and hope for the best. But grow and hope solutions that aim to stop climate change whilst maintaining economic growth cannot possibly work. If economic growth continues, we will be unable to avoid runaway climate change - natural disasters, resource wars and species extinction on unprecedented scales.

The EU’s climate change target is to limit the increase in global temperature at 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels (in fact the science tells us we need a more radical 1.5 degree target, but that’s for another rant.) ‘Growth Isn’t Possible’, a recent report published by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) think-tank, shows that meeting the 2 degrees target whilst maintaining growth cannot be done. The report calculates that if the global economy was to maintain growth at a relatively low 3% growth rate, in order to meet the 2 degrees target, the global economy’s carbon intensity – the amount of C02 released per dollar made - would have to fall by 95% by 2050.

Grow-and-hopers have to be hoping, specifically, for this 95% fall in carbon intensity. Now, the ‘green growth’ lobby have always seen techno-fixes as the answer to our prayers – we’ll keep getting richer and leave it to those brilliant (bit nerdy though) scientists to sort us out. I doubt, however, that even the most ardent techno-fixer would have claimed, prior to the NEF report, that we could hope for technological advances sufficient for a 95% cut. Of course, this is exactly what ‘grow and hope’ proponents will be claiming now.

However, we’ve seen no evidence of any technology-fuelled falls in carbon intensity as of yet: the carbon intensity of the economy remained effectively unchanged between 2002 and 2007. And there’s no sign of significant improvement when the techno-fix industry’s most hyped-up ideas are scrutinised. According to the Director of the US Geological Survey carbon capture and storage won’t be commercially viable on a widespread scale until 2045 – too late for us! As for biofuels, if the UK were to use oilseed rape and corn biofuels instead of petrol and diesel we would need 36 million hectares of land to grow it – 650 per cent more than all the arable land in the UK! What about nuclear? David Flemming, in ‘The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy: A Life-Cycle in Trouble’ argues that the world’s endowment of uranium ore is now so depleted that the nuclear industry will never, from its own resources, be able to generate the energy it needs to safely store its waste (the waste must be cooled in what is a very energy intensive process).

Worse still, we’ve got to account for the ‘rebound effect’: increases in efficiency are accompanied by increased consumption. Suppose we invent a new energy-efficient car that gets more km from a litre of petrol than before. One of these cars is going to save me a fair bit of money, meaning that I’m going to be able to buy more stuff. Indeed, an analysis of domestic energy consumption before and after the installation of energy saving devices has shown that only half the efficiency gains are translated into genuine reductions in carbon emissions.

We must accept then, that techno-fixes cannot deliver the improvement in carbon intensity that we need. Environmental campaigner and writer Danny Chivers has summed up the techno-fix-and-growth strategy perfectly: ‘Your house is on fire, so you sit down in the living room and start drawing up designs for a giant wall-smashing robot.’

Our only option, therefore, is to give up economic growth. But what does this mean? Grow and hopers tell us that we need growth to alleviate poverty. They tell us we need growth to make us happy. They’re wrong on both counts.

Let’s take the poverty myth first. As is noted in ‘Growth isn’t Possible’ ‘Between 1990 and 2001, for every $100 worth of growth in the world’s income per person, just $0.60, down from $2.20 the previous decade, found its target and contributed to reducing poverty below the $1-a-day line.’ Trickle down economics has failed – instead of poverty being alleviated, what we’ve seen is the rich enjoying faster cars, more holidays and bigger TVs. There are more than enough resources in the world to ensure that everyone has their basic needs met – poverty isn’t a problem of scarcity, but of distribution.

Moving on to the second myth, GDP (the metric used to measure growth) is a notoriously bad indicator of wellbeing. Research conducted by NEF reveals that although the UK’s GDP has doubled since 1980, people’s satisfaction with life has hardly changed. Doing away with growth isn’t going to mean doing away with the things that really make us happy – flourishing relationships; artistic creativity; strong communities; healthy lifestyles; educating ourselves; personal freedom. In fact it will mean lots more of those things – in a zero-growth economy, we’d work less and have more time to do the things we love.

This might sound like hippie bullshit, but I bet there’s a guilty part of you that wants to agree. Parents tell their kids that money doesn’t matter, but spend hundreds on their Christmas presents. After seeing ‘Trainspotting’, I bet you agreed to ‘Choose Life’ instead of ‘…a fucking big television…washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers’. But we leave the cinema to return to consumer paradise. Doing away with growth will just mean practicing what we preach – let’s embrace this!

Kenneth Boulding said that ‘Only mad men and economists believe in infinite growth in a finite world’. Andrew Simms, the head of NEF, illustrates this wonderfully by recalling an encounter with one such mad man economist. How, Simms asked, when the human race has used up the last of the Earth’s natural resources, will economic growth continue? Our mad man’s response: ‘We’ll exploit asteroids!’ Simms is calling for both pragmatists and utopians in shaping the ‘bold transition’ to the new economic system we so urgently need. Please: be a pragmatist, be a utopian; don’t be a mad person, don’t be a (grow and hope) economist.

Climate change is not just an ecological problem. It is not all about drowning polar bears. It is also bad for your health – but the good news is actions to fight it are good for you.

Back in May, The Lancet published a forty-page report on the medical effects of climate change, the longest in the highly respected journal’s history. It is still freely available to non-subscribers.

The paper was dubbed “the Stern Report for medics” by climatologist Professor Mark Maslin, recalling the influential 2006 review of the economics of climate change.

It concluded that climate change was the greatest threat to public health this century. A combination of increased disease, food and water insecurity, extreme weather events, rising sea levels and lack of shelter will put billions at risk. These will be exacerbated by armed conflict, mass migration and ecological collapse with developing countries the worst hit.

To say the least, it was not lightest of reading material.

Well-off countries such as our own will not be unaffected. Thousands died during Europe’s 2003 heatwave, which also killed around 2,000 people in the UK. Most were carried off by the heat, but a significant proportion was probably killed by air pollution. Presumably more casualties will follow – perhaps your own elderly relatives among them.

Making this kind of link between the broad threat of climate change and more personal concerns such as health is a key strategy to persuade the public to curb their own emissions.

The Lancet’s editor Richard Horton said much the same at the launch on November 25 of an entire edition dedicated to the “public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”. The event, at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, was attended by health minister Andy Burnham. I and the rest of the audience also heard video messages in support from UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and the head of the World Health Organization.

A large number of medical students were also in the audience. I spoke to a few who were members of Medsin – the Medical Students International Network. If you are a medical student, you really should get involved with this bunch, if you aren’t already. P&P works alongside them.

The series of five papers is the first exploration of how people’s health will benefit from taking steps to cut emissions, both in the UK and abroad. They focus on urban transport, emissions from household energy use, farming and food, low-carbon electricity production and the effects of ‘short-lived greenhouse gas pollutants’ such as soot.

One of the more interesting observations is that a low-carbon transport system, with greater walking and cycling, would save both lives and CO₂ emissions. It would cut heart disease and strokes in London by 10-20%, and make an impact on other health problems, such as depression. The impact would still be positive even after factoring in the greater chance of lethal car crashes from more cyclists being on the roads.

There would be a less substantial impact on health from improving the energy efficiency and ventilation of the UK’s homes. These effects would be related to improved temperatures, lower exposure to indoor pollutants and radon (a radioactive gas that seeps out of the ground in some areas) and fewer carbon monoxide poisonings.

Much of the media seized upon the farming paper. This concluded that halving the sector’s emissions by 2030, aligned with the government’s target for the nation as a whole, will require a 30% cut meat production. If this is reflected by consumption, it will also cut the occurrence of heart disease by 15% through lower intake of saturated fat. Less meat eating would cut cancer rates and lower obesity too.

Not surprisingly, the National Farmers’ Union was livid, blasting the Department of Health’s acceptance of the report as “ill-informed and simplistic”.

Another paper gave a poke in the eye to the nascent geo-engineering lobby. Deliberately emitting sulphate aerosols, which have a cooling effect but form dangerous particulates, would also have a substantial health impact.

So, if you are confronted by a climate change deniers or sceptics, ask them if they trust their doctors. Then tell them that the heads of eighteen colleges of medicine across the world described the prospect of failure at the Copenhagen climate talks, which begin in Monday, as a “health catastrophe”.

But whether the health angle will trump the kind of tabloid hoo-hah we have seen over the hacked UEA e-mails, in the long-term at least, is quite another matter.

PS

I see that Shared Planet 2009 in the fine city of Manchester has been and gone. It’s a rather important anniversary for me. I met my wife at Shared Planet 1999, at Warwick. The P&P website has the details.

Gareth Simkins is an environmental journalist who writes for The ENDS Report, the UK’s premier source of environmental business and policy news and analysis. He was active in P&P as a student and developed the Go Green campaign in 2003.

OUR BASIC HUMAN RIGHT IS FREEDOM, freedom of expression and choice without discrimination. We punish and invade impoverish and Middle Eastern countries who do not obey these rights, yet in a growing number of European world powers have forgotten such rights.  French Muslim women are now forbidden to wear the Burqa with anti-Burqa campaigns reaching Belgium, Italy and Spain. Even here there is talk of such right being abolished for some Muslim women. You would be wrong to think such view in recent days was from the BNP leader Nick Griffen. In fact it came from our coalition government by Conservative MP Phillip Hollobone who expressed support for similar measures in this country.

After all, we have been through has a society, war have after war trying to win equality for those oppressed have we just merely given up to the pressure of standing up to what is right or wrong. Some would state that this due to globalisation that has caused an east and west divide. This has lead to us becoming “Islamophobic” like in societies before when we were all anti-black and anti-Jewish? This is something I highly doubt.  Or maybe it could be considered that due to globalisation there is a crisis of national identity. What does seem likely considering in Britain if you are patriotic you’re stereotyped to be skinhead and a member of the BNP party?

Others clearly state that it is just a human mechanism to target a small minority in society when things go wrong like Hitler did with the Jews. As in France there are only 2,000 women who actually wear the Burqa.  One can suggest that this is highly plausible because Islam is an easy card play like the Jewish faith was in the 1930s.  This can be further emphasised by the black mugging in Britain during the 1970’s and 1980’s because of a recession there was inner city unrest and strikes, the mugging problem was amplified by the government even though it was only small scale. This distracted the British public of wider social issues as many called for tougher immigration security. This may sound familiar and credible as many argue that this is exactly what is happening in France currently.   They have already seen inner city unrest and large scale riots and with the French government preparing further harsh pension cuts, it can be seen as winning political strategy to bring about anti-Burqa laws. Also it is curious to note that the Burqa ban in Belgium is the only thing the Belgium government can decided on since it has been unable to form a government or even deal with the financial crisis.

In France like many other European countries Muslim women are the poorest in society with many deluding themselves to believe this is the result of the Burqa, However, many women who wear the Burqa wear it by choice and feel liberated. In Egypt there is an increasing number of female intellectuals’ who are choosing to wear the Burqa.  Personally, I have not tried it but should the French government be helping these women instead of taking away their freedom of choice away.

There is always going to be mixed feeling towards the Burqa but as a diverse society should we be more excepting or should there be a limit on choice and freedom.

Every time I come home for the holidays, or for a special occasion, or just because I need to, mortality and the fragility of life seem to become more and more apparent. In the last year there have been family and friends deaths that have shocked, the bloodiest month of the war in Afghanistan, the sale of our family business, my God Mother turning 70, the culling of analogue TV (joke) and the death of legends such as Michael Jackson and John Dankworth.

I’m lucky to live in the same town as most of my close family, my Granny lives just next door. For as long as I’ve noticed she has been hailed as ‘remarkable’ for her age-still driving, still bright eyed and quick witted, still going on holiday, and still making jewellery at 93. I.e. she is still passing comment on what I wear with a designer’s eye, winking at…everyone, snorting into her whiskey etc.

We also have a pretty cool dog, a beautiful striped greyhound that always seemed to me to be able to run faster than a cheetah. We have had her since she was 2 years old, I was 11 when she joined the family. Now that I’ve reached 20, I can see her legs failing, her laps of the beach getting slower and fewer, and eyes going murky.

Just like the dog, every time I return home, Granny seems to take a step closer to death.

She no longer has ‘interesting conversation’ because all she wants to tell me about is this bruise and this ache and this pill and this life that she no longer wants for herself. Her tenacity to not wear beige like the rest of the retired population of this town has been transferred to threatening me with her walking off the harbour wall and beating the demons that haunt in her in her old age rather than feeding the aspects of her life that warded them off in the first place.

Would frivolity lessen the pain of facing death?

Would a trip to the other side of the world shroud her aches and pains in cultural diversity and distraction?

Would drinking herself to oblivion make her remember better times so as to override and smother the current ones?

Well apparently not.

I have suggested all of these things, and apart from the latter, which she has always done anyway (she doesn’t like water) the cons of her life always win over.

What is the psychology behind this? What are her motivations?

From the outside it is hard to see past how annoying it has become, your sympathy is marred by her selfishness in focusing on it, it should be easy to be frivolous, but if I put myself in her place I cannot think I would be much different. I’m sure, being a do-er, that I would feel like enjoying myself and throwing caution to the wind all the more if I could walk properly, if I could do it all without wincing in pain and having to drag a scarily purple leg around with me to see the sites of the world. To do it anyway requires a lot of money and a lot of organisation to make up for your lack of capacity; thus my efforts day in and day out to reduce that pain, to solve the problem, to replace my teeth, are all the efforts of a compos mentis human who still has pride in themselves, and still has the sense of self to be embarrassed by the slow unravelling of what you know about yourself, with the ultimate knowledge that death is the only outcome.

To desire to put it off, to remedy your ills so that you can enjoy life more, has got to be an indication that the capacity to enjoy life, and to hang onto it, remains within.

Recently I have noticed that countries of the world can suffer from this too. I hate to mention it so close to Granny (the other day she said to me “it’s all very well saving the planet but if you can’t save your Grandmother….”) but in the UNFCCC process, i.e. the UN Climate Change Negotiations, those countries who sit in plenary at the negotiations brazenly telling the world they are going under water or being starved to death by the climatic changes their country is facing betrays the same thinking as Granny.

Obviously every human knows that death is their final destination, and that it’s what comes in between now and death that counts. But, if you see death every day, in the colour of your leg, your teeth falling out, in the tides lapping on your doorstep, or the face of your child who you can’t feed because the crops have failed and it’s your only source of income, it is no longer an issue of deciding how to best use your in-between time, it is survival.

As the youth emphasised in Poznan in 2008, survival is not negotiable.

That fear of death, that reflex for survival is surely what drives the brazen please in plenary to commit to 350 parts per million, and agree on 1.5 degrees maximum temperature rise without compromise-it is not a matter of choice but necessity.

Similarly it is my lack of proximity to death that makes me unable to empathise with my Granny when she just doesn’t shut up (I am sympathetic though), and equally the Saudi Arabians who follow Tuvalu’s pleas for survival with excuses of loss of crops and profits from oil as a reason to commit comes down to a lack of empathy and concern because it is not happening to them. If they were fighting for survival, oil profits would be the least of their worries, but they are not.

Countries with the money to get themselves out of any fixes they come across, are the fully endowed frivolous people, they are the ones who no matter what nature throws at them, they believe they can throw money back at it in equal weight and see a solution without compromising anything of what they do.

The SIDS (Small Island Developing Nations) and African countries are those with immense national pride and culture but who are already seeing the worst effects of nature’s aging and unravelling, thus they are ones who need to reduce the pain, plug the gaps, and get help. They are the 93 year olds in this process, the ones who cannot consider frivolity until they have solved the ills that they already have, a lot of which happen to be caused by a changing climate.

The developed countries, who have the funds, and already feel the impacts of climate change, such as Australia and New Zealand are the 93 year olds who are the same as my Granny, but they have the money to throw at the situation, so that instead of changing their reality, they simply become frivolous to cover it up.

The developed countries who aren’t yet in that position, like the UK and most of Europe, are something like my God Mother who has just reached 70 and is, as of yet, vehemently without aches and ailments that need servicing, so she can be frivolous with her time and focus in any which way pleases her-after all, the pain isn’t imminent, it is merely something we all accept as a future possibility, and one which we could take vitamins for today, but really, are we convinced it will make the difference in the long term?

I draw two lessons from this; firstly that life is precious, in all its forms, in all its pains and in all its beauty. Secondly, it is this inspiration and pride in one’s life and lands that will keep international negotiations and agreements alive in the coming years.  As long as we have headstrong countries like Grenada and Tuvalu, Kenya and Bolivia clinging onto survival because they love their country and their life, we have a reason to negotiate.

To apply the question I ask of Granny, would frivolity lessen the pain of facing death?

I would answer no.

Frivolity in the face of death makes everything more acute.

When you know what the frivolity is masking, what it is really trying to achieve, rather than add pleasure to a dying life it creates an excuse for inaction, it is disturbing to witness and sickening to face because you know that death came unhindered and without fear of a challenge.

The day we give up on life and the future, the day we stop campaigning and lobbying our MP’s and Governments to solve the pains and ailments of our earth, is the day we become frivolous with ourselves and our children’s futures, and thanks to globalisation, this is not acceptable on more than a merely personal level because we are not only carving out a future for ourselves but a reality for the SIDS and African countries today.

Our friends in the US from United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) have begun a new campaign demanding the infamous worker right abuser Nike ‘Just Pay It’. Nike currently owe 1,800 workers $2.2 million in severance payments and without jobs these workers are in need of food and money. Associated Press also report that owners of the factory pocketed payments to the Honduras’s national health care system, costing workers their health insurance.

However the student fightback in the US has already had a small but significant success with the Worker Rights Consortium affiliated University of Wisconsin ending contracts with Nike in solidarity with workers. This makes the university the first in history to stand up to Nike and make a clear demand that human rights are respected, an action which USAS hope will echo throughout the sector and encourage other universities to cut.

This small victory highlights the importance of the Worker Rights Consortium and the power a affiliated university can have in protecting human rights within its supply chain. Find out more about the Worker Rights Consortium and how you can get your university to affiliate.

The Worker Rights Consortium have also recently created a UK specific Q&A document to help answer any questions

The upcoming election to many is a premade decision: the Tories are going to come in because people are sick of Labour – which is all rather odd when you think that we’re going through a recession and usually that means a greater need for social security (and hence a shift to the left). Then again, it’s not like Labour are much to the left considering the passing of the Digital Economy Bill and the National Insurance hikes. Add that to the simple fact that the Liberal Democrats don’t really know which side of the spectrum they’re standing at (yes on green issues, no on immigration issues, etc) – and you’ve got yourself in massive conundrum. Or at least so in a country where winning an election is all about first-past-the-post and thus silences the smaller parties.

However, all conundrums have a window of opportunity to create the change people actually want to see – and on 6th May, we may begin to see the rise of a much smaller party who we won’t have to campaign against to create the change we want to see. In three major constituencies, the Green Party (which believes in all the things that us People and Planetters campaign for) has an opportunity to become MPs in Westminister: in Brighton, Caroline Lucas; in Lewisham, Darren Johnson; and in Norwich, Adrian Ramsay. These gains are not born out of a political system in crisis, but also because people do not want to waste their vote by voting for parties that do not represent their views.

The time for only voting for either two (or three) major parties is over. As students, none of them represent what we need right now:

• fair and affordable education,
• international justice,
• freedoms of speech/press/expression,
• equality & equity,
• improved national public services,
• increasing employment,
• fairer tax systems,
• cheaper and more reliable public transport, etc.

All of these are policies that the Greens are representing with fairer national and international economics which put people and sustainability before profit. It is sad that our generation sees politics as the epitome of evil and distrusts every politician. Political support is a predominant reason (but not the only one) as to why so many social reforms have occurred in the past, including the right to form unions, the right to vote, and the emancipation of slavery.

We are young, and we are those who can still have hope. We campaign and are members of People & Planet because we care and because we think that change is possible. Let us not lose hope. Let us make a political movement and shout out loud our concerns. The Green Party represents what we are as a generation of those looking for change. Thus I urge you - vote for (and join) the Greens.

Alternatively, have a look at the main election website (which is actually rather cool) .

This post was initially posted on AcaciaThorns (http://www.acaciathorns.net)