I was told, a while ago that to get a point across you must be bold and go straight for the jugular, people have a limited attention span and quickly tire, making the shock tactic the best way to hold their attention span.

The developing World represents only opportunity for western industry to exploit. It has a cheap and abundant work force, not unionized, hungry and subservient, money minded, educated and a work ethic already instilled.
No work place safety requirement, nor time off in lieu of payment, no Sickness benefits or health care, tax or welfare. No retirement plan or 36 hour week, there is no EPA, to worry us, no green movement to placate.
Third world non developing regions have greater spoils to reap, no representational governments, tribal ownership, warring parties, oil and mineral abundance, no capital, no lawyers, no safeguards, and no courts.
It’s just too hard to stay away. It is just a new place to add the nort’s, while we add some figures and they keep the zero’s.


I write this on the 100th birthday of the Global Warming prediction. A century has passed since a Swedish scientist noticed the smokestacks of Europe and wondered what became of all that smoke.
I write this while the latest response to this century old problem is to create Carbon dioxide accumulators, machines designed to suck the pollution from the atmosphere and bury it deep under ground in air tight natural caverns. If only waste disposal was so easy, and there was to be no future production.

That Swedish scientist published a theory and in the intervening years that theory has become fact although no one knows what to do about it.
During that time much has changed, so much so that I can say that I like so many others, have more scientific knowledge than he did but can not consider myself educated. Even though my knowledge stems from no scientific training, I have managed to easily acquire it all in this age of information.
I am certain that he would be amazed that his theory is understood so widely and I am sure that the reaction of the industrialized world would not have surprised him had he lived.
He would have noticed mass production and the wars for resources, he would have seen consumerism consume, and I think he would have drawn parallel comparisons with the Anti smoking lobby who have also failed to halt harm caused by smoke.
He would have come up against the equal but insurmountable force, which protects each, addiction.

I’ve always preferred to read the alarming claims of the doomsday prediction, do you remember the popular editorial in the 1970’s? A little depressing and unrelenting but deserved I thought. We used to be smothered by it day after day, served up cold and repeated with side orders of despair.
Some are relieved by its absence, but not me, I miss it. It achieved so much action, these days were lucky if environmental damage is even recognized, there’s a by-partisan agreement not to mention doomsday ever again, because it was all far too depressing, and threatened progress and unrestricted production.


Would any of us of realized how bad things had become if doomsday predictions had not been made?
The anti smoking campaign is apparently worth the doomsday message. They are allowed to speak plainly, they even say your going to die what could be plainer? at best they point out the decay.
What if they took the environmentalists approach?
They could ask you to cut down, take fewer puffs, and choose healthier tobaccos, but they tried that and it failed.
Do they face the same problems? Smoking is consumerism and both are as addictive, and as neither has a safe consumption rate the only way to save your self is to quit.
Recently gambling, Internet use and porn has been added to the list of harmful addictions why not shopping?
In all its forms, It’s has all the hallmarks of an addiction. Consumerism is pushed upon us. As we are encouraged the demand increases and our dependency is finally measured by our commitment to it.
Without our consumerist lifestyles we would be back to subsistence but with it we live in luxury, it’s not a matter of free choice but of free markets and we all demand a share.
The pollution comes with the package it cannot be avoided. Perhaps the only difference between our addiction to consumerism and an addiction to nicotine, is in giving up, we cannot.

I think it takes a shock to bring us to our senses, out of ignorance, and back in touch with the realities of the end consumers, served up cold is better than not at all.

The anti smoking debate heated up when the outlandish claims of the manufacturers were questioned. They told us that smoking wasn’t harmful, it was non-addictive, some even said their brand was good for your health. Years of scientific research went into proving that sucking in a lung full of smoke 200 times a day would be harmful. The toxins in the smoke were known, but the proof of harm took a while longer to be shown.
However even when the proofs came smoking did not stop, just frowned upon and expensive, not less common or out of fashion it just adopted a mystical air of recklessness about it.
If you follow the history of the anti smoking achievements it runs close to parallel with any save the world campaign because of it’s link with addiction. Tobacco manufactures still promote harm and consumerism still destroys nature under the promotion of the lip service deceptions of Planet Ark.

Before the environmentalist movement started, if we had a little rubbish we threw it into the sea. ICI hired barges for the purpose, chemical waste thrown over board in huge quantities encased in leaky barrels into our southern seas. Camera’s rolling, just off the beaches. Our waste management displayed total ignorance, and unashamedly replied “Just doing me job, Mate, no law against it!”, no one cared or knew about it, no one knew the harm was being done.
30 years have passed since then.

Those same chemicals still exist somewhere just out of sight, above ground leaking, leaching taking longer to get to the sea but they are still underway. Those rusted out barrels were never salvaged and have now become part of the food chain, with a reservoir of unlimited stockpile seeping through the shores to replenish supply. Toxic waste will never be contained unless the need to produce it stops.

The 70s were the days when any claim could be made, unreasonable scientific theories printed, Doomsday was never that far away. All those theories were presented and all were up for debate, they were largely refuted, just like cigarettes were not addictive we also believed industrialization was as benign, we were told, now we know different, because we challenged.
Global Warming, Ozone layer depletion, rising salinity, radiation leaking toxic leaching and more to come. Those were the days when they said insignificant damage was being done.
The notion of environmental degradation was unearthed, bought to the surface. We were educated, something had to be done, and 20 years of public pressure armed the fight for change.
They knew we knew, we had been made aware, educated, mobilized, organized and they were forced to respond because we were scared.


Doomsday is only just out of favor, while the unpleasant causes remain, the clock still ticks but we are no longer handling the truth or conjecture. Its timepiece is muffled, pacified by a rose colored tea-cosy, insulating us from the heated debate.
The pendulum has swung too far the other way, cliché’s are the only things that are ever truly recycled.

Doomsday predictions are not used to force the issue any longer, they made the future seem hopeless, which admittedly made the situation untenable for a while. However the change to positive focus, left us in denial.
Encouragement did not do the cause justice, no middle ground was ever found, or alternative directions for economies or industries were ever mapped. Now more apparent is the guilt of both the environmental movement and industrialists, each are to blame now by association benefiting each other more than the planet.

A partnership has evolved, giving industrialist cover, they involve environmental impact studies as the industry hire pseudo- greens to handle the PR, most environmentalist earn a living now by accepting thirty pieces of silver less tax. They take the samples, report only in secret and present simple patched up simplistic containment tactics at home but not overseas.
Environmental news is delivered in positive encouragement text, biased, tainted, cleaned and recycled for maximum exposure, part of industrial promotions, sourced worldwide, corporatized, homogenized and garnished with misinformation before presented as a whole and applied, like pleasing wall paper to cover over structural cracks.

Singular examples of achievements, so we can think everything is under control, moving forward nicely powered by the sun, wind or water no harm done.
One isolated spill cleaned up, two slightly distorted images of corporate responsibility and three grand shows of awaiting improvement, it is what ‘Tubular Bells’ was to music.


Thankyou for your time.