After looking forward so much to the Edinburgh fringe (yup, that time when our world leaders put together their own version of the Perrier Comedy Awards and gathered at Gleneagles to booze, stuff their faces and, in between schmoozing with each other, proclaim they were the starving people's saviours..........worked a treat, hasn't it?) and then being so disappointed at the outcome....yup, that prolonged silence was political-speak for "outcome"...... I looked back at my expressions of hope for the Rio conference all those years ago; you'd've thought I'd've got more sense by now, huh? Nope. I'm like so many others who keep getting shat on; I can't work out the circumference of the pan. I wrote the following for entry into some environmental story competition thing for people under the age of 17 for some self-satisfied society or other looking after endangered bricks or some other such great work; can't understand why it didn't make the final three. Anyhow, here it is........fuck-all changed really, has it?
It seems so prophetic, somehow, that the only way my voice can be heard (in two hundred words only, please) is by entering a competition; a competition that I am too old to enter............. Well, I'm about to fail on two counts; so, what's new? So many times during the last quarter of a century, I and millions like me have failed. We have failed each time we have seen countless groups of statesmen gather and "discover" theories and ideas that many of us have known and expounded for the past fifty years. For so much of that past half century we have put forward these same theories and ideas, well ahead of the days of enlightenment of these so-called informed thinkers, only to have them waved away or, more often, diluted by the Cerberus of compromise, isolationism and trade-off; and when agreement has been reached? So many times we have found the agreements wanting, the resolved decisions weakening, and the action lethargic, if it could be arsed to get out of bed in the first place that it. All too often ecological decisions are made that fit only into the maker's political lifetime, and the uniform of environmental and humanitarian responsibility is ill fitting on many.
If we, the rank and file of humanity can recognise these shortcomings, then how come you cannot? How come you, those that we have elevated to posts of authority and trust, and should know better given your education and that of those around you, how come you cannot see? From your elevated position you can look over the mountain; the majority can't. Their wings are clipped by the scissors of necessary self preservation wielded by the servants of vested interest. That is why we look to you for a faithful and open report on global conditions and an honest strategy for improvement; past experience has taught us that in the case of those reports, and on most strategies, the opposite is true. So, when once again you return by first-class travel from your well-fed conference with a bagful of empty promises, the flag of self interest flying high, corporate ideology in your heart and the 'forecast saying rain tomorrow' philosophy indelibly printed in your manifesto, how can you possibly be surprised at unrest or civil disobedience, at people who climb trees, dig tunnels or lie in front of tanks; if you can take this advice from such a one; Welcome to the Real World.
Cessation of human rights abuses, halting the social destruction of indigenous peoples or the reversing of wildlife conservation calamities do not get solved with a white-tie banquet of six courses and a gala ball. It might get people together to discuss them, but eventually they only get solved when someone identifies the countries involved, studies the environmental dynamics of the threatened species or habitat, recommends a series of measures to revert the abuse or decline, and the country in question holds up its hand and puts the recommendations into action, those that need it being funded by the rich countries who will also inevitably benefit. After all the bluff and political posturing is done it really is that simple. All it takes is for those in positions of power to recognise the abuses and announce that they, like us, refuse their consent.
Right now we are told that the people dying in all the terrorist excursions of the present and recent past, either willingly or no, on whatever side, soldier or civilian, guilty or innocent, are dying for a cause; it's a lie. All of these people are dying for nothing. Heroes? Don't kid yourselves. They're just another corpse that died alone and bloody. All it takes is for the leaders to say, OK. I've had enough of this. Let's do something else. Let's talk..... and it all stops.....no more bloodshed........really; cut out the government-backed arms dealers that use these skirmishes as testing grounds' for new weaponry, the banking-backed conglomerates that take cheaply from the poor to sell expensively to the rich, the politically-backed leaders that get away with genocide; cut them out and, ....."Let’s sit down and talk"; and despite all the rhetoric and the thousands that die for the cause, it only takes a handful of strategically placed people to say it and mean it and bugger-me it happens! C'mon. It's not a cause, the bloodshed, the starvation, the infanticide, the butchery, it's just a lack of political foresight deserving of a white stick, an underdeveloped sense of social conscience and an overdose of arrogance. It's not an admission of shame to own that you don't have all the answers to these abuses, we none of us have, but it's a shameful admission to recognise the abuse and do nothing about it.
Here, at Rio Earth Summit +5, you have been granted a further opportunity and been furnished with the necessary information and public support to soar like eagles; to rise above those selfish, earthbound contemporaries who moralise over the rights of countries whose people now want egress to the door marked "equal shares" and a right to decent lives and living as though it were somehow undemocratic to give them the components that we have. The components that would allow them the chance to cease searching the ground for grains of 'now', and lift their eyes to the horizon of 'future'. If current trends and thinking predominate, the horizon you are being shown by the politoglomerates from their false peaks of exploitation and amusement, even viewed through the most optimistic telescope, is, at best, happiness for the few, at worst a mirage for all. In Rio, you are being asked to stand next to an environmental furnace; unfortunately, many there just want you to warm your hands and bake a few chestnuts; don't be hoodwinked by them. If you have the courage to open the door, if you can stand the heat and more, to show yourselves to be good smiths, we will work alongside you; help to create a mould that this time doesn't fracture during the casting. A mould in which we can forge an empathetic, global human network where everyone succeeds with the help of the community, not the few succeed at its expense.
Throughout the past fifty years, like some of you now present, we too have attempted to open the door of that environmental furnace and been burnt for our trouble, yet we still keep returning. We return for no personal profit, just in the sure knowledge that we have got to get the mould right; sooner rather than later. What we have begun to accept, once again and seemingly far earlier than those whose finger is supposedly on the pulse of current ecological thinking, is that our energy and the supply of raw materials is fast running out. Soon we won't have enough sand to make another mould.
You say you are acting on behalf of the people. If that is so, why don't you listen to what they are saying? Listen now. If we point out to you that some people in the world are starving, it's not necessarily because our ultimate aim is to corner the bread market; if someone informs you, after twenty years of study, that tigers and gorillas are becoming extinct through hunting and habitat destruction, it's not necessarily because they deal in aphrodisiacs and are concerned about a droop in the market; if someone tells you that indigenous tribes are being lost through habitat encroachment and disturbance, it's not necessarily because they want to corner the market in ethnic art; if someone tells you they have an answer to the problem twins of a thinning ozone layer and an increase in the number of sunburn victims, it's not necessarily because they are in the fashion business and want to increase sales in the sun-glasses and sun cream market. Strange as it may seem, it could just be they are telling you the truth just because it is the truth, that if they didn't care it wouldn't matter, but they do so it does. That the tiger and gorilla are becoming extinct, indigenous peoples and civilisations are being destroyed, the global warming and the incidence of skin cancer is increasing, that "those people over there with no food and no hope of growing any" actually are starving. Ask us. Strange as it may seem you will find that we do care, that we would offer our unconditional, unselfish commitment in return for someone's, almost anyone's honest, unbiased blueprint for building another mould...... before the sand runs out.
So, with all these feelings bound up in my breast, I look for ways to express them and, after all this writing, I hear the echo of the typewriter keys and find the room empty. Once again I am faced with the only avenue of expression that could ever make a difference; the well blocked ears of the conference delegates that are here, in Rio, to carry out the people's wishes. And I know, even as I write, that the avenue is a dead-end on a distant planet for, try as I might to find a platform upon which to discuss my fears, I find only political quicksand. I search for people of quality and uncover bigotry, arrogance and isolationism; I listen for words of truth and vision and find a sound-bite philosophy standing on a foundation of platitudes and buzz-words. I look into the eyes of the delegates who reel off the pre-bargained, pre-scripted ecological messages as they pose on the steps of some architectural backdrop and, with much sadness, become more convinced in my belief that my voice will never be heard outside my own head, and that the best I can hope for is to rail at a television magazine....... through the entering a competition; a competition that I am too old to enter......
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