Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.
When I read something like this article in The Guardian, I am increasingly not shocked or surprised. Why? Well put simply, this has been said before, but politician’s and society at large, just aren’t listening, we’re not interested, unless we’re directly affected.
In 2014/15 I worked on flood recovery from the severe winter flooding of 2013/14. The lionsshare of the media attention went to places like the Somerset levels, but the effects were much more widespread than that. The immediate response, and that just after was that this was horrific and should never be allowed to happen again, anywhere. Lots of effort was put into making sure that was the case, and the winter of 2014/15 passed relatively quietly in the areas where I was working, but there was more flooding in Cumbria with storms Desomond and Eva. This might have been on another planet however, as locally things were wound down, people forgot what had happen a mere 12 months before.
Human memory is short and political memories even shorter. It seems we are destined to never learn the lessons of our own history. We won’t put sufficient effort into doing something about this issue, nor we will stop for a moment to consider the effects that continued unrestrained growth is having. We’ll still build on flood plains, not matter how short sighted stupid that is and we don’t even do the simple things, like maintaining watercourse, ditches, streams and banks to even help the existing system cope.
The Week In Wildlife – In Pictures
Currently Reading:
The Book of Yaak by Rick Bass [GoodReads]
Joyland by Stephen King [GoodReads]
Not surprised that this was sneaked through when attention was elsewhere. Whilst I know that there is a need for some chemical use in certain circumstances, I think the weight of evidence against glyphosate should have led to a different result, and a ban. Can’t help think that the pressure of big business and lobbyists against the ban might have had more influence.
I love that this guy just went ahead and helped a butterfly species, without too much assistance (or interference) from authority.
Electronic Scrapbook 
Hi, Alan. Quick note: the link to the glyphosate story doesn’t seem to be working.
In relation to your first commentary, we, as a society, have been trained to forget things very fast. Even common sense sort of things seem to be lost on many people these days, and all they think about is what is immediately in front of them or what is trending on Facebook, in their “friend networks”. It never became as relevant to me that this was happening, until we chose our current lifestyle. Skill and knowledge, once owned and practised by even my own father and uncles, were forgotten about until I started to have a need for them, out here on the homestead. “Oh, we used to do that all of the time, when we were younger,” seems to be a common phrase I hear from them these days.
People think that our big governments and unprecedented level of legislation is good for our society, but I say different. We’ve never been so close to destruction (as a society) as we are right now. And it’s not from climate change, or asteroid impact, or nuclear war with another country; its from our own ignorance, focus on self, and reliance on “big brother”and the church of science to save us.
A really good read! Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.
David.
Hi David, thanks for the heads-up on the link, it should be working now. Thanks for reading and commenting, I think you’re right and the government “memory” is the worst of all.