Some Stuff My MP Doesn't Want Me To Tell You

There's some stuff I've been wanting to get off my chest for a while, so buckle up. 

Last year I spoke to my MP on Zoom about the climate emergency. It was hard to get a word in edgeways as he graciously allowed that he might upgrade his car from a hybrid to a fully electric model, and boasted about his heat pump boiler system (I'd recently contacted my council representatives about the possibility of installing heat pumps in public parks, to be told that the government had helpfully introduced legislation to make this an impossibility. I told my MP about this and he quickly changed the subject). 

After fifteen minutes of this smug waffle in my half hour time slot, I got a bit annoyed and suggested that I didn't feel the government is treating the climate EMERGENCY with the appropriate amount of urgency. (You know, where they encourage us all to buy electric cars and use bags for life whilst also trying to open new coal mines, and trying to fund new fossil fuel projects in Mozambique that would produce enough greenhouse gas emissions to, oh yeah, kill us all. With taxpayers' money, by the way. I didn't say that bit, though, I don't think the Mozambique thing had happened yet.)

The MP's eyebrows shot up his ruddy, pork-pie face and he started on about how we don't want to scare the public. I pointed out that 'the public' are going to be pretty scared when food shortages start in this country, which Extinction Rebellion predicts could be as soon as a couple of years. He didn't have a lot to say about that, other than to caution me again about scaring people.

We're not supposed to talk about the state of the world today. It scares people. It makes them uncomfortable. It puts them off their tea and biscuits.

Except, not talking about it isn't going to lead anywhere good. If we can't look at the problems, if we can't discuss the problems, how in hell are we going to do anything about them while we still have time?

The MP said that change needs to come from the individual consumer. That's you and me. Not governments, not banks, not corporations, not big business and energy companies, but the little people. 

This made me feel deeply uneasy. I hope these opinions were representative of this MP only, not the whole government, as it made me suspect that when the world is past saving, and the people are in the streets demanding to know why more wasn't done, the whole bloody lot of them might just shrug their shoulders and slope off to their bunkers mumbling something about "Well, it's your own fault for buying so many disposable straws."

This was a bit startling to me, as I had been assuming that the people in charge were largely rational and would be stepping in to help any minute now. This was the first time I got a look at the mindset that prioritises profit over people, and wants to preserve the status quo - unrelenting economic growth - over all else and at any cost.

 

It's a little concerning if the UK government thinks that our beeswax wraps and moon cups are going to save the world when 71% of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by just 100 companies. That's right, companies, not countries. Businesses and their investors are doing the majority of the damage to our ecosystem and, oh yeah, killing us all. Sit with that one for a moment.

I posted about all this on Facebook once, and was surprised to find that a good few people still think that the climate crisis is a big hoax. I've agreed that in ten years' time, if they're right and we're all still alive, I'll buy them a pint. Inwardly, I found it difficult to understand a point of view based on completely dismissing fifty or so years of scientific study from assorted geniuses across the world.

But okay, let's leave aside the changing climate for just a moment. We're still in the shit, in a variety of disturbing and terrifying ways. And still nobody is talking about it. We're talking about TikTok and television and the weather, but we don't generally like to look directly at the fact that our lifestyles cannot logically continue as they are today. 

So here's a few more things you may not have known about:

- We get the metals and minerals for our cars, phones and other gadgets - and our jewellery - largely from open-pit mining. Environmental issues aside, this is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, and children are doing it. Also, rocks don't grow back. Future generations will not have access to these minerals, so unless we change our technology and vastly improve our recycling (and stop upgrading our gadgets every two minutes), we will reach a point when we can't actually manufacture any more.

- I don't know about you, but I've never really thought much about these metals and minerals and where they come from, or how. Let's just hit a couple of the highlights. One gold wedding ring creates 30 tons of toxic waste, and cyanide is often used in its production to remove the gold from the ore. Generally nobody is cleaning up this cyanide afterwards and it just sits around in pools, leaching into waterways. So that's nice.

- Did you know that the release of the PlayStation 2 helped fuel and fund a war in the Congo? Coltan, a mineral used in the manufacture of the games console - as well as laptops, phones and other such devices - became suddenly extremely valuable when Sony released the PS2, and rebels and militia troops from neighbouring Rwanda, as well as Western-based mining companies, forced children and prisoners-of-war to mine the 'black gold' in dangerous conditions. It's estimated that as many as 40% of coltan miners are children.

- There is enough food being produced in the world to end global hunger. It's not that we don't have the food. It's not that we don't have the money to distribute it. It's... just not happening.

- The one where Shell had nine activists killed following a sham trial. Or the one where Shell used a military police force against peaceful protesters and eighty people ended up dead, their bodies dumped in a river. There are actually more examples, yet this company with blood all over its hands just keeps on truckin'. Consequences? What are those?

- Disney's merchandise is made in sweatshops. Child labour, again. Workers are beaten, sexually harassed, and in some factories, forbidden to speak. It makes me sick that my child's Winnie the Pooh clothing was made in squalid conditions for pathetic pay by someone else's children. In 2018, Disney's CEO, Bob Iger, earned $66million. I say earned because I don't know the word for money made from the blood and sweat of impoverished people.

- The price of the average cup of chain-brand coffee could provide malaria medicine for six children in India. But again, because of the unequal spread of wealth and resources, this isn't happening, so we go on drinking our caramelattes while other people's kids die from preventable disease.

- On the topic of preventable disease, one hundred thousand children per year die of dysentery because they don't have access to clean water. If you're wondering what that's like, you might find out. Water shortages are predicted within some UK counties within the next decade or so, as our own natural water reserves are becoming too degraded, depleted and polluted to sustain us. Southern Water is looking at building a desalination plant in the Portsmouth area to treat sea water for human consumption. Which is great for us, but a bit shit for all the plants and wildlife that also depend on those polluted natural waters. Good job we don't need trees to breathe or anything! Oh, wait...

- On the topic of preventable disease once again, I don't know if you've noticed any pandemics lately, but if you missed the last one, there'll probably soon be more on the way due to our revolting factory farming practices. 

- One hundred species are going extinct every day, mainly due to deforestation. One. Hundred. Species. A day. 

- Do you know where we derive much of our medicine from? Lifesaving leukaemia drugs, for example? Quinine, another example? Oh yeah, that's right, plants from the rainforest. Imagine what other lifesaving drugs we could have found by now if we were preserving them instead of bulldozing them into clear-cut oblivion. Just a thought. We've analysed roughly 1% of rainforest species for their beneficial properties. We're destroying the rest, apparently. 

Do you find pandemics scary? Do you find food shortages and polluted water uncomfortable?

Me too. I think it's a sign of sanity.

I don't have the answers. I do know that we can't continue to deplete the earth's finite resources, or keep treating people and animals like commodities - or worse - to make stuff that ends up in the bin (for examples, see the shelves at your local Poundland or B&M). I know that we don't solve the problems by ignoring the problems. 

I'm sorry if I'm making you uncomfortable. But I hope I am. I do believe that the big changes we need to overhaul this unfair, violent system need to come from governments and world banks and big business, but I'm also faced with the reality that they aren't going to make those changes until and unless they have to. That means we need to speak up. We need to hold them to account. We need to point out the problems and keep pointing them out until something is done about it. We need to do the boring legwork - the 'clicktivism', the petitions, the letters, the emails, the protests, the boycotts - we need to vote with our wallets, we need to raise our children to care for the planet rather than seeing it as a collection of resources to exploit. We need to stop waiting for someone else to do it. 

I'm sorry to break the news to you that Disney aren't good guys! I don't like it either! 

I know you're tired. I know you're busy. I know you'd rather not think about it. There is so much work to do. There are so many problems, and they're all interconnected - women's rights and racism and child labour and war and poverty and deforestation and air pollution and palm oil and about a million more 'ands', and it's so easy to feel disheartened and helpless. And nobody wants to be accused of being 'shrill' or 'too serious'. 

But the first step is talking about it.

We need to start talking about it.

This post was heavily inspired by Annie Leonard's book The Story of Stuff. Please do read it, if you're able. There's a lot of stuff that's shocking, but there's also a lot of reasons to be hopeful, and ideas for how we can change and what we can do.