What a difference a lot of humans make

Britain used to have “pea-soup” fogs, which were due to people using coal for fires. Electricity changed all that, but its production brings new problems. We can all make economies and save a lot of wasteful practices, to reach a state where there is no waste of anything. But in no time population growth will take up that slack too.

We can believe that science will save us with even more inventions - but that is rather idolatrous: if all irrigation were piped instead of channeled to stop evaporation; if we ate fresh produce that was not completely perfect; if we had many desalination plants (using lots of fossil fuels) to supply our water needs; if we packed our roofs with solar panels; and if we accepted nuclear energy with its problems of waste for future inventions …

We seem to think that we must use up all our resources now. That now we must reach our optimum possible populations. We can leave no options for the following generations.

We can focus on something as dodgy as Emissions Trading Schemes, which are a way for some people to make money but leave things much as they are. We can take scientists’ and meteorologists’ statements out of context to make what we like. We can focus on global warming which leaves the way open to point to anomalies now and in the past, and to forget other things that humans are doing to the planet and its inhabitants - such as the overfishing and soiling of the oceans, and the destruction of war-torn countries by armaments.

Humans can change the way they do things - after all, there are no pea-soup fogs in London now, and some places no longer have acid rain. Some societies had forethought and escaped doom in the past. But we can remember all the cities buried in sand or jungles which did not save themselves. No doubt they thought of the economic costs they would have to bear themselves. Today the money-figures raised by property values and the building industry through growth would dazzle Scrooge McDuck, but there is more to life than that.