Last week I was early, I’m always early, for my interview with Martha Kearney on the World at One and so I watched a protest march set off from outside the BBC near Oxford Circus.
There were firefighters and teachers from the NUT. I recognised the strains of Billy Bragg’s rendition of The Internationale playing above the heads of the assembled marchers.
One of the teachers had this placard and I asked him whether I could take a photo of it which I then tweeted – by the time I had finished my interview about Passenger Pigeons it was ‘trending’ on Twitter in London – ie lots of people were seeing it and sending it on to their networks.
It’s a placard not an essay, but that is sometimes an advantage. The reason these nine words struck a chord with me was that they seemed to sum up sentiments that are difficult to put into words. For me, fairness is more important than riches, being kind is more important than being better off materially, being part of a group of friends is more important than being part of an economically active group of spenders.
Yes there is an economy, just as there is a society – both are emergent properties of our individual actions. But it is the quality of those interactions that matter to me rather than the passage between us of bits of paper with numbers on them.
You see – it is more effective in nine words than 90! I don’t know what the placard-maker meant, maybe none of what I read into it, maybe something different, maybe something deeper, but I’m grateful to him for his obviously home-made nugget of thought-provoking wisdom.
And what has this to do with the natural world you might ask?
I’m tempted to say ‘You work it out for yourself!’ but here’s a prompt. We need to decide what sort of world we want to inhabit. Of the three legs of the sustainability stool – ecology, economy and social – then the least of these, for me, is the economy. When I think of the type of world I would like to live in it is fairer and it stops causing ecological destruction. Yes we need economic activity to deliver a better society but we don’t necessarily need economic growth, and economic growth makes it far more difficult, starting from where we are now, to deliver ecological protection.
I’m not sure that the love of money is at the root of all evils but it plays a part in a great many of them. We seem to have put the economy at the top of a hierarchy, and ecology at the bottom. Our stool has a very long economic leg and a very short ecological one. I think we would be far better-seated if we changed the lengths of the legs of the stool. For a comfortable position we need the societal leg to be slightly longer than the ecological leg and that to be a little longer than the economy.
Maybe my placard would be three words: redistribute, re-wild and retrench.
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I’ve just been listening to an environment minister ( some bloke from the House of Lords, didn’t catch his name) Telling us (the Great British public) that we can do our bit for bees and butterflies by mowing our lawns less, and planting up a flowery window box.
My window boxes already look lovely ( I don’t have a lawn) thankyou DEFRA, now can farmers stop spraying off all the wildflowers over millions of hectares of grassland, and indiscriminately spraying off all the insects, including bees and butterflies on millions of hectares of cropland?
By ‘millions of hectares of grassland’, I presume you are referring to the improved, intensive grassland which dominates the lowland pastoral landscapes of the UK.
Grassland farmers tend only to apply blanket applications of herbicides to intensive grassland in order to deal with severe, economically damaging, infestations of broad-leaved weeds, particularly docks and thistles.
In most improved intensive grassland the only flowering plants in the sward tends to be white clover and red clover to a much lesser extent. Most other flowering plants simply cannot survive due to the competition from grass, high soil phosphate levels and regular defoliation. Most farmers I know will use clover safe herbicides wherever practical, although most prefer to use topping or spot-treatments to deal with localised infestations.
Yes it would be wonderful to see more wildflowers across our pastoral landscapes; but ultimately the consumer holds the key to making this happen. The problem is that most consumers in this country simply don’t care – they buy on price and price alone. For this reason only 3.5% of the UK’s farmland is managed organically. Blame them not the farmers!
Ernest the key thing as I am sure you are aware is to find a group of people distinct from the group of people one sees oneself as belonging to and blame them.
We can’t just blame consumers as we are all consumers.
Then we are all to blame – simples!
Ernest, to say farmers need to spay insecticides, herbicides and turn our countryside into a monoculture because of “consumer demand” is a rather bizzare denial of responsibility. The fact that price is a factor for many people does not mean farmers can continue to destroy our biodiversity, our environment and our future,. We need to rely on farmers to be good custodians of the countryside.
It was nice of you to mention high phosphate levels, the run off from which is polluting groundwater and rivers.
I notice you don’t come out in defence of insecticide use, I can plant as many bee and butterfly friendly flowers in my garden, but it’s no good if they then get sprayed off by the farmer next door, (or the farmer has already done away with those uneconomic weeds the caterpillars rely on for food!)
I’m a consumer too, I positively demand farmers take better care of our countryside.
Chris,
Perhaps my comment should have read, ‘if you wish to blame somebody then please also recognise the role that the public and the consumer have played in the state of the countryside as it currently is’.
In my own county, nearly all of the species-rich pastures and meadows were lost to intensive farming from the Second World War to the early 80’s – most of this was incentivised by publically funded grant schemes. Farmers were doing that the government/EU policy asked them to do.
A very high proportion of the species-rich grassland in my county is managed positively (although a bit homogenously) under HLS, certainly most of the high value designated sites (SSSI’s and SBI’s/CWS’s) are under some form of management scheme. A lot of farmers with moderately diverse or semi-improved grassland have this entered into ELS where blanket applications of herbicides are prohibited and spot-treatments are limited only to injurious weeds which they have a legal duty to control.
I think it’s fair to say that many farms could do more under agri-environment schemes, but I think it easier to level this criticism at arable farms than it is grassland farms where the range of options is much more limited. It would be great to see more species-rich grassland creation, particularly next to existing sites of interest but it must be said that the opportunity or availability of suitable sites is very limited – certainly in my county.
High phosphate levels – I mentioned this because available soil phosphate levels are high (e.g. >25mg/l), particularly on medium/heavy textured soils the conditions become pretty hostile for the majority of grassland wildflowers, clover being a notable exception. Good luck trying to recreate a wildflower meadow on a Stagnogley soil at P index 3.
Organic farming offers the opportunity for improved grasslands to be managed less intensively, fewer inputs, defoliations, more clover etc. but it’s not so easy to make that pay. The dairies and supermarkets are hardly beating down the conventional milk producer’s door down in order to get them into organic conversion. Why? Because there isn’t sufficient demand from the consumer. It’s particularly galling for the many organic sheep and beef producers to have to sell their produce at rates little above the market rate for conventionally produced meats, rates which don’t reflect the extra costs of organic production.
“I’m a consumer too, I positively demand farmers take better care of our countryside”
Good on you Chris – I’d suggest that your shopping basket is probably the best way to make that happen, that doesn’t just mean buying organic though, brands like Conservation Grade etc. all make a big difference.
Cheers,
Ernest
Ps – I wasn’t aware that phosphate pollution of groundwater wasn’t a particular issue in the UK – did you mean nitrate?
While we are deciding how we live implicitly we are exerting controls on all other species on earth some of which have been here much longer and who have their own societies but note not economies. Not too late for our society to respect rather than control others.
and look up Robert Kennedy’s fabulous critic of GDP on wiki quotes (and fuller version on Guardian.com).
Think my placard would say ‘consume less, have fewer children’. That would solve most problems in the long run.
I’d like to have a fairer economy which looks after people and the environment better for all our good. To do this we need to build a fairer society that … ditto.
I’m not really sure you can separate the two.
As for not wanting economic growth maybe it’s easy to say that if you are at or near the top of the pile – which let’s be honest pretty much all of us are in the UK. Fairer distribution of wealth is party of the solution but billions of very impoverished people on the planet badly need both that and economic growth too. It’s not just about having a better car or more beer it’s about clean drinking water, basic medical care and an education. The challenge is to deliver sustainable and equitable economic growth.
‘redistribute, re-wild and retrench’
I agree, but first as a society we need to re-evaluate.
Is that the same Billy Bragg who lives in his £2 million property in Burton Bradstock in Dorset?
Give over Mark! You are starting to believe your own left-wing hype!
“Is that the same Billy Bragg”
The singing watermelon
Ha, and a left winger can’t live in a big house if they make loads of dosh singing left wing stuff?
He has an opinion despite being well off, and I have one being a poor charity worker
Apparently one can!
All those bankers make money out of those who have money whilst Billy B makes his out of those that don’t – Is that hypocrisy?
PS I have a CD by BB (bought with cash) and find him good value ……… but ….
I’m sure he’s sung “Dirty Old Town” a few times – haven’t we all? – and now we’ve all helped him to move to Dorset
People can choose to buy Billy Bragg’s music. By and large they have no choice or opportunity to influence the scale at which Mr Banker, Senior Executive and Pension Fund Manager conspire to dip their fingers in their pension fund, stock portfolio or company profits.
I always have to laugh when people of the right seem to expect all of the left to live austere lives in sheltered housing or similar. Absolute nonsense.
It’s what separates us from other animals – the ‘economy’ took over from the ‘pecking order’
Let’s live ina society not an economy!! – Is that why the NUT is striking for more CASH – be it salary pension whatever?
The problem with some “conservationists” is that they make posts saying things like Mark has here and they go on and vote Labour (or similar) – a party entirely wedded to the economic system the conservationist says is doing all the damage.
If you truly believe what the placard says, then don’t vote for the opposite.
……..and some of us vote for the Green Party, A party entirely wedded to challenging the old economic system, Steve!