In response to a report from the Campaign to Protect Rural England that claims most real countryside in England may be lost within a generation:
Many of the problems we see are the result of the countryside attracting hundreds of thousands of people moving there because of the attractive environment and high quality of life which it offers. They cannot all be wrong.
- A spokesman at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
I can't grasp how far beyond sanity this statement falls. It just rockets right past it, does a loop-the-loop, and crashes into the spokesman's own house. His assuring smile doesn't so much as flinch as a gargantuan fireball erupts.
Despite, or because of, my long-standing antipathy to my farming background, I'm now acutely aware of the situation we're in. A large-scale expansion of locally-distributed organic food production is the only way forward. Anyone who's seriously looked at the fossil fuel situation knows this.
No, this doesn't mean that we're regressing back to "shit-kicking peasant" medievalism - although that might happen if we don't transition consciously. Technology will play a large part, but not necessarily in the sense of the gleaming biotech that's currently being fostered by multinationals. To me, we're either moving forward creatively and intelligently into a future that's a little like the distant past, and a lot like nothing we've seen before, or we'll be forced, brutally, by circumstances, to collapse toward something between the Middle Ages and Mad Max.
The fact that our government's response to this alarming report amounts to nothing - no argument, no evidence, no sense - is indicative of our situation. We're in collective denial, and we elect those who will help us to keep the lid on.
2 comments:
The obvious stupidity of *their* argument and indeed the direction of the debate beggars belief. The notion that the country side is a *nice place* ongoing, and we shouldn't be stopping people from having a bit of it is clearly self defeating ... you just can't have both.
The reality is (i fear this applies to government-mental approach to almost everything), the markets and where we spend our money is the real driver to change. They have no interest in pointing out the reality of limited space and resources for a future which is clearly a total fantasy.
Lets face it the aspirations of a great many people in this country is a nice car (in order to visit the dwindling areas of countryside) and a slice of suburbia. The tragedy is that this fantasy lifestyle aspiration is now unachievable for most people, at least if you consider the medium/long term view.
The reality of the countryside now and I fear ever more so in the future, is that it is being priced out of the reach of most people by those who have the means. The cost of a small (and I do mean small) house in what is left of the rural idyll of Sussex is equivalent to a west end apartment in London. This trend is set to get worse.
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