Saturday, September 16, 2023

 


I have been a climate activist since before it was called climate activism. I first stood as a Green Party candidate in the UK General Election in 1992. It was not an easy thing to do. I lived in the constituency of the longest serving Conservative MP - Keneth Clarke. I stood no chance of election. I stood even less chance of being heard by press or public, but I tried and at the hustings, Mr Clarke personally thanked me for 'Supporting Democracy'. I replied that I wished he would consider the possibility that he was wrong about Conservative principles. In 2005, once I had recovered from that crushing defeat, I stood again, this time with more assurance in my ability to perform in public on the 'Hustings' - which is the one chance I have to address issues in public with all the candidates. I had not done very badly in 1992 but I hoped for a better showing in 2005. By then there had begun to be at least a small amount of public understanding - at least of the points we 'Greens' were trying to make. 


Simply put, Malthus was right. 


We live with a limited set of resources in the ground and limited space to throw away our waste. Once we use it all up, we will all die. I said I was putting it simply, but it is obviously true. Things run out. In 1992 we were up against the entire mass of the infrastructure of the western World, and indeed the rest of the world too as everyone hurtled along the same path - of growth. Here is another obvious fact, again one which you can test yourself - If you get more of something, then if resources are limited where you are, you must have taken them from somewhere else. For some reason 'we' all thought that the people who we were taking stuff from would be happy to let us do so for ever and not twig that maybe they were suffering.


Keeping things simple here, I shall call on your personal experience and that of any older person. 1962 was the last 'real' snow in the UK, it has snowed since, but that lasted on the streets for months. People wore hats, gloves, scarves as well as thick coats. These are hardly seen at all these days. There used to be ice on the inside of windows, breath was always visible inside a bedroom, bed clothes had to be thick and there had to be a lot of them. Making a bed was a task not just because the Duvet hadn't made it to the UK back then.


Think of the shape of a hockey stick, I know nothing of the game but I do recognise an exponential growth curve when I see one. Yes, there are parts in the graph of the rise in temperature of the planet that do not climb, or do indeed fall but these are only a small fraction of the larger graph. The 11 year cycles of the Sun can be seen, larger views show the volcanism of the Earth, the orbit of the solar system through the local group all do show up in sufficiently long range scientific observations. I do not claim otherwise. I do however point out that the rate of change in this internationally recognised 'Anthropic Epoch', which is visible to today's geologists, is vastly faster than at any time and in any scale view of the recoverable history of the planet. Even the asteroid strike which, together with increased volcanism, killed off the Dinosaurs took at least many thousands of years if not several millions to totally snuff them out. By the way, the small dinosaurs evolved in to Birds. 


Easily seen and totally reproducible records, Tree Rings, ice cores, written history itself, films made by Hollywood in which everyone worse hats - show that things are getting warmer very fast indeed. I myself was nearly killed by tiles falling off our roof in London when a Tornado, OK, a small one, hit our house.


Floods, Fires, rising sea levels, stronger winds, loss of species, any number of clearly evidenced facts show that the planet is warming. Records show that we are doing it.


Why then is there so much talk of a 'climate hoax'? I have not read or studied all of them as it is a challenge to read things that make me so angry, however, the arguments against environmental protection are I believe aimed at the protection of the status quo keeping business as usual as possible. Sadly I am certain that there are very many players in the Fossil Fuel economy who will do anything to keep their profits high at any price to anyone else. I have faced them for decades. I have been first ignored, then laughed at, now we are being attacked because the big bad guys out there know, and have known for decades that we are right.


Gaslighting is a term I have learned recently, it is the act of making people think they did not see what they actually experienced. I think this is an appropriate term to use in this situation.  Everyone knows the facts, but most are terrified - often rightly - of the consequences of trying to put matters right - and also blind to the speed at which it is essential to act.


I call on all readers to stop bothering with the carefully selected data touted by a decreasing number of people and look to the facts of their own lives, the shortages, the changed weather - which is driven by a changing climate - the increase in population and population movement - warned about for decades by Greens everywhere and now a topic our UK Government is trying to sweep under the carpet. Just how obvious do the signals have to be before people show their governments that we have to do things differently from now on ?


Now here comes the good bit:- We know how to fix things, indeed you know how to fix things in your own life and working environment. For example, look at how to increase efficiency in the production of local produce. Reduce exports of anything you need to eat or use yourselves. Leave Oil in the ground as much as you can. Use some of it to make sustainable power collectors - of Solar, Geothermal, Wind and Sea waves. There is no shortage of energy and never can be, its just that we are using it badly. All the answers are out there, no more need to be discovered and, even better than that, more are invented and recovered from history every moment - we just have to use them. The changes shall be radical - because we have left it so long before doing anything about our growing problems. Jobs will change, jobs will go. Retraining shall happen. This shall take time and so a safety net for people's income, a basic income, is essential. That is a governmental job.



There are many green foreseen changes that have already happened to our daily lives here in the UK. Covid was one such prediction, and more diseases like that are expected as a result of humans going too far. We pushed people in to eating, or at least in to close contact with animals that were normally left well alone. Trans-species diseases resulted - as we always said they would. The best way you can protect your selves and your future is by voting - or at least telling your representatives to go, Green. 


I say a Green vote is the most effective - because the history of leaving it to government as usual has had its day.


Simon Anthony 

    green@torty.org.uk

     Barking, Dagenham 

and Havering Green Party

Prospective Parliamentary 

  Candidate for Barking

I am a long time lover of space. I am old enough to have watched Apollo 8, I was born while Sputnik was in orbit. I was delighted by the moon landing and expected a very great deal more of these wonders in the very near future. The Space Shuttle was indeed amassing, but from the outset I worried about the solid rocket strap on motors and the incredibly fragile shuttle tiles. The ISS is incredible still to this day but none of what we have is more than a shadow of what was expected back then.


Back then the environmental damage caused by the western form of everyday life and business was just beginning to become noticed. It has taken fifty years to be taken seriously, but I knew how incredibly important it was from the early 1990s. I first stood as a British Green Party candidate in 1992. I stood no chance, I stood against the longest standing MP in British history - the then Health Minister, or was he the Secretary of Defence by then, anyway it was Kenneth Clarke who I shared the Hustings podium with. 


It took me many months to recover from the stress of that defeat, not that it was in anyway a shock that I lost, but the simple pressure of being, even for a moment, considered to be on a par with such a political icon drained me deeply. He thanked me for ‘supporting democracy’ I asked him if he could consider the chance that he may be wrong about his political convictions.


I saw him again in 2005 when I next stood. He remembered me, or at least claimed to - which was nice. It was surreal to have a pre hustings drink with him, but far less scary this time. Had I the chance to say words that were not answers to specific questions, I would have said that our only hope of continuing to live on this planet - what with the idea that Growth as the only answer to everything - would be to go in to space. There we could find all the resources we could ever need. There we could do what we liked and not mess anything up. But, I did not get the chance.


I am standing for a third time at the next general election, over thirty years later. This time I shall not let my natural voice just answer the questions. I shall push for all I am worth towards space. I can clearly see that it is impossible, even with the best will in the world, to get the people of the world to give up any aspect of what is seen to be ‘the good life’ no matter what happens. 


I don’t want people to have to face the disasters, the apocalyptic nature of the flooding of Libya, the devastation caused by wild fires, the tornado that took the tiles off the roof of our house in London which only just missed hitting me, to say nothing of the human caused but not human made Covid issues. It looks as if it would take even more than what has already happened to make people tell their governments that they see the problem. There should be no need to wait for the end of everything civilised on this planet to make people change the way we do things. 


Forget politics, forget parties, we must act together.


I have worked as hard as I can to bring about consensus between whatever argumentative groups I found, but I have not got very far in these three decades. However, my first great hope for the future is at long last looking as if it will be able to save us all.


Industry is coming to the rescue. The very mechanisms that have driven the planet to the very brink are now realising that ‘growth’ at least on Earth is counter productive, destructive, bottom line - expensive. Going Green, going in to space, is now seen as the least expansive and vastly more profitable route to take.


I applaud this new way of thinking, even though it is fifty years late  - after all, they knew first that this would happen. Lets hope they have their plans well laid. We need them all.

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Brexit - it is really all over ?

Greens hate the idea of further capitalist globalisation, but know that is a small problem compared with the loss of our planetary environmental support system. This is not a scare tactic - we have been saying this for decade on decade, only now do the other parties even realise there is a question to ask - they have not gone any real way towards providing a set of answers.

The Brexit vote for a Green was like having to chose between two children and hope the one you lose can cope better that the other child by itself. We can deal with globalisation only if we can still breathe - staying in lets us debate those issues from the inside - where we geographically and meteorologically exist anyway.  Please forgive my generalisations and remember that the details of the facts are less relevant than the power with with they are shouted. This isn't an easy question and yet we have to give an easy answer - that can never be fully right - we have to make a version of Sophie's choice.

This can be changed. Generalisations are forced by 'democracy' and made far worse by the two party, first past the post system. Reality is, people are individuals - politics ignores this almost totally at the moment. The Green Party has been held back for years by doing its best to not generalise and so gets very little actually decided. I think Jeremy Corbyn would fit in well once he starts think about the environment. That difficulty in facing up to the yes/no aspects of 'democracy' is in part why the Green Party has a 'Philosophical basis' as a central part of its manifestos.

As a very part time politician, I am delighted and at the same time deeply saddened at the reasons for the massive political wake up caused by the Brexit referendum. I keep reading wonderful comments from people I have never heard say anything even faintly 'political' before. To me 'Politics' is the word that describes how we can decide the future - and as such everyone should spend all their time learning enough to be sure they can be democratic and vote with anything other than a knee jerk response . This is obviously impossible, impractical and a rotten way to live - you'd never get anything done. So, we pick people to do that for us and trust them. When a few of them take personal advantage they destroy our trust in all of them. This is neither just nor true, but it is totally understandable. The public made a choice but now regret it - or so it looks to me.

This is not the end of Britain in Europe quite yet however. From the administrative angle alone the practicalities of the actual work required to remake 40 years of negotiations after an exit may cause it to be abandoned. From the view of the public it could well be they now see the lies too late and have actually changed their minds. At the time of writing over two and a three quarter million people want another vote.

I know we clever humans can and shall make anything work - eventually - but it was not obvious how damaging an exit would be in so many ways. As I write, Article 50 has not been passed through Parliament. An potentially altered public attitude can be gauged from the details of the petition at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/131215 . In this remarkable and one-off scenario the result of the referendum has been even more dramatically opposed than was the result of last General Election. This is possibly because far more people - about double the last turnout voted. A new election we could expect to have a similarly enlarged turnout.

This petition was started before the vote and the wording states - whichever way the vote goes - 75% should have voted and the difference should be 60/40 - not sour grapes, Farage said the same - once. A new petition asking for a free vote on ratifying Article 50 is at the checking stage at the moment. It can be found at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/141150 .

Our very system is flawed. It is only a true democracy when people actually know what they are voting about and they have been checking Google in their thousands like never before. I am basically saying - people have changed their minds now they can see they have been lied to or have misunderstood what they heard. A second chance is fair - that is what democracy should be - but is not fair when the facts are either hidden or are lied about.

This second bite petition has the power to stop ratification of Article 50. It is unique, as was the referendum in that it has been held at a time when people can actually get the information they need in order to come to a decision - but - we are all new to this game.

A second referendum would most certainly be binding and it is essential if we value democracy.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Brexit - how to make the best of a bad vote.

Right folks. How can we make this work ? Jenny Jones's comments obviously come to mind. I did not hear any Green say that her views were wrong, just that, because they did not match with what Conference had decided she should keep quiet about them. One of her major points is that Greens are and have always been firmly against Globalisation - of industry, the economy and commerce in general. The not opposing Remain argument put greater weight on the environmental and social aspects of staying within the EU - which has always been an economic grouping and not an environmental one - despite the best efforts of very many Euro Greens. All their work and that of so many other groups that have been aimed at correcting that error are now in terrible danger of being wasted. But, we should now remember that they were the best we could do from the position we were in then. Now we have moved.

We always wanted, needed and campaigned for an environmental union and we can still have that - now freed from the commercial concerns imposed by having to meet the ever more difficult problems of equating different countries and societies in the pretence of them being a single entity. Environmentally the world is indeed one place and every action one group makes has an impact on many if not all others, we have always known that and now the people have chosen to have our collective noses rubbed in the realities of our similarities and differences.

Now that the UK, for as long as it can be called United, is cutting itself away from financial ties with Europe, it shall have to run on a wartime system - living with vastly reduced imports. Land will have to be put in to food production and people shall be needed to tend the processes. Raw materials will be in short supply too, but, the UK, like all 21st century economies has generated huge quantities of waste and these can be recovered and reused - probably at a far lower eventual cost than would be expended rebuilding infrastructure to cope with the as yet utterly unpredictable import export systems that must now be redeveloped. There could be a maximum of only two years in which to do this, possibly far less time than that. Greens know what to do, we have been trying to get societies to be self sufficient for decades. Now, the UK has forced itself in that direction this is a great opportunity if approached correctly. Produce locally. Consume locally. Export only what the rest of the world can not make, import only what the UK can not make.

And now the good news. We all need water, food, space and resources to sustain life and the quality of life we have come to expect and hope for. Too often in the past these have been won through invasion and wars. Today though things have moved on. The last few decades of planet wide technological and social growth and unification of information and scientific effort have resulted in exponential increases in the capability of every technology humanity has to hand - and has even created the probability of artificial assistance - Robotics. These changes are no shock to anyone who has been watching, but most people have not had the time, they have work to do, they leave that sort of thing rightly to elected representatives to do that job while they get on with their's. This 'Leave' vote tells politicians that the public thinks they have been caught with their hands in the till - sleeping or partying on the job. The Public has spoken and said - enough - we deserve better. Well, Greens are better.

Win Win ? No - the transition could be dreadfully painful. That is why the Green Party did not advocate it in the first place. We knew how hard it would be, we feared the xenophobia that could result from a 'them and us' 'Leave' vote, but hey, you asked for it, now here it comes. It's the job of the Greens to reunite a shattering country in to sustainable - environmental self sufficient small groups that can work together country and planet wide for the benefit of everyone and every thing.

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Econonics, a possibly niave view and my reason for keeping it.

When I was a school kid, I didn't like being a kid and I hated school. I particularly hated lessons that forced-fed me facts with no explanation of the reasons for them or the basic principles underlying their working. What, I thought, was the point in cutting open a dead frog to see what's inside when it had been done thousands of times before - and where the answers for what I should find had been set in stone anyway - so, that if I saw anything different, I would be 'wrong' rather than heralded as the new discoverer of something 'right'. In maths, lessons apparently taught me calculus, but, maybe I missed the one in which the teacher told me why I should bother with it. Having no idea what it could do, I saw no reason to learn it - also - I had no way of getting to grips with a slippery customer which had no association to any reality I already new. Also, it was hard!

I had been a late reader too. My first school books were 'Janet and John' stories in which two utterly dull kids went to a toy shop or a butcher's or somewhere else boring and did boring things like saying ' Oh, what a lovely balloon' and suchlike. Why on earth would I want to read that? The pictures told me what was going on - and nothing was - so there was no point in deadening my mind with the small black wiggly things under the boring illustrations.

My Mother thought otherwise. She read me 'Winnie the Pooh' stories - these had brilliant drawings which set the scene rather than tell the whole plot in one go. She did all the voices and everything too, and, she recorded them on tape so I could listen whenever I wanted. Reel to Reel tapes by the way, on a 'Gramdeck' as we could not afford a real tape recorder - it was the very early 1960s after all. So, that way I learned there was good stuff in books after all, but, it was all on tape - so again - no point in my learning to read.

My Mother caught on to this one rather quickly. The 'Cat in the Hat' came next. Again, brilliant, but totally different - and this time colour - illustrations, surreal and inviting imagination. The poetry was enticing too. I liked the feel of the words and spoke them along with my Mother's reading - that way I went on to read them myself. My next book was 'Escape from Planet Earth', a hardback with no pictures.

I found I could learn. Physics was a great love, as was anything technological. Things I could use and trust and test. Things that would lead somewhere new and exciting or improve what I already had - wonderful. French did not come in to that realm at all. I asked why I had to learn that and was told that one day I may want to go there. I pointed out I wouldn't. because I didn't speak the language - and the lesson ended and never returned. That was in primary school though, I had no such luck at my 'English Grammar School'.

I had just about passed my 11 plus exam and had been reluctantly let in to the painfully local school for boys. I did not get on well. I never really understood that School then was a place to learn answers not ask questions - so I learned nothing and got told off. Except for Physics and Technology where I made personal friends of the teachers. `

I was also on very good terms with the Art master and the English master. The first chap made fun of me in a way I could respect - the first time that ever happened. The second chap let me join the 'Stage Staff'. There I learned how to get on with people who liked the same things I did - oddly, tape recorders.

This was my early school life. I learned what I felt was important or interesting and ignored anything and everything that left me cold. I did try and work up an ability to pass exams, but to no effect. If I could not check the answer or understand and appreciate how it was achieved, then I had no way to remember it. This was a very slow way to learn and it showed in my marks.

Economics was a different matter, it was an odd half way house. I could see a mechanism and understand the importance of being able to match supply with demand butI did not see the moral reason for increasing the price by reducing the supply when demand was high, and I still don't. In fact, I took a degree of offense from that sort of thinking and said so, in effect, in the answers I gave in a multiple choice exam.

My Maths understanding was broken by the lack of an explanation of it's values, but I had a grasp of percentages. I knew that a random set of answers to questions with three options would get me a 33.3333% mark on average sort of thing. When it came to the exam, I scored 4%. I think I was a Green from that point on, at least 96% green.

The teacher told my parents that I should read newspapers to learn how the real world worked, but I think I knew that his idea of the real world didn't actually work at all - it was just consuming it's candle at both ends and in the middle to burn brightly enough to blind observers to the fact that it was all going to be 'up' as soon as it ran out of wax. My opinion has not changed. Some may, and do, call me naive for this way of thinking. They do so often enough for me to have almost learned how to spell the word 'naive' without looking it up first, but, I see no reason to change my world view.

Another part of Maths that didn't pass me by was subtraction. You can't keep taking away from a fixed number without it going negative. I wonder what my old economics master would say to that.


Sunday, January 25, 2015

Once was enough. (Why I never voted Conservative again.)

I was brought up in a conservative household, in that my Mother was Conservative and my Father was quiet - he was actually an active liberal, then he was a reluctant LibDem, but not overtly at home. Politics was never mentioned unless it was by my Mother , saying something to the television about the Labour bloke who was on at the time. The socialist government's policies had destroyed her father's building firm in the 1970s - so she still hates them all.

My Mother's influence also explains why I was never a Labour man, even though I failed at school and started working at 17. I joined the Post Office, the telecoms section - soon to be called BT, but then mostly still called the GPO - at least that's what the crockery said in the staff canteens. It was not the job I wanted. I was still too young to join the BBC and my Father in television engineering production, although I tried. I turned up for work at the 'Post Office' in my Harris Tweed jacket and was instantly ostracised. They thought I was a management spy - hardly acting incognito - but, I was obviously different, especially when I opened my mouth. I also had a disturbing tendency to read 'Soviet Weekly' as it had the only coverage I could find of the Soviet space programme. I was not well suited for the job.

I got on well though, I could do it, twisting wires together, warming my feet in a 'foot box' under a red and white striped workman's tent with a blowtorch - melting my socks in winter. The men I worked with, they were all male, continually tested me - often in groups - asking questions about who the heck I was and what on earth was I doing with them. I answered as honestly as I could - and got on very well indeed with everyone - until I started working in the Post Office Tower. There the staff felt that I was a threat and treated me somewhat badly. I did not get on well there, but I did get old enough to enter the BBC - so I did.

Oddly, the Beeb was worse. People never asked me who I was at all, never bothered to talk to or interact with me in any way other than to do with the job at hand. Not nice. Depressing - far more off-putting than the initial open hostility at the Post Office. That, I could and did address. The silent treatment gave me nothing and no one to work with.

This was the class system at work, not that I realised it at the time. Politics went with class then, so I sort of fell in to voting Conservative. She was a nice lady and it would be a good thing to have a woman prime minister we all thought, so I voted Conservative. "Rounding up rather than rounding down' was my thinking. Better to raise everyone as high as possible than lower everyone to the same level - that was my view of the difference between the 'two' parties.

This was the time of the first economic depression of my experience. At the time I thought I was unaffected by it, I had my own home and a job for life, what else was there, I was even married. But, every time I watched TV ( which was basically my job ) I saw a world different from what I had been told it was. I saw something else in the alternative comedy shows - humour - intelligence , hope for change, anger at inequality, repression, the 'status quo' ( who I never thought much of, I'm more of an Orchestral chap ). I began to feel uneasy. All the jokes were against 'my' party. Mrs T's voice had got deeper and more strident ( after her vocal training I later learned ). I didn't like her any more, and I did like Not the Nine O'clock News - a lot. I even worked on it from time to time. I even thought up a sketch and got it accepted by the show - which was then cancelled.

I had a nagging feeling of being wrong about things, of being a problem to the world rather than living in it. This was uncomfortable. Then, I realised what the problem was - I was part of it - being me, I could change me, or at least my view of the world. As it turned out, I didn't change much at all. The only thing I did differently was put a cross in another place - at least to start with. I felt so much better being on the right side of everything - right as in correct. I had no need to continually find self justification for an increasing difficult to support world view that I had inherited from my Tory past. I in no way changed what I thought and felt about people and life in general, I just realised that the party I had voted for was not supportive of anything I wanted to be a part of. I did not and do not reject the levelling up rather than down argument I started out with, I just noticed that the policies I had supported in no way were aimed at supporting that goal. I looked around for something that did what it said both on it's tin and in my heart - and I found the Green Party.

There was a TV audience / Vox pops thing back then. Julian Pettifer was the host. John Sergeant, the then BBC Chief political correspondent was the chief guest  - I was also there, at the back, in long hair and sandals (probably) after having stood in the recent General Election. The first half of the show went off smoothly, but the second half got taken over by some invited audience member who basically talked a lot and incited loud arguments and uncontrolled rowdiness. It was clear to me that the second half of the show was a write-off, and it was redone. On take Two, I was asked to pose the question I had come to deliver "How long will it take for the News Media to treat the Green Party in the same way as the Conservatives and Labour parties ?" - well, that was the gist of it. Possibly to stop a recurrence of the uproar in take one, John Sergeant took the rest of the show up in a very lengthy answer. basically he said -'60 years, that's how long it took the Labour Party to reach government after it's inception. Well, that was over a quarter of a century ago now and the Greens had been going for twenty years or so already by then. On his reckoning, we shall be in power during the government after this next one.

I think we can do better than that.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Why is the 'West' hated ?



Well, for a start, most of the West is loved or at least tolerated by most of the rest of the world, but it is the point of this piece to claim that the bits that are not adored and emulated are the very bits the Green Party is seeking to change. Put it another way, terrorism would not be incited by a Greened up West.

My claim is based on my perspective on world views as held by people other than me. That is a tough job to do, but one that everyone should attempt before deciding on the justification of any 'war' - hot or cold.

This Green Party supporter's idea of a non greenies subconscious view of the world is one where people go about their daily lives unaware of their impact on the environment - unable or indeed unwilling to do anything about it. Lack of interest or engagement forms most of the inability of the West to change, a solid and determined desire for power - to keep 'business as usual going for as long as possible - forms the rest, the most influential section. Sadly, that final part controls or owns the infrastructure , both physical and legal that runs our world.

This is not a blame game. The lot in charge have been responsible for the massive gains in freedoms and opportunities that all the people of the west have benefitted from for so long. We love our way of life and have no intention of changing it, certainly not because someone somewhere else doesn't like it. It really puts our backs up if the outsiders start doing anything about their grievances. Terrorism is not nobel, exciting, or in anyway acceptable - but it does have a cause. My contention is that this very cause is the thing that Greens see as dooming us all. In one word, it is Growth.

Growth needs two things, space and resources. For centuries, the strong have inherited everything the weak have had to offer - because they can. This has worked fantastically well for the strong, us. It even strengthened the otherwise weak, or at least convinced them that they where second or third class world citizens. They were told by their stronger 'betters' that they could and should work hard to improve themselves - by emulating us.

In ancient history, civilisations had survived and grown to the point where things leveled out nicely, not too few people to do the work, not so many that there was not enough to eat. Presumably life was good, comfortable and people could be happy living it, but it didn't grow. Now, add a few wolves to that contented herd and you will get quite a few very angry sheep. OK, a sheep can't take down a wolf, but a bunch of them could be very nasty to a few unprotected cubs.

Rome worked in rather the same way as the west today. Looking back at what happened to them gives us an idea of the future of the 'West' Rome was supported by slaves but a slave could rise to great heights and some did, but most could not. There were a limited number of spaces for freed slaves and lots of work for the rest to do, so there was only one carrot and a very large number of sticks. Today is the same, but there are more carrots - not an unlimited number of spaces, however the trick still works because everyone really believes 'it could be you' and so 'keeps calm and carries on'.

This fuels Growth. Growth is good, the alternative is death - or so we teach. The Roman Empire faded away as their resources failed to support the increased demands, but there were a lot of bangs and even more whimpering on its way out. Rome just had to keep growing, if it had been happy with what it had, it could still be around now.

Rome knew nothing else and it was not alone. Napoleon had to invade Moscow, so did Hitler - all in the name of growth ( but they called it 'living room' ). The goal of growth was the downfall of all of them. Resources ran out and nature got its own back.

We can yet escape this trap by recognising their error. The alternative to growth is not death, it is sustainability. That does not mean ossification, we can still have novelty, luxury, great advances in everything - but - not at the expense of space or resources - these have to be shared and re-used, reclaimed and redistributed so everyone has a go - or, and this is the main bit, the weak will get strong and take it from us.

The threats and the solutions:-

The only way to be safe from unprovoked attack is to ensure you don't have anything an attacker may want - the way to ensure total safety is not to do anything provocative.

Proper resource distribution addresses that first point. Science and technology, although not a panacea, do offer us the chance to continually improve our way of life and - when shared openly with anyone who wants it - give the same to everyone else too. That would negate our need for defence systems - quite a saving.

For the second point, we in the west have no intention of provoking others although we do it every day. We don't even know anyone else exists - we are 'Little England' and the rest of the world is just where we dump old stuff and get new stuff from. In a green future, we could be just as insular, but we would create nothing that needed dumping and would need nothing more from the outside than we had already inside. Ukip supporters should love that - total isolation until the summer holidays.

What would we do with our time ? Go and explore space - or learn new things, or learn old things - that will be up to the individual, but I'm sure someone somewhere would still be angry about something. We should be strong enough to let them shout.