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.