For many, the wildfires that have ruined holidays have been a major climate change wake-up call. But a bigger challenge is looming. This year’s unprecedented combination of early flooding, followed by a relentless chain of heatwaves causing drought, has had a huge negative impact on farmers. The NFU has announced concern at the resulting reduction in farm production, which is something we can ill afford – we import 40% of all the food we consume, 47% of the vegetables, and 80% of the fruit. Our over-reliance on imported food places us in an extremely vulnerable position. Most of the countries that feed us are experiencing their own reduced production, as global warming brings increasingly extreme weather patterns everywhere.
Corruption of vested interests
You are unlikely to have heard about last year’s Government report on the effect upon our national security of global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse … because release of the report was suppressed until a Freedom Of Information request from the Green Alliance forced the Government to publish it.
The report makes for very uncomfortable reading, detailing as it does the shocking loss in biodiversity since 1970.
It identifies food production as the most significant cause of that loss, and states that at present ‘… every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse’.
Read that again.
The government’s attempt to suppress the report clearly demonstrates the problematic short-term nature of our so-called democracy, whereby a government elected by a minority has only a few years to impose its ideologically-driven agenda upon the rest of us, while trying not to disillusion so many voters that it loses power at the next election.
This is why the Green Party supports the use of Citizens’ Assemblies to make the big decisions affecting our nation, free from the corruption of vested interests who are focussed solely on clinging to power and making short-term profits with scant regard for our long-term future.
Big challenges bring big opportunities. If you haven’t yet, please do find a local screening of the People’s Emergency Briefing film at nebriefing.org/screening-map, join the discussion afterwards, and help create the better future that is still – just – within our grasp.
Ken Huggins for the Green Party
