Climate change , A Personal view.

By Peter Hanscomb

Your a wildlife photographer and animal lover , a statement aimed at my direction in my local pub-bar by a friend , OK guilty as charged i replied , i take pictures of wildlife and i would class myself as a bit of a amature armchair naturalist. So my friend continued , where do you stand on the environment and these climate protesters ?

A very good question , the climate is under threat , something definitely needs to be done to re address the situation but what ?

Extinction Rebellion , Youth strike for Climate , Campaign against Climate Change and Earth Strike. The list of protest and environmental activist groups grows bigger every month with new protest groups popping up all around the world. Of course , it’s not a new subject with the likes of the WWF and Greenpeace who have been challenging governments and commercial organisations since formation in 1969. More and more world scientists now agree global warming is a real threat, followed by a slow response from world governments but it’s clear we need to do more.

What has changed is the dramatic increase in change in our world environment and global warming, fuelled by consumer demand and the rapid development in countries once termed the third world. However , one major change over the last few years is the explosion in world population. I’m a child of the sixty’s post war boom. Born in 1966 the population at the time of my birth was around 3.3 billion. By the time i had reached my 50th birthday the population had nearly doubled and today there are 7.7 billion humans trying to make a living on our planet. Population predictions by the United Nations predict a further increase to nearly 10 billion people by 2050.

We humans are the dominant species on our planet , global warming and the damage this causes is completely a direct result of our combined actions. It’s also within our control to fix . We have the technology , we know what the root cause of the problem and how to repair the damage done. What is lacking is political will and proper resources to help reverse the situation before it’s to late, but for me the real question is are there just to many humans , more than the planet can cope with ?

We live in a world where there has been major improvements in world relations. There are still 40 active conflicts ongoing in our world today , but none on the same scale as the last global conflict , World War Two which had an estimated 70 million deaths. Medicine has improved no end and more people now survive medical conditions that would have resulted in death not so many years ago. Major out breaks of contagious disease have by and large been eradicated and all over the world average life expectancy has grown steadily.

So it’s clear we have to act on climate change , we will have to look at consumption , recycling , transport and our food chains , but it may also be time to have serious conversations on how to slow the growth in human numbers ? And I’m not advocating  world war  three or a mass cull . ( peace love and  harmony to all ) We all have a responsibility to help change and develop the world into a place that works not only for all mankind , but also all the other creatures that call our planet earth home.

So maybe it’s time to leave our legacy on this planet.

Or maybe just stick to football ( soccer ) as a topic of conversation in the pub !