by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
All we are hearing is CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and occasionally the issue with plastic, especially the kind that is plastic bottles of all sorts. The word carbon is being manipulated to include soot, for instance, which is now called “brown carbon” and all that in order to be able to trade all those issues under the carbon trading schemes, what I would refer to as modern day indulgences.
The Hippies of the late 60s and early 70s of the last century were ever so right when they simply talked and warmed about pollution of air, water, soil, etc. and about the general environmental degradation and destruction. In their days though we still had mostly glass bottles for everything and in most places there was a deposit attached to those bottles the refund of which made up the pocket money for many a child back then.
We scoured the highways and byways, pulling a small handcart, and taking bottle after bottle out of the ditches that those too lazy to dispose off properly had thrown to take back to the shops for the refund money. The lazy people were about already then when there actually was a small incentive to bring the bottles back. We kids benefited from this and the environment benefited from us taking the bottles back to the shops.
But today, when we are not talking about plastic pollution, everything is carbon this and carbon that. Soot, the stuff that is covering the glaciers in the Himalayas and causing them to melt (and probably also in places such as Switzerland and elsewhere) is now referred to as “brown carbon”. It is soot and this soot comes from oil and coal fired power plants. Exhaust fumes from combustion engines are now referred to as “carbon emissions”, etc., ad infinitum. It has all become “carbon this” and “carbon that” and for but one reason, aside from confusing everyone, and that is that carbon can be traded in the modern day indulgences scheme called carbon trading.
Let's get back down to earth and call a spade a spade and deal with pollution of air, water, soil and everything else in between. In fact, had we done that when the warning messages came from the Hippies we would have a much better Planet by now than we have and had we not done away with practices of the native peoples, such as back burning to prevent bush fires, we would have a lot less of them. But hey, that releases carbon into the atmosphere and for other reasons the Greenies put a stop to that. Now those bush and wild fires, whether in the USA, Siberia, Australia or other places release a far greater amount of “carbon” into the atmosphere on an annual level than any of the back burning would have ever done.
Modern man thinks himself so superior – that includes so many of the experts – in comparison to tribal people who have practiced certain things for particular reasons. We think that we have much greater knowledge and understanding and that our technology will safe us. Yes, we have seen to where that has lead us, aside from smartphone zombies, I mean.
The same attitude has been taken as to our woodlands and their management, especially in some parts of Europe, such as Britain, where coppicing was the standard management practice for broadleaf woodlands. But the self-appointed apostles and experts claimed that cutting trees was bad for the environment and the practice of cutting parcels of woodland in rotation had to be stopped. Another reason for the decline of coppicing, it is true, was also that the bottom fell out market for wood products from such operations, but the main culprit was the pressure from the misguided. Now some of the once thriving coppice woods are so severely overstood that they are in danger of collapsing, which will be the end of the coppice stools, some of which can be a thousand year or more in age.
I could go on and on citing examples be this in forest management, or agriculture, or so many others, but we would be here for the next month or so. Suffice to say that the belief of certain people that they knew so much better about all the things than the people who had sustainably managed woods and countryside for centuries and more and our belief that technology could save us, so to speak, is the reason that we are were we are today. Sixty wasted years.
© 2020
