Spreading the word in Enniskillen town centre on Global Frackdown Day, October 2013.
The Fermanagh and South Tyrone Green Party
Sunday, 10 November 2013
Thursday, 10 October 2013
Next meeting
Our next meeting will be held on Thursday 17th October at 6pm in the bar
of the Horseshoe & Saddlers, Enniskillen. New and prospective
members are very welcome.
Sunday, 1 September 2013
Next meeting - AGM
Our next meeting, which will be our 2013 AGM, will be held on Thursday 26th September at 6pm in the bar
of the Horseshoe & Saddlers, Enniskillen. New and prospective
members are very welcome.
Thursday, 25 July 2013
The Emperor Is Wearing No Clothes
Lawrence Speight
The twenty-four hour G8 Summit in County Fermanagh cost £80 million including £60 million for security. It is sobering to think that if the leaders were engaged with G8 business for 10 hours each hour cost £8 million. In consideration of the social and environmental projects this money could have been spent on one has to ask was the summit value for money. The small economy of Northern Ireland has to pay £20 million of the cost.
The purpose of the summit was for the G8 leaders to address the urgent problems of the day. These included the war in Syria, global hunger and tax avoidance by the rich and powerful.
The summit highlights the failed approach taken by our political institutions which rely on a combination of constitutional constructs and illusions to sustain them. One of the illusions is those with political power have insightful understanding. Another is that the compassion of national leaders is not circumscribed by party, ethnic or national loyalties or desire for egoistical gain. A third illusion is political leaders can change the cultural milieu and thereby make positive things happen. These illusions help explain the widespread adulation the G8 leaders received on their short visit to Northern Ireland.
Evidence for the prevalence of these illusions is that global warming was not on the G8 agenda. Insightfulness and compassion would have ensured otherwise. Most of the G8 leaders came to the summit with a fixed remedy for the war in Syria, which is to give the combatants more guns, missiles and ammunition. None had any intention of addressing the unjust structural relationships that underpin world hunger. The idea that robust measures should be put in place to ensure that the rich pay a fair tax is an anathema to the G8. Research by the Tax Justice Network shows that global tax evasion could be costing more than 2.5 trillion Euro a year, and that as much as 26 trillion Euros could be hidden by individuals in tax havens. (Editorial, Irish Times, 17.06) Arthur Beesley in his analysis of the summit in The Irish Times (18.06) writes: “When Obama arrived in the White House in 2009 there was plenty of talk about resolute action to take more tax from big business. Four years later, this is still in the realm of talk.” In this light the £300 million summit was a photo opportunity for the G8 leaders.
The key political problem of our age, and which should have been on the G8 agenda, is how to manage abundance. The fact that three million children die of hunger each year, and one in eight of the world’s population goes to bed hungry every night is not because of a perennial food shortage. U.N. figures show that half of the food produced world-wide is wasted before it gets to the shops and the affluent throw one third of the food they buy into the bin. As Terry Eagleton writes in The Guardian Review, 29.06, “Widespread hunger is the result of predatory social systems.”
Most of the problems humanity faces, including lack of sanitation, health services and education for the billions who are destitute could be solved by a small percentage of the money spent on wars and preparation for war. The following figures illustrate this. Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies calculates that the United States has spent $6 trillion on its wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US, National Priorities Project, estimates that since 2001 the United States has spent $1,450,427,500,000 on wars. The Today programme, Radio 4, 28.06, estimates that the UK has spent £40 billion on the war in Afghanistan. The Stockholm Peace Institute’s figure for worldwide military expenditure in 2012 is $1.75 trillion. If the G8 leaders had agreed to progressively reduce their military budgets the summit would have been worth the expense.
War and our destruction of the environment are a form of self-harm rooted in our lack of imagination. When it comes to the economy, we cannot imagine any model other than that of growth. When it comes to energy we cannot imagine anything but fossil fuels. With food we cannot image any system but oil-based monoculture, which in the case of soya and palm oil leads to the destruction of rainforests - the rain clouds and lungs of the Earth.
Hope for a deep rooted and widespread eco-consciousness, as well as a nonviolent approach to conflict, lies in that most people know that 2 multiplied by 2 does not equal 5 as in the logic of orthodox economics. The millions demonstrating on the streets of Brazil, Egypt and Turkey against institutional corruption, the 5,000 anti-G8 demonstrators in Belfast and 2,000 in Enniskillen, as well as the occupy-movement, the transitional towns movement, the long waiting lists in every town and city on these islands for allotments, and the work of such agencies as Oxfam, War On Want, Christian Aid and Trocaire is hope that a critical mass will act on the realisation that “the emperor is wearing no clothes”. It is time for a new paradigm.
The twenty-four hour G8 Summit in County Fermanagh cost £80 million including £60 million for security. It is sobering to think that if the leaders were engaged with G8 business for 10 hours each hour cost £8 million. In consideration of the social and environmental projects this money could have been spent on one has to ask was the summit value for money. The small economy of Northern Ireland has to pay £20 million of the cost.
The purpose of the summit was for the G8 leaders to address the urgent problems of the day. These included the war in Syria, global hunger and tax avoidance by the rich and powerful.
The summit highlights the failed approach taken by our political institutions which rely on a combination of constitutional constructs and illusions to sustain them. One of the illusions is those with political power have insightful understanding. Another is that the compassion of national leaders is not circumscribed by party, ethnic or national loyalties or desire for egoistical gain. A third illusion is political leaders can change the cultural milieu and thereby make positive things happen. These illusions help explain the widespread adulation the G8 leaders received on their short visit to Northern Ireland.
Evidence for the prevalence of these illusions is that global warming was not on the G8 agenda. Insightfulness and compassion would have ensured otherwise. Most of the G8 leaders came to the summit with a fixed remedy for the war in Syria, which is to give the combatants more guns, missiles and ammunition. None had any intention of addressing the unjust structural relationships that underpin world hunger. The idea that robust measures should be put in place to ensure that the rich pay a fair tax is an anathema to the G8. Research by the Tax Justice Network shows that global tax evasion could be costing more than 2.5 trillion Euro a year, and that as much as 26 trillion Euros could be hidden by individuals in tax havens. (Editorial, Irish Times, 17.06) Arthur Beesley in his analysis of the summit in The Irish Times (18.06) writes: “When Obama arrived in the White House in 2009 there was plenty of talk about resolute action to take more tax from big business. Four years later, this is still in the realm of talk.” In this light the £300 million summit was a photo opportunity for the G8 leaders.
The key political problem of our age, and which should have been on the G8 agenda, is how to manage abundance. The fact that three million children die of hunger each year, and one in eight of the world’s population goes to bed hungry every night is not because of a perennial food shortage. U.N. figures show that half of the food produced world-wide is wasted before it gets to the shops and the affluent throw one third of the food they buy into the bin. As Terry Eagleton writes in The Guardian Review, 29.06, “Widespread hunger is the result of predatory social systems.”
Most of the problems humanity faces, including lack of sanitation, health services and education for the billions who are destitute could be solved by a small percentage of the money spent on wars and preparation for war. The following figures illustrate this. Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies calculates that the United States has spent $6 trillion on its wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US, National Priorities Project, estimates that since 2001 the United States has spent $1,450,427,500,000 on wars. The Today programme, Radio 4, 28.06, estimates that the UK has spent £40 billion on the war in Afghanistan. The Stockholm Peace Institute’s figure for worldwide military expenditure in 2012 is $1.75 trillion. If the G8 leaders had agreed to progressively reduce their military budgets the summit would have been worth the expense.
War and our destruction of the environment are a form of self-harm rooted in our lack of imagination. When it comes to the economy, we cannot imagine any model other than that of growth. When it comes to energy we cannot imagine anything but fossil fuels. With food we cannot image any system but oil-based monoculture, which in the case of soya and palm oil leads to the destruction of rainforests - the rain clouds and lungs of the Earth.
Hope for a deep rooted and widespread eco-consciousness, as well as a nonviolent approach to conflict, lies in that most people know that 2 multiplied by 2 does not equal 5 as in the logic of orthodox economics. The millions demonstrating on the streets of Brazil, Egypt and Turkey against institutional corruption, the 5,000 anti-G8 demonstrators in Belfast and 2,000 in Enniskillen, as well as the occupy-movement, the transitional towns movement, the long waiting lists in every town and city on these islands for allotments, and the work of such agencies as Oxfam, War On Want, Christian Aid and Trocaire is hope that a critical mass will act on the realisation that “the emperor is wearing no clothes”. It is time for a new paradigm.
Tuesday, 16 July 2013
Next meeting
Our next meeting will be held on Thursday 25th July at 6pm in the bar
of the Horseshoe & Saddlers, Enniskillen. New and prospective
members are very welcome.
Thursday, 4 April 2013
Lucifer’s Sin
Lawrence Speight
We tend to think of ourselves as the alpha species, somewhat akin to the iconic frontiers people of the American West; a species that can forge its own destiny without reference to or dependency on others. There are grounds for this view.
We have brought much of what we have conceived in our imagination to life. By means of high-speed trains and airplanes we can travel great distances in short periods of time, smart phones enable us to see and talk to each other across oceans and continents almost as if we were feet apart. Through organ transplants we can prevent what were once inevitable deaths. We have eradicated the scourge of smallpox and are close to doing the same with polio. We can eat the choicest foods, produced in every climate, at any time, by way of our local supermarket. This is a feat beyond what the richest monarch could ever have enjoyed. We can carry out micro-surgery and study planets and stars billions of miles away. Military personnel can kill people in deserts and on mountainsides in far away countries without exposing themselves to danger. Some governments, including the United Kingdom, can commit the ultimate terrorist act and eliminate hundreds of millions of people at the press of a button.
With the exception of the poor and the persecuted, people in the early part of the 21st century have the powers described in classical mythologies. We are the personification of ancient Gods. However, we have a fatal flaw, we believe our illusions.
Perhaps our most harmful illusion is the belief that our technosphere is an entity set apart from the biosphere, that our culture is its own self-sustaining cosmos. We are so imbued with this idea that we elect governments that subsidise the destruction of the very means of our existence, believing, as politicians often say that “it is the right thing to do.” Rainforests, the site of the most varied biodiversity on the planet, described as the Earth’s lungs, are clear-felled with the help of government subsidies in order for companies to grow palm oil. Soil, which purifies and regulates our water supply, provides us with over 90% of the food we eat, along with timber, fibre and bio-fuels, is washed into rivers by poor farming methods at a rate faster than it can be replenished. Great expanses of sea have been turned into dead zones through agreements that ignore research findings on sustainable fishing. Although the link between burning fossil fuels and climate chaos is now as widely accepted as the link between inhaling cigarette smoke and lung cancer, companies are given permission by governments, and money by banks, to build ever more coal-fired power stations as well as extract oil and gas from the ground regardless of local conditions.
The evidence of how we manage our relationship with nonhuman nature suggests we have not found our niche in the web of life and are thus destined for a short life-span. Given the rapidity with which we are cannibalizing the Earth is it realistic to think that our species, which has existed for a mere 200,000 years, will see the sun rise 10 million years from now, which is the average life-span of a species? What are the chances of us surviving as long as the elephant, 60 million years, the crocodile, 80 million years, or the turtle which in the course of its 150 million years saw the dinosaurs evolve and become extinct?
I suspect most people would feel offended by the idea that many nonhuman life-forms are likely to outlive humankind and continue to evolve over the one billion years our Garden of Eden is expected to sustain life. By way of our illusions we are evicting ourselves from paradise, truly the fallen species having committed Lucifer’s sin, hubris - preoccupation with self. Taking the wellbeing of other species and the health of ecosystems into account when we make decisions, and undertaking environmental restoration work, is one way we can find redemption.
We tend to think of ourselves as the alpha species, somewhat akin to the iconic frontiers people of the American West; a species that can forge its own destiny without reference to or dependency on others. There are grounds for this view.
We have brought much of what we have conceived in our imagination to life. By means of high-speed trains and airplanes we can travel great distances in short periods of time, smart phones enable us to see and talk to each other across oceans and continents almost as if we were feet apart. Through organ transplants we can prevent what were once inevitable deaths. We have eradicated the scourge of smallpox and are close to doing the same with polio. We can eat the choicest foods, produced in every climate, at any time, by way of our local supermarket. This is a feat beyond what the richest monarch could ever have enjoyed. We can carry out micro-surgery and study planets and stars billions of miles away. Military personnel can kill people in deserts and on mountainsides in far away countries without exposing themselves to danger. Some governments, including the United Kingdom, can commit the ultimate terrorist act and eliminate hundreds of millions of people at the press of a button.
With the exception of the poor and the persecuted, people in the early part of the 21st century have the powers described in classical mythologies. We are the personification of ancient Gods. However, we have a fatal flaw, we believe our illusions.
Perhaps our most harmful illusion is the belief that our technosphere is an entity set apart from the biosphere, that our culture is its own self-sustaining cosmos. We are so imbued with this idea that we elect governments that subsidise the destruction of the very means of our existence, believing, as politicians often say that “it is the right thing to do.” Rainforests, the site of the most varied biodiversity on the planet, described as the Earth’s lungs, are clear-felled with the help of government subsidies in order for companies to grow palm oil. Soil, which purifies and regulates our water supply, provides us with over 90% of the food we eat, along with timber, fibre and bio-fuels, is washed into rivers by poor farming methods at a rate faster than it can be replenished. Great expanses of sea have been turned into dead zones through agreements that ignore research findings on sustainable fishing. Although the link between burning fossil fuels and climate chaos is now as widely accepted as the link between inhaling cigarette smoke and lung cancer, companies are given permission by governments, and money by banks, to build ever more coal-fired power stations as well as extract oil and gas from the ground regardless of local conditions.
The evidence of how we manage our relationship with nonhuman nature suggests we have not found our niche in the web of life and are thus destined for a short life-span. Given the rapidity with which we are cannibalizing the Earth is it realistic to think that our species, which has existed for a mere 200,000 years, will see the sun rise 10 million years from now, which is the average life-span of a species? What are the chances of us surviving as long as the elephant, 60 million years, the crocodile, 80 million years, or the turtle which in the course of its 150 million years saw the dinosaurs evolve and become extinct?
I suspect most people would feel offended by the idea that many nonhuman life-forms are likely to outlive humankind and continue to evolve over the one billion years our Garden of Eden is expected to sustain life. By way of our illusions we are evicting ourselves from paradise, truly the fallen species having committed Lucifer’s sin, hubris - preoccupation with self. Taking the wellbeing of other species and the health of ecosystems into account when we make decisions, and undertaking environmental restoration work, is one way we can find redemption.
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