AFON
This can’t go on: the need for drastic change to worldwide lifestyles – by Sam Hopes
Welcome to our series of blog posts in the run up to the general election (7th May 2015). Over this month AFON members will share their own Visions for Nature: what they want the natural world to look like by 2050 and how they want to get there. We have created a hashtag on Twitter so why not join the conversation? What’s your #VisionforNature?
Our planet is an incredible thing. Just thinking about it’s extraordinary complexity, the huge diversity of life it supports and the incomprehensible journey of life since those first amino acids reacted to form RNA makes the hair on my neck stand on end. Unfortunately not all of the population shares my passion and amazement, whether it is simply that they don’t know enough about it, or in some cases that they don’t care. In 2015, many people still do not know the first thing about where and how their food was grown. Intensive farming is one of the biggest problems facing what is left of the natural world today. With shrinking natural habitats, species are being forced more than ever onto agricultural land; land which is often as barren a habitat for them as a desert, often sprayed with harmful chemicals, and where they are seen as pests. From the other point of view however, people have to eat and for that, food needs to be produced. With an ever-growing human population, what hope is there for nature to endure the relentless human onslaught, and what can be done to help?
It is often said that for everyone on earth to live as we do in the West, we would need the resources of three planets. Who are we to deny other countries from developing to an equal state as ourselves? Obviously this is not an option, however as we also do not have three planets available to us, we are left with one route to take; we have to change our lifestyles and we need to change them now. In fact we needed to change them 30 years ago. At this point it is worth mentioning that we will need to do this just to survive as a human race and produce enough food and fuel. Further and more extreme changes will need to be made if we are to have a future where nature is to also thrive. So, what do we change? Below are just three examples out of many thousands of changes that could improve the prospects for nature in an increasingly hostile world.
Firstly there needs to be human population control. This is a very touchy subject, and it will likely involve an assessment of what we deem to be essential human rights. Perhaps one of the most effective ways of achieving this is through education; as populations become more educated, they often choose to pursue a career and have fewer children. This is also aided by the decreased influence of religion in educated societies, as religions are often against contraception and promote having children. A lower and more stable global population could allow room for nature.
Secondly there needs to be massive changes to diets around the world. People cannot eat anywhere near as much meat and dairy as they currently do in the West. The vast tracts of land devoted to cattle rearing and the resultant devastation are destroying even our biggest and most pristine natural places. The West leads the way on this but the developing world is getting richer; people want to eat more meat, and to have other luxuries that we enjoy in the west, most of which are completely unsustainable. If we want to change the world, we need to lead the way from the West, as otherwise we cannot expect other countries to follow suit.
There also needs to be changes to the way we grow our food. Vast monoculture fields are not sustainable; in fact mixed cropping produces better yields as well as making a more diverse habitat for local species. The decline of many kinds of species from all taxon groups can be attributed to changing farming practices, from fungi to large mammals. There needs to be a green revolution, with people growing their own food as much as they can, reducing the need for vast fields. Ways of increasing the yield of land should be researched and encouraged, for example planting bananas amongst coffee and rearing fish in paddy fields. These changes will allow more effective use of land and reduce the total area needed for food production, allowing more room for nature, as well as creating more diverse habitats. If you plant the right plants together, pests and pest controlling species live in the same place, balancing the natural order and negating the need for environmentally degrading pesticides.
Thirdly we need to stop keeping animals as pets, especially cats and dogs. This can potentially be counter-productive as pet ownership can help develop an interest in animals and their conservation, however they also create a lot of problems for wildlife. Not only do we tend to keep carnivores which are less sustainable than herbivores due to the need to rear other herbivores for the carnivores to eat, but cats also kill an astonishing number of small wild animals each year. In fact, owning a dog produces roughly twice the volume of greenhouse gasses per year as owning an SUV.
Those three changes are certainly not the only changes that need to be made by a long shot. They are however (in my opinion) a reasonable mix of the sorts of things we can expect to tackle – yes some things will be relatively easy to achieve, like growing your own food and not keeping a pet. Some things will be a little harder like changing your diet, instigating mixed cropping on farms, and educating people worldwide how to live sustainably with nature. Some things however will be much harder and will require a lot of work, such as reducing human population, tackling capitalisation and corporate greed, passing new greener legislation and saying NO to environmentally harmful products, practices and people.