Are you in charge of the planet?

Caring for Our Planet

My green manifesto: We can make the world a better place, but it is up to all of us to effect change and make our voices heard

It is easy to feel impotent in the shadow of the political and corporate interests that exercise so much power over the environment. The questions that instinctively arise when we feel a sense of anger and urgency about human treatment of the natural world - What can I do? Can I effect change? Can I make my voice heard? - seem so often to be answered with a resigned “Nothing” or “No”. What possible difference could my living habits make to the future health - even survival - of the natural world?

But just as individual habits will remain an eccentric idealism without political and corporate change, so political and corporate change will remain superficial and inadequate without personal change. Indeed, without individual action these larger changes will not occur. Political change will only happen when large numbers of people practise what they believe in. When there is a big enough groundswell of opinion and enough action, then governments will be forced to bring in laws and structural transformations. Based on my own personal experiences of practicable, sustainable living, here is my manifesto for how we, as individuals, can begin to cause this to happen. I hope that others may gain hints for their own lives from my recommendations.

Change our attitudes. Our industrial culture is human-centred and utilitarian. We value nature because of its usefulness to us; we believe that we are in charge and can do what we like with the world’s natural resources. If we want a sustainable future we need to change this mindset. We need to recognise that all life has intrinsic value, as this Tablet series has sought to show. Without such a shift in our personal attitudes towards the natural world, no sustainable lifestyle can be achieved. In place of the utilitarian calculus, a reverential, respectful world-view is required. Then we will destroy less, poison less, kill less.