Business, everyone tells me, has gone green. That’s nice. All the ads one sees from big corporations stress how enviro-friendly they are, and how buying a packet of this or a bucketful of that will guarantee our kids a better planet.

Oh yeah? Who do you suppose wrecked the environment in the first place? It wasn’t you or me, at least not directly. When I grew up, my Mum carried a set of shopping bags to the grocery store and was never offered “paper or plastic”. When I was a kid, milk and soda pop were delivered in bottles to the back door of our house, and last week’s bottles were collected and recycled (yes, I’m that old).

Then some corporate bozos decided that a better idea would be to sell diet soft drinks in cans. Number of calories in the contents of the can: none. Number of calories expended to make the can, not counting the ore extraction and transportation: 2,200.
It’s a math problem, innit? When the Coke people sat down to do their sums, they ignored the environmental cost of what they were doing. Just ignored it. So, attempts have been made to count the cost of destroying the planet an integral part of the equation. Good idea. Progress, 20 years later: zero.

It’s easy to blame the Americans, which is always good sport, even if they’re not involved. They’re all horrid polluters, except for my friends, obviously. But that’s the past, man. The future of pollution and death to the living planet comes from China, Brazil, Russia and India. Those guys are just gearing up to start destroying anything they can get their hands on, and they will not be denied. “Hey,” they might say, if two billion people could speak with a single voice: “You made a mess. Now it’s our turn to make a mess. And if we all die in the process, well that’ll show you, won’t it?”

Erm, where I have heard that before? Oh yes, local politics. But I digress.
The good news about the environment is this: the planet doesn’t care. It was here before us, and it will survive whatever we do to it. When we’ve all killed ourselves, the planet will endure, even if it takes millennia. They’re hardy things, planets; plus, big-heads that we are, we grossly overestimate our effect on things.
Bermuda is especially threatened by global warming, if it actually exists. A 10-foot rise in sea levels around the world, and your beachfront condo is going to be even more below water than your mortgage payments.

Is this depressing? I should say not. Man is a dumb animal, let’s be honest, and now that we know just how bad we are for the planet in the short-term, we still don’t care. That’s in our nature. We may be stupid, but that’s who we are. Let’s celebrate that. Burn something non-renewable and put the ashes in a plastic bag. That’ll show everyone how clever you are.

2010 Archives

Jogging remains a big deal - click here

Business of Charities - click here

Rims 2010 - click here