Has to be said, Brendan, you have a point. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of an accelerating plane and the sudden jolt as it lifts off the runway and begins to gracefully rise as the world gets smaller and smaller around you. Not to mention the miracle of setting into the cabin and stepping off on the other side of the World just a few hours later.

However, your article, whilst cute in its childlike simplicity and descriptive verve, is a bit of a distraction.

It’s a bit like complaining about the rationing of petrol or the blackout of our cities back in 1939 as we stood a good chance of being inundated by one of the nastiest regimes in history. Yes, those steps, like the imperative to dramatically cut flying, represent a step backward. They represent a rejection of the many joys and benefits brought by human progress, which, as you point out, should rightly be celebrated.

But your article is also worrying in its lack of reference to science. Are you suggesting the liberation experienced by some through flight outweighs the oppressive drought, flooding, food shortages and mass migration which climate change will inevitably bring? Or, do you dispute the science, and on what basis? I’m not a scientist, and I don’t believe you are, Mr. O’Neil. I don’t pretend to fully understand the complexities of the global climate any more than you do. However, what I do know is that there are 300 scientists from across the world, from a huge array of disciplines and backgrounds, who not only agree we’re in trouble, but are 90% sure of it. I also know that kind of agreement is unprecedented. Are you saying you know better than those guys?

The fact of the matter is, we’ve reached the stage where attention will begin to shift from climate change, to its possible implications. Those implications constitute the most severe and direct threat to Britain since 1939. I expect that, when it comes down to it, similarly drastic measures will be necessary to deal with the mass migration of the entire Mediterranean region, the disruption and stretching of global food supplies, the wars as the superpowers carve up the dwindling resources for themselves. That’s not scaremongering or disaster movie fodder, those are the predictions of the IPCC, and are already happening to some extent, albeit on a limited basis.

So stop whining like a little boy who wants to be allowed to play with his toys whilst sitting on the edge of a cliff. The human ingenuity you wax lyrical about is responsible for this mess, there’s no doubt about it. However, this is not a call to crawl back into our cave.

Those of us with sufficient vision, not to mention true, rather than romanticised faith in humanity don’t waste our time bemoaning necessary sacrifices. Instead, if you wish to celebrate the liberation of human progress and its benefits, instead explore, believe in, and celebrate the role human ingenuity has to play in getting us out of this mess.

Where once the middle class strove to keep up with the Joneses, we’d now much rather prove our worth by asserting our individualism. The high street, at one time the peddler of a kind of homogenous, identikit fashion for the masses, is now all about finding a new look for ourselves, defining ourselves and marking out who we wish to be, by what we buy. Neurotic middle-aged control-freaks with no sense of humour buy PCs, whilst savvy, young, laid-back creative types use Macs, remember?

And so we’ve been pigeonholed accordingly. Are you a ‘Metrosexual’, ‘BME’, ‘Yuppie’, ‘NEET’, ‘Chav’, ‘Punk’, ‘Hippie’, ‘Emo’, ’Goth’ or one of the others? In the old days, a ‘Green’ was someone who typically recycled their bottles, had a compost heap or womery, didn’t own a car, avoided flying, wore knitted woollen jumpers and bought suspect looking organic veg from a tin shed on the outskirts of town. Often they were vegetarians too, and in their younger days had been caught up in things like the CND or Greenpeace, more often than not still receiving their monthly newsletter in the post. In the day of the ‘New’ Green, on the other hand, anyone can do it. You just have to drive the right car, have the right energy supplier, switch your 60” flat screen off at night and ensure the holiday home in Tuscany has been fitted with solar panels.

Of course, very often such people don’t exist beyond the pages of marketing manuals or the studies of sociologists or demographers, and few would doubt that being some shade of ‘green’, New or Old, is better than no green at all. Equally so, a lot has been said and written about the Old Greens and their uncertain relationship to the vastly more numerous New Greens as it is they, rather than the Old, who now set the environmentalist agenda. That’s a debate for elsewhere, and indeed, this article is a broader analysis of the current state of the environmentalist movement, just as applicable to both as we approach what may prove to be some of the most critical decades of modern history.

The first bitter pill for both to swallow is that if ‘green’ is regarded a little more than a lifestyle choice, we’re toast. It’s easy, having put our own houses in order, to enter into a guilt-free comfort zone. We’re doing our bit, and exhort others to do the same. For the New Greens, many of whom now dominate Britain’s establishment, the environmental lifestyle is in danger of being a political carrot; the kind of lifestyle the pollsters know middle England aspires to, and thus the one the politicians promise to deliver by way of symbol, speech and gesture.

For the ‘Old’, environmentalist hardcore, the situation is slightly different. Whilst their issue now tops the political agenda, the majority hold out against the political mainstream, for fear of being co-opted into a social and economic agenda of which they (perhaps rightly) want no part. Instead, many judge their time better spent as part of local and national interest groups and NGOs, or within smaller, more radical political parties. Some even chose to disengage altogether, sectioning themselves off onto the smallholding, content in the knowledge that they’re doing all they can to insure themselves and their family against the apocalypse they know is coming.

Continued on Monday 16/7/07

Remember the bad old days of the late 1980s and early 90s? McDonalds was a novelty, few had heard of GAP, Starbucks or Top Shop, and things like Nike caused wars in shoe shops. On the political side of things, the country was still run by old men with comb-overs and thick glasses. I remember watching them, as a toddler, during a particularly boisterous session of PMQs which happened to have been left on, slightly bemused when told these men ran the country. The slick pr-managed smile had barely been invented yet. Neither, I think, had environmentalism entered the mainstream. Even the arrival of the messiah, ‘pretty straight guy’ Tony Blair didn’t really do that; his climate change promises tended to be regarded by commentators as electoral garnish. A pleasant, if not particularly filling, addition to New Labour’s juicy promises to rebuild hospitals and get the trains running on time.

Of course there were the occasional middle-class one-family crusaders who did their bit, composting food scraps, cycling the kids to school and recycling their bottles, just as there’s always been those who took it further, downsizing to the Shetlands to grow organic veg. But these people on the whole went against the mainstream, not with it. Next Door was by no means hostile; ‘Nice people’ ‘lovely family’, but nonetheless, slightly eccentric. Harmless enough, mind you, but following a different lifestyle choice to the rest of us. They had to put up with the same kind of warm-hearted ignorance and inadvertent condescension that might greet the first black or gay family to move into a sheltered English village. Although, even in todays enlightened times that’s still the reality in many places, ‘the establishment’ view, arguably, has changed substantially. Today even the party of combovers and thick glasses pays homage to Mother Earth.

In 2007, everyone wants to be green just as ardently as everyone wanted a pair of Nikes back in 1990. If you’re in the public eye, it’s not really a choice, it’s an electoral imperative. Green toilet paper, green cars, green wellies, everything in green, even if it isn’t really, and the marketing men can hardly keep up. It’s never been easier to be green as it is now, while you’re hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t possess at least some form of awareness of climate change. For those who have been at the forefront of this movement, that’s a real victory. With David Cameron wily having picked up on it, and every other political party out there scrambling to outbid them for the green vote, ‘green’, sets the agenda like never before. For fear of being lynched, however, I think it’s high time we questioned whether, having brought the debate this far, being ‘green’ is really where we need to be.

Part II on Friday 13th

While, on the whole you make some pretty good points, it does concern me that you seem to regard Bob Geldof as synonymous with the Make Poverty History Campaign, when, in reality, the two were, to a large extent seperate.

The Make Poverty History campaign was led by GCAP (the Global Call to Action Against Poverty), made up of NGOs worldwide. Some of them, such as Oxfam have been in the business of international development for over 50 years now, longer than most governmental agencies, and with it have a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge of its intricacies. If you bothered to look, the aims of MPH were very clear and achievable, asking G8 nations to live up to their promise of a 0.7% (made almost a decade ago) contribution of GDP to international aid, measurable and systematic cancellation of debt for specific countries etc.

Your real target is idiot Geldof and his cohorts. Unlike Oxfam, ActionAid, WDM or any of the other big NGOs, Mr Geldof does not represent a constituency, supporters fundraisers, campaigners, partners in the developing world or otherwise. He represents himself. You will recall that unlike the planned and strategic long-term campaign of MPH, spread over the year at specific points, ‘Live8′ was announced no more than a month in advance, seemingly because Bob and co woke up one morning and decided it would be a nice thing to do.

Consequently, when July 2nd came round, it was the rock stars, and what they had eaten for breakfast that made the front pages, rather than the millions of ordinary people who took to the streets that day, not just in the UK, but in the developing world also, in order to demand a better deal for themselves. They did not, it seem, need Geldof to speak on their behalf.

You’re right though; Geldof’s idiotic proclaimation to his assembled worshippers of ‘mission accomplished, frankly’, was a disaster. To hijack a campaign is irritating. To prematurely call it to a close is catastrophic. None of the credible organizations in MPH believed business would be finished at Gleneagles. These organizations employ entire teams of researchers and economists who knew from the word go that mission was not accomplished. They have partner organizations and agencies in Africa and Asia who knew for a fact the limitations of what was promised at Gleneagles. Did Geldof? No, but he’d shaken hands with ‘I’m a pretty straight guy’ Tony Blair, which was enough for him.

It was always going to be difficult to mantain the coalition and momentum built, with great success, by the Make Poverty History Coalition. Despite that, however, the organizations which put 2005 on the map as the year of reckoning posessed the will and to some extent the means to do it, had it not been for Geldof. Like his ego, he inflated the campaign we began, filling it with hot air, too quickly, and too big. And when he was done with it, he popped it.

As you all probably know,at the core of the EU is economic cooperation between its member countries, which, most of us agree, has on the whole been a pretty good thing. In light of this big, scary globalized super-competitive economy, it certainly makes sense for countries to be bargaining collectively, rather than individually. Because the EU is such a lucrative market for, for example, Chinese textiles or Nigerian cotton, many countries would give their right arm to do a deal to get access to it in a way which they might not if, for example, they were to sign a deal with Wales alone.

The EU is well aware of its strong hand, no more so than when dealing with developing countries, themselves somewhat less enviable position. Woe betide any developing countries which follow our example and band together, of course- in WTO-speak, that’s called price fixing and is strictly prohibited. So all in all, think of EPAs as a bit of a divide-and-rule tactic; they tend to be used as an alternative to more multilateral avenues such as the WTO, where developing countries have had a nasty habit of sticking up for one another in recent years.

And so what do to with all that power? Well, us Europeans have a dirty little secret, the kind of secret which we try to bury below all kinds of sanctimonious language about human rights and democracy, but which is still a bit of an open secret on the world stage. We really like to run other people’s countries. Been doing it for years, centuries even. And so, being Europeans, we simply can’t resist using EPAs as an opportunity to build in all kinds of nifty extra clauses which interfere with the running of the countries we deal with. We can, for example, require the privatization of state owned goods and services (such as water, electricity and even, in some cases education and healthcare), the ending subsidies for certain industries, and and pretty much anything else we’d like to add. A bit like a the highwayman who humiliates you by making you dance in the middle of the road in your undies, just before making off with your handbag.

f the guys in Brussels decide that they’d like everybody in Zambia to wear polka dotted t-shirts on the first Wednesday of every month in return for the right to sell Zambian peanuts within the EU, then who is Zambia to argue? The same principle applies to selling off government owned assets such as the water supply and other public utilities to private (and, funnily enough, often European) ownership.

In the UK, everyone remembers, and some still live with, the kind of upheaval which resulted when British Rail, BT, British Gas etc were all privatised, when certain subsidies and benefits have been changed and when other major changes to the British economy have taken place. Imagine similar changes being demanded of a developing country, and it’s understandable that before committing to some of this stuff, Zambia and others would like the opportunity to work out exactly what the impact of these changes will be.

So how long is Zambia getting to consider the impact of their EPA on their economy? Well, here’s the punch line. They’ve got until next month to sign on the dotted line, or they’ll face penalties which include massive cuts in aid. In other words, they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Damned if they sign up to a trade deal which is so clearly rigged in the EU’s favour, forcing them into major changes to their own economies in which they’ve had no say or time to consider. Damned if they don’t, for the simple reason that if they don’t sign, aid gets cut and they may have lost a rare chance to get badly needed access to foreign markets.

Of course, this is nothing new, tactics have just slightly changed. A few years ago, everybody was pinning their hopes on doing much the same thing through the World Trade Organization, on a multilateral basis. When, thanks partly to bickering between the EU and US, and partly due to pressure from campaigners worldwide, those talks stalled, the EU has therefore been forced to change tack. The new strategy is to make these deals on a bilateral basis, using the clout of the EU to pick off the developing countries one by one.

If this was a gangster movie, you’d at least be impressed by their sheer audacity, resourcefulness and lack of scruples, and after all this, nobody should doubt the EU’s commitment to securing rock-bottom prices for the British consumer. Of course everyone loves scrambling for cheap underpants at Primark, but the question is, at what price?

Smog in Hong Kong © Greenpeace / Leo Chan 2004

Given that the day before the Conservatives reportedly started making positive noises about meeting that 80% target, it’s worth throwing just one more statistic at you: if the UK was to stop all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the drop would be made up for by China alone within three years. Add into that equation the other massive developing countries such as India and Brazil, and it’s clear that us switching to energy efficient light bulbs isn’t going to be enough.

That begs the question of what we, here in the suddenly impotent anglosphere can do about it. Obviously, the old solution of keeping them poor and agricultural, reserving for ourselves the bulk of emissions isn’t going to be workable for much longer. It would also be an incredibly hard sell to convince these nations to curb their own growth for the sake of a problem which we, through pioneering a flawed pattern of development, have created. Yet, if this is allowed to continue, old, recently developed and developing countries alike will face catastrophe.

Neither saving the World by ourselves nor forcing others to follow our lead are options available to us as they too often have been in the past. Instead, our best hope of saving ourselves, it seems, lies in proving that it is possible to combat this problem, reducing the risks in other, larger countries adopting our model voluntarily. If we want to make real progress in these areas; it’s down to us to prove that it is possible, and even beneficial, to have a sustainable, ethically accountable society and at the same time, enjoy the benefits of economic development.

Changing your light bulbs won’t make any difference unless all of China or India does it too, but that’s no argument for not putting in place here in the UK the relevant laws, regulations and programmes to make it happen. As a smaller nation with a highly-skilled workforce and a history of resourcefulness and innovation, we are ideally placed to prove that a modern, prosperous zero carbon economy is possible, unlike larger nations where it can take far longer to mobilize public and political opinion.

Clout on the world’s stage which has historically far outstripped our size is something almost unique to this country. Instead of writhing in apathy or in staking everything on efforts to lever larger countries into ‘doing something’ on our behalf, it seems to me that the opportunity is there to take the lead in a second industrial revolution, providing that model for sustainable development which the world so clearly needs.

That may be all fine and well (it isn’t), but the fact remains that under 25s are the fastest growing section of the planet’s population, and more often than not, at the epicentre of most of its problems.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, as HIV wreaks havoc amongst the adult population, it is a new generation, born in the shadow of the disease, who will determine the way forward for the continent. In the export processing zones of Indonesia and Bangladesh, it is the young women of whom the workforce is largely comprised who are leading the struggle for proper rights and working conditions. In Latin America, it is the students who are speaking out against the forced privatisation of their public utilities by foreign multinationals. As climate change and environmental degradation begin to wreak their unfathomable consequences, it again will be the irresponsible ‘yoof’ who have the most to lose, but with the greatest means to find alternatives outcomes.

At first glance, to your proverbial Martian observer, finding these alternatives might not seem so difficult after all. ‘Alternative’ is everywhere! It’s impossible not to walk into Top Shop and buy ‘alternative’ clothing, or to buy anything else but ‘alternative’ music in our chain record stores. Want teenage rebel? It’s this summer’s hot look. Want to be a punk? Their next concert is sponsored by a shoe company and the new album goes on sale next week. Surf bum? Get your ‘vintage’ effect £50 t-shirts from the beach hut in your local shopping centre. Teenage rebellion has, like just about everything else, been sliced, diced, tamed, mass-produced, marketed and packaged, ready for you to buy. Alas, it’s exceedingly difficult to be anything but ‘alternative’ these days.

So whilst the ‘yoof’ are being savaged to sell newspapers here in the West, and in the South, called to the fore of some of the greatest problems of our age, the marketing men are clambering all over themselves to grab a slice of our culture and the right to speak on our behalf. Is a real ‘alternative’ culture and type of consumerism still possible; or in doing that, do we become just another niche market? Stay tuned for the dilemmas, ideas and observations of a student campaigner doing his best to find out.

Meanwhile, at home, we’re being implored to ‘Feed the World’, ‘Adopt a Child’ ‘Save Africa’, and even, by a certain Mr Geldof, to “give us your fookin’ money!”, while a stint in one of these nations digging wells or cuddling orphans is likely to factor into the plans for one’s future gap year. Indeed, it would seem that Africa is a terrible, backward sort of place, full of destitution and despair. The natives are diseased, the people need educating, their conflicts need peacekeeping, their children feeding and their streets cleaning, tidied up and equipped with nice chain stores – all of which they are wholly incapable of doing by themselves.

Of course, as worthy as these efforts may be, with the best of intentions, and often the most worthwhile of results, is this a helpful or even accurate image? Funnily enough, little over 100 years ago, our great and great-great grandparents were saying similar things, this time to justify the occupation of nations such as India, Iraq and indeed much of Africa, too. Much of European thought rested on the idea that the ‘natives’ of such lands needed the paternal hand of Western, civilized thought to guide them down the path of enlightenment, and that through colonization, exploitation, commerce and, in it’s most extreme expression, slavery, such things could be achieved. Many famines, natural disasters, wars and rebellions later, we’ve quite rightly moved out of that business, and yet the idea seems to persist that those less economically well off than ourselves are inherently incapable. As healthy, materially wealthy and, at home at least, peaceful people, safe and secure in our cul-de-sacs, we reason, ‘we’ have everything to give, and ‘they’ have everything to learn, with our wallets alleviating our consciences accordingly.

On the other hand, while it’s easy to be critical of that approach, nobody denies that somebody needs to ‘stop the rot’. It’s no myth that literally thousands die every day due to malnutrition, AIDS, dirty water, and that hundreds of thousands lack access to basic healthcare and education. If we let things stay as they are, the current trends will simply continue. Clearly, things need to change. The question is, when working to solve these problems, why do we do it? What is our role? Who do we do it for? Is it out of altruism, or a paternalistic desire to watch out for those who, as if by nature or magic, happen to be less-well off than ourselves? We want to help, but who are we to tell others the ‘right’ way to live? In short, are we, our government, The G8, Bob Geldof, Oxfam, the Red Cross, Christian Aid or anybody else the right people to ‘Make Poverty History’?

I was tackling some of these fairly fundamental questions at a workshop on ‘Attitudes and Beliefs’ at the Oxfam Assembly in June 2006. Every two years, individuals from across the international development organization and its partners across the World get together to discuss its future direction, to question the directors and trustees, float ideas, and find out more about the work of others. As a delegate of Oxfam GB’s ‘Youth Board’, I was there along with three of my colleagues to represent the interests and voice of young people, and in the UK in particular, within our work. Sitting opposite me in one of the smaller groups we had broken into was Dilma, a regional manager in Brazil, to my left, Bibash, a project coordinator from north Sudan, John Carlos, from Mexico, and to my right, Killanga from Vietnam. All except Dilma, who made use of a Portuguese interpreter, spoke English, and together, we were engaged in lively debate, sharing out experiences of the way in which Oxfam was seen in our respective constituencies, and the kind of attitudes which assisted or obstructed our work there.
“We are not beneficiaries; I wish they would stop referring to us as such”,
protested an indignant John Carlos,

“Yes”,
agreed Bibash,
“We are not your beneficiaries”,
he said, smiling as he turned towards myself and the other group members, pausing for emphasis,
“We are your colleagues; programme participants, working with you for the same things”
Killanga nodded, as I ventured,
“So really, we need less of a focus on this idea of the helpful helping the helpless, don’t we?

This idea seemed to meet with approval from John Carlos and Bibash, and, after a perhaps a brief struggle to translate my wordplay, Dilma too, who explained how she felt that in Brazil, they needed more freedom to shift the focus of campaigning to the problems they specifically faced in her community. As the discussion continued, Bibash pointed out that,

“We need a greater sense of self-responsibility”,

an idea which I was fairly used to, myself continually arguing for the need to create a sense of shared responsibility for the World amongst you, my fellow ‘youth’ here in the UK.

For Bibash, however, it meant local people in Northern Sudan taking responsibility for themselves. He explained that in one village, an aid agency had come in and built a well with little consultation with local people. Once the conditions there had stabilised, he told us, the community had difficulties coming to terms the agencies pulling out, leaving them again to their own devices along with a well which few were willing to take ownership of, nor felt inclined to maintain, regarding it as ‘their’ well, rather than ‘ours’. Clearly, however good the intentions those who built that well, unless we approach these situations with a little bit of humility and willing to listen, asking ‘what can we do for you’, allowing those we work with to take ownership, rather than ‘we’ll do this for you’, such work can never be truly effective in our efforts, instead allowing this grotesque status quo to remain.

But from that discussion, and the event as a whole, I drew a wider message. I spent three days with among the most intelligent, knowledgeable, wise, articulate and experienced people I have ever met, most without the undisputed benefit of a private school, let alone the dreadfully crucial Oxbridge education we’ve come to expect of our leaders. These were not the ignorant, diseased, voiceless, faceless, nor indeed helpless individual of the infamous Band-Aid album art, these were people who understood the problems of their communities, and who possessed the ideas, experience and means to do something about it.

So why then, aren’t nations like Sudan, Mozambique and Venezuela centres of blue skies, green grass, singing birds, bright sunshine and peace, love and prosperity for all? Well, in Mozambique, they used to have a sugar industry, a fairly productive, competitive and profitable one too. Then, in the tradition of the missionaries which swept the continent a hundred years before, in came economists who, knowing best, took charge, changing policies, removing rules and barriers to comply with a system to which we, here in the developed world, do not ourselves subscribe. Similarly, Sudan has been racked for decades by a civil war, which preceded a famine which has killed thousands more. Funnily enough, there are few gun factories in Sudan, and so arises the question, where did they come from? If you fly over to Venezuela and you’ll find a nation which continues to lack basic medical services, and yet pays millions annually in debt repayments to far wealthier nations, while enjoying some of the largest oil reserves in the World.

Taking such things into account, it’s not hard to see the absurdity in our basic ideas of charity; akin to a gangster’s driver offering to take the victim to hospital on his way home to count his loot. If we, -you- want to be really effective in leaving the world a better place for all of us, then it increasingly seems to me that it’s not simply enough for ourselves to be doing positive things, whether that be raising money, volunteering in these places, or building wells, however useful these acts may be, so much as preventing our own governments from doing the negative things.

Perhaps, in nations which were not racked by war sponsored by our commercial opportunism, places not ripped apart by our economic arrogance, and governments bankrupted by our greed, individuals such as Bibash, John Carlos, Dilma and Killanga would be able to get their work done, which they clearly possess the expertise and drive to do. That’s not to say that our own efforts go unwanted, or unneeded, or that there isn’t a role for us to play, but I truly believe that it’s time for us to realize that the solutions to the developing world’s problems lie in the developing world. W e are their partners, not their benefactors; and we should instead see our role as making room in the global arena for others to take control over their lives, rather than simply replacing one type of foreign control with another.

In our discussions about the beliefs which stood in our way, they talked of ‘selfishness’ and ‘greed’ as characteristics which could be reversed, rather than as basic qualities of humans, to be accepted and exploited rather than challenged. Scoff as you will at such apparent naivety, but the fact that such beliefs and optimism persist and are honestly held in nations which, we are led to believe, are such pits of decay and disaster, to me speaks volumes. Could it be that, in doing these things, we find we have as much to learn as to offer?