Read an article on this chap and his merry band of followers who rock around London tarting up bits of scrubland and greenery by doing some impromptu gardening. This sort of thing brightens up London which we generally consider a grey miserable, drab place… All good you’d think, but no… this guy gets harassed by the police on a regular basis. Can you believe that, harassed for guerrilla gardening, as if the police don’t have better things to do with their time (you’d imagine) with all the gun crime, knife crime, muggings, beatings, rapes, stabbings, murders and robberies. Yeah, guerrilla gardeners and drivers are MUCH better targets, the real REPROBATES of society. The guys got a book out (entitled: on guerrilla gardening) and we’re going to get a copy as it looks good!

Not sure how the youth of today are ever going to gain a sense of social responsibility and a passion for the environment when even at school, the youth of today are actively cheating to get their qualifications? Search the web and you’ll find a whole host of sites offering college essays and term papers etc. I wonder if these are being used for proper research, or just a means to get a good grade? I guess the teachers of today have a lot of work on their hands deciphering the real work from the manufactured. You can relate this very subject directly to looking after the environment. Too often people ‘claim’ ‘green and clean’ when the reality is they are cheating. How many people buy just whatever they want regardless of the environmental consequences, to quench their thirst for the latest gadget, or cheap clothes manufactured in a developing nation, where the workers are constantly being exploited, and yet still claim that they are green activists? The answer unfortunately is too many people.

Tis the season to be jolly for sure, and we have lots of Christmas parties in the industry which I work in, so the booze has been flowing and we are all over indulging, but we have yet to succumb to any Turkey. As an eco-blog we’re sure you are expecting us to give you a hard time regarding over spending on useless tat, such as our favourite objet d’art, the ‘digital photo frame’… anyway, all we’re going to say is Merry Christmas, don’t go too crazy with buying stuff, it’s the thought that counts, and have fun!

I have written a few flippant articles lately and have wondered about some of the content of them in great depth. The article which caused the most anxiety and perhaps the most thought was the one related to ‘Peak Oil’. I found a web-page which offered a gloomy if not horrific outlook for the future which culminated with a list of things you could do to ‘prepare’ for the worst. If we are truly going to run out of oil in the future then the prospect of this can barely be thought about as nobody seems to have prepared for the worst, and a world without any oil surely will be reverting us to (I quote from a more intelligence source) a post industrial stone age. When you think about the fact that there will be no oil, and that oil is pretty much the driving force in all that we do, we are faced with a few facts, generally which can be summed up as we’re pretty much screwed, we do not pass go, we do not collect £200 and have absolutely no future what-so-ever.
When you think about the drive towards nuclear power, GM crops, the illegal war in Iraq in terms of an oil crisis then things start to make a little more sense. Whatever I write here today will have little effect on any outcome that may happen. I cannot ‘fix’, ‘solve’ or do anything to resolve the terrifying events that are going to unfold within the next 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 years. Yeah, there is uncertainty when this is actually going to happen, we just don’t know. I have even started to wonder whether the sceptics who dismiss climate change may be correct and all the measures about sustainability, recycling, clean power, is just a masquerade, masking the true underlying cause as to why we need to ‘do’ something. When you realise that governments continuously cynically lie, cheat and play a game of smoke and mirrors then you can be sure when they say that they are making changes to benefit the ‘environment’ then there is either money or something more important at stake. Personally, no matter how cynical you are (like governments) or whether you believe in peak oil or not, or climate change or not something certainly seems to be amiss with society in general. Where are we going? What is this odd obsession with celebrities and consumerism we have all embraced all about?
I like to think of the worst-case scenario. Worst case is the fruititon of all the things scientist say might happen. We know that the oil is running out at some point. Nobody seems concerned. The mainstream press do not seem to care. Honestly just think of what is going to happen when the oil runs out. Just think. I know it is becoming increasingly difficult to ‘think’ and ‘create’ but just try to imagine, the more open individuals out there can do this easily, I am not going to spell it out to you if you don’t really get the idea of a world without oil, there are no alternatives to fall back on. Now consider that climate change is actually a real thing, and what the implications are for this, Melted ice caps, a rise in the sea levels, countries (say goodbye to the Dutch) submerged under water, wild weather, storms, hurricanes, and more. Consider the ‘conveyor belt’ in the ocean. That’s another article, the long and the short of that is if it is impacted by climate change (which it will be) the UK and the northern hemisphere will be plunged into tundra. Of course we also have perpetually increasing population mass to content with also, which in itself is a challenge most horrid. Combine these events and this century certainly has a few ‘issues’ it will have to deal with, and I for one do not believe we are capable of resolving them. I know I sound like a lunatic, but the evidence is out there if you just look for it.
Ian Dury is unfortunately dead, but before he died he used to sing that he had reasons to be cheerful. If he were alive today I believe that he would think the same thing, and I also have reasons to be cheerful even considering the facts above. I believe my generation, and the next couple of generations are in for a hard time. Human existence is in for a torrid ride and there are some big questions that are going to need to be answered and things are never going to be quite the same again. I can foresee tens of millions of people around the globe dying of starvation, I can see the complete degrade of first world society, where capital cities become no go zones, plunged into violent darkness due to the lack of electricity across the entire world, I can see I time when shops won’t be filled with MP3 players and digital photo-frames as there won’t even be any food to be bought, I can see the breakdown of sanitation services and running water, and I’m not talking about poor African countries, I am talking about the ‘developed world’, the UK and the US and the whole of Europe which will implode without the glorious black oil. Where will we be then? And I say we still have reasons to be cheerful, and I mean it, because the world is a resilient entity, eventually it can heal itself from ‘climate change’ and humanity is equally resilient, and 95% of the people may die out, but if there is one characteristic that humans have it is one of survival. I believe that humans may also learn from their mistakes and we will not adopt a money led society again, we will take on board the lessons of living an economical lifestyle, with ‘eco’ values of recycling, of not wasting things and never taking anything for granted. That may not be in my lifetime, or your lifetime, but it could be in your children’s lifetime so I will continue to spout nonsense on my little eco blog, giving advice on how best to live our lives, whilst offering up some outlandish doom mongering in the process. Maybe the oil will last another few hundred years, maybe climate change is a tale to scare children, maybe nothing will happen at all and I should have just bought a nice 4×4 and be done with it. Ah well, time will tell.

The social commentary section of this website has been included to allow a platform to ‘vent off’ or gripe about all the things that drive us nuts in the world which do not fit in to the environmental areas of this site.

Although Suburban Chimp covers a wide range of environmental topics, including consumerism and social responsibility there are these odd topics that don’t quite fit in, but are also desperately important to the well being of the general populous. OK, so when I say ‘desperately important’ then I don’t mean desperate like climate change, desperate like people starving and living on $1 a day, but desperate in a different way. I need a sounding board, a flippant sounding board it may be, but a sounding board it is. Let’s move on to the main event.

Trains. Most environmentalists get this soft warm fuzzy when they start talking about trains, whilst most commuters get the symptoms of a nervous breakdown or a heart attack. Basically trains in the UK could be better. I’m sure there will be plenty of opportune for me to spout off on the punctuality and cost of an ever increasingly shabby service, along with overcrowding and the reduction of scheduled services. (sneaky rant out of the way)

Regardless of all these negative aspects of train travel it is still the main option of travel for me to get to work every day and yet there is even more annoyances that one must suffer, namely the other passengers!

It seems that there is a whole bunch of people in society who don’t appear to have travelled on a train before, or have been let out in polite society before. Last night for instance the carriage sounded like an amusement arcade because someone was playing a game on their phone or games console with the sound on. What sort of idiot feels that this is appropriate behaviour? Same goes for the ‘creatures’ who test out new ring tones on the train. What is going on in their brains? Not to mention the beeping of constant text messaging, phone calls with irritating people talking loudly, stupid people having even stupider conversations and other people coughing, sniffing, practically dying on the train who sound like they are in desperate need of medical attention. Read a book, read a paper. If you have to get your laptop out and work, (type quietly) but shut the hell up and be quiet, nobody wants to hear you, or your gadgets. If you’re ill, stay at HOME we don’t want to hear you or get your germs.

I guess this is more about tolerance and perhaps I’m being intolerant here, but I think it doesn’t take a genius to work out if you are making repetitive noise over a long period of time you are basically irritating other people.