June 30th, 2009 | Climate Change, Events, Locals Taking Action, Videos
Stretton unimpressed by ‘Age of Stupid’
According to our online poll (scroll down and look right) opinion on ‘The Age of Stupid’ is divided, with a significant number of those who saw it rating it Rubbish. Cast your vote now, and feel free to give us your views…
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> As the “nimby” lady said last night, we’re all aware of saving the world but….
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> It was an interesting film full of emotive images and messages, and there were the usual array of soft targets - oil, Shell, flights, floods, etc; perhaps a few more proven facts and figures might have been useful to support the arguments ?
> I think that most of us care for the environment to varying extent and there’s always the danger that the “save the planet” ideas can get lost in an image of doing good and green-type ideas from a minority of cranky people claiming the end of the world is nigh.
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> Before anyone gets upset, I agree with your efforts and don’t actually think you’re cranky ! However, it’s so easy to create dramatic circumstances and images such as in the film and without meaningful substantiation, lose the whole impetus as a result. Of course, you don’t really want to get to 2055 just to be able say “we were right”.
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> Let’s take the nimby lady - to support the efforts of Piers Guy, you’d have to be suggesting lining the skyline of the Long Mynd north to south with windpower. Those who understand Church Stretton mentality will know just how difficult it was just to add a sports centre to the schools campus.
> Seeing wind turbines on the skyline over the moors between Kendal and Sedbergh just demonstrates the clash of needs versus the environment, and something of an irony at the end of the film seeing the space debris surrounding planet earth (message to us of our damage beyond the planet), and then at the same time proposing that we cover our landscapes with mechanical wind turbines.
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> To get a serious message across needs serious and viable options, and wind turbines as they appear right now will most likely do more damage to the cause. That said, the whole nation seems quite content to decorate homes with satellite TV dishes, so why not each home having its own miniature roof top turbine ? Perhaps then we can say goodbye to the major monsters that increasingly haunt the UK’s landscapes, and so much in evidence in places like Denmark.
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> Perhaps a challenge for your kids ideas competition is to devise a low level turbine system which can be equally as effective as the high tower systems which so alienate people? Why not work with the folk in New Zealand who are also looking seriously at wind turbines - they have quite a scientific approach and are always looking towards innovation. Turbines down there seem equally unpopular, but then there’s far more room to place them without upsetting population centres.
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> Oil: yes well, perhaps the biggest joke of all…
> When we first “discovered” North Sea oil back in the 60s, the overriding message was that it was finite. It can be an absolute certainty that successive UK and foreign Govts. fully understood that ALL world oil supplies are finite (ie. on a commercial scale).
> So knowing this, how hard have successive Govts. worked in those 40 years to create alternate fuel sources ?
> Given the extremely high oil tax revenues for the UK Govt., it has never been in their interest to find alternate fuel supplies and so today we see us all dashing around like headless chickens erecting wind turbines, sticking cooking oil in cars, etc etc. - all very “green” but so very minor in scale.
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> Now that we have a UK in so much debt, do we really believe that the next UK Govt will suddenly “discover” the alternatives to highly-taxed petrol and diesel and risk losing those vital taxes needed to repay our huge overborrowing ? We could have done so much more over the past 40 years to resolve the environmental concerns of today.
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> If you want to save on fuel oil, then ask Arriva buses to switch engines off and not allow them to idle for 20+ minutes at a time (Shrewsbury Park and Ride buses especially prone to this), or taxis in ranks such as Heathrow where the needs of the environment are minimal. (Indeed, why do we have to have so much of our international travel dictated by obligatory travel via the south east ?) Or follow the driving rules of Germany where drivers are obliged to turn engines off at traffic lights or in other stationary queues.
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> It may be of interest to know that a small community group in Northumberland “Tarset 2050″ is currently endeavouring to create new rural sustainability projects using the opportunities on their doorstep ie. sheep, and forestry for the mainpart. Over the past 18 months or so, I’ve been trying to help promote the concept of using sheep’s wool for a new and very versatile style of recyclable packaging, which started with local UK promotion and then was offered for development in New Zealand and Australia. I won’t go into all the uses and advantages in avoiding landfill etc., but you may wish to consider the qualities of wool and how this might be developed into all manner of packaging materials… and no landfill.
> Perhaps you could look overseas such as New Zealand, where antarctic awareness is big news. You might want to visit the Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT, and thus NZAHT)website http://www.nzaht.org out of interest.
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> In all, I’ve very mixed feelings about the film. It has value of course.
> It stated a lot of the obvious, and felt at times like it knew the popular targets to hit and predictably went for them. No one seems to want to discuss the sustainable projects that the likes of Shell or BP undertake. Nor the fact that African economics run largely on corruption and bribes, even to the extent of the police arresting you for little reason other than to obtain release fines which go in the back pocket (very popular in Liberia for example). So the threat of staff kidnap is very real.
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> The film is perhaps a bit long in terms of running time when so many facets of global warming needed attention. Not suitable in present format for schools who are probably ahead of us in awareness anyway, though a shortened edited version could be useful within education worldwide..
> Authoritative notes and statistics need to accompany the film - not just predictable images.
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> Let’s face it, we had major eathquakes in California over many decades, and hurricanes off Florida are far from new. This didn’t prove that the end of the world was nigh though some may have thought so.
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> Perhaps the message of “Stupid” has to be one of credibility and immediacy, with acceptable,workable solutions, and not just manipulation of an emotive topic to make a case.
> Winning people over could be done with credible solutions; demanding that huge wind turbines be planted near everyones back garden may be a seemingly good idea, but I doubt will produce the level of support you seek. I don’t think you can blame folk for that.
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> Every small idea helps so good luck with what you’re doing.
> However, it’s by far the bigger ideas that will make the difference and until election outcomes seriously start to affect political thinking on such matters, that’s where the main problem will lie.
> As ever, solutions are often found via self-interest. Most vitally, that includes Goverments and recession will most certainly help them turn a blind eye yet again to the environment.