Dear All
It is a curious thing that young people never think they’ll grow old.
But life is short.
3 score years and 10 is all you’ve got and a little bit more if you believe the government statistics.
When I was born, the world’s population was just over 2.1 billion. Today, in less than 70 years, it is more than 7 billion. My friend and esteemed colleague, Gerry Moloney, would tell you the earth can cope and how he has worked out that it's entirely possible you could fit the current population into an area the size of County Cork in Ireland. They wouldn’t be able to have a barbecue mind or dance a jig like Michael Flatley, but yes, he’s right, they could all fit into County Cork albeit like sardines.
So yes, the earth can cope with population explosions, climate change, global warming or geoengineering as some believe and anything else we are being threatened with….BUT CAN WE? It really shouldn’t matter about the size of the population – the earth is a big place. There’s lots of land. It’s how we organise ourselves and history shows we aren’t very good at it when dealing with the common good. But it does matter if we are all crowded together in places like London that they call Megalopoluses, and you add to that the effect of climate change on the lives of non-city dwellers and farming communities.
In less than the next 70 years, human population is estimated to grow to 10 or even 11 billion. However, if you believe Prof John Lovelock, the brilliant, British, independent scientist who single-handedly discovered CFC’s and their destruction of the Ozone layer, as I do, then we are doomed through climate change and its affects on food, water and shelter and we will be lucky if the world’s population is even 1 billion.
Either way, this is startling and not to be ignored.
Climate change is already exacerbating hunger and poverty worldwide. For those on the front line, it’s a daily battle against unpredictable and severe weather. Take Ugandan farmer Florence Madamu as an example, who says it is this that hampers her ability to provide enough food for her community. “The sun is prolonged until the end of September - and whenever it rains, it rains so heavily it destroys all our crops in the fields. You can plant a whole acre or two and come out with nothing”, says Florence.
Deforestation is happening at an incredible rate in South America, the so-called lungs of the earth. There are only 3200 Tigers left in the wild and many other animals are facing extinction from the destruction of their natural habitats.
So, whether you believe in climate change as a natural phenomenon or it is being geoengineered, it is evidently clear from the extreme weather we’ve seen in the last 10 years especially, that something is definitely happening. For many of us, we won’t be around to see ultimately what may happen but our children and grandchildren will and it is reckless at the least to not try and do something about it. We can’t all do very much as individuals although many do their best but collectively we ought to do whatever we can.
To that end, a number of various interested parties came together in the name of PPP – Partners in Protecting the Planet – as an informal group of responsible businesses that recognises and enhances the beneficial affect that caring companies can have on the environment and the quality of life touched by their corporate activities.
Most of our members embed these principals into their Corporate Social Responsibility programmes, but even if you are a small company or do not have a published CSR strategy, you can still make a