Credit Crunch.

‘The action taken in response to the credit crunch indicates the scale and speed of what is possible. Saving the ecosystem services upon which we all depend would seem to be at least as important as baling out the worldwide cartel of reckless and greedy bankers.’

This was the response from Professor Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum, London, when asked by The Independent whether we should have a’ Plan B’ to curb the worst effects of global warming. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/what-can-we-do-to-save-our-planet-1221097.html

This is true.. The government have gone to huge lengths and costs to try and sort this out for everyone, to make it as painless as possible, so why can’t they ‘step it up’ a couple of paces with the climate change and solutions to it? Surely all they need to do is start putting through some new laws about carbon output, and taxes on coal and other non-renewable fuels, and it would be achieved, after all they are usually quite happy to put new laws into action.
If you just tap into google or another search engine ‘new laws in 2008’ there are a vast amount of them, ranging from tax exemptions, missing peoples families, men paying for sex, and forced marriages to name but a few that most of us know nothing about!

However, while life is in a changing time, with the credit crunch and ever increasing redundancies being made life will surely change for the better for our sustainable development issues hopefully.

Our spending ways are decreasing dramatically for most of us. Where are most of us going on holiday this year?, if indeed, a holiday at all!

Feb 4th Thetimes:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5654242.ece
British Holidays for British Workers.

Pontin's announced yesterday that it is creating 2,000 jobs and spending £50 million updating its Ocean Parcs to cope with demand. Landmark Trust (the upmarket Pontin's where you can stay in 18th-century follies in the shape of pineapples) has been inundated with requests not just from the Shadow Cabinet, which now has to holiday in Britain, but from bankers vying to sleep in a Gothic temple in Buckinghamshire.

This will help with unemployment in the UK, and less carbon emissions from aeroplanes. Who can afford to go on holiday abroad when the pound is so weak to the Euro and the dollar? The flights to these places are still cheap, but then it is going to cost a small fortune while you are holidaying there.

Most of us that are over 20 can remember some kind of credit crunch/ recession, and even if it wasn’t a worldwide, or nationwide credit crunch, most individuals at some point in their life have a period of having no spare money and wondering how on earth they are going to pay the big red bill that has just zoomed through the letter box! (or is that just me?)

This will change most people’s views on leaving the lights on because they are in too much of a rush, and leaving the TV on standby all night because they can’t be bothered to turn it off. The little things as everyone always tell us, are the most important. Its like the old saying, ‘Look after the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves’. I’m not so sure that it is true, but when you are struggling to pay the basic household bills, and rent/mortgage, anything is worth a go.

Gone are the days, that you want to ‘dress to impress’ and spend over the odds on new clothes. Now it has become ‘Bargain Hunt’ Era. Less people are shopping for the finest foods, and are with the rest of us at the local Poundland, or 99p store.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article5541951.ece

These shops are definitely not feeling the credit crunch. Poundland are revelling in it, aiming to open another 30 stores this year.

Primarks are also a leading ‘bargain’ store for clothes, which are still doing well, but what about the child labour that goes into all these clothes getting made? Have we now stopped caring, because we can’t afford to care? Does everything really revolve around money.

The Fairtrade and Organic brands were often bought at the supermarkets. Have we stopped buying these now and started buying the ‘Value’ instead? Was the reason that we bought them in the first place just to look like we cared, or can we really not afford that extra 20p for them anymore?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1970474/Financial-crisis-Credit-crunch-fails-to-stop-our-summer-holidays.html

Another subject is ‘home-growing’. Having your own allotment has been on the increase steadily for the last couple of years, probably due to all the gardening programmes, and the chefs like Jamie Oliver that have their own little cabbage patch, but in the last year, some of the councils have been inundated by requests for an allotment.

In Sheffield 2,200 people want an allotment, compared to 35 people 10 years ago.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/4409956/Recession-creates-queues-for-allotments.html
Figures from councils across Britain reveal that as many as 100,000 people could be waiting for allotment places as hard-pressed families seek to save money by returning to "The Good Life".

Could this be the Good Life..... returning to this?

I think it could definitely help us towards reducing our waste and carbon emissions, but I also agree with Nef;

Out of the ashes of the crash, a new economic order is emerging. This is a genuinely historic – and for many, painful – time. But it presents us with a unique opportunity to build a financial infrastructure that actually does the job the old order failed to do: to value and protect our fundamental social and natural operating systems. In a new economy, these are what must be valued and invested in, not the hollow, unsustainable and destructive promises of easy credit, consumerism and unsustainable economic growth. A return to ‘business as usual’ is not an option.

http://www.sustainablescotland.com/library/new-thinking/wellbeing/view-category.html?dir=ASC&limit=5&limitstart=0&order=name

Whatever good things come out of the credit crunch, there still needs to be huge restructuring to our way of lives to make everything better, if that is at all possible any more.