Now
that summer is here it is easy to ignore the wider world and only take
in what we see through the sun's glare at the beach or from the top of a
shady mountain.
Away
from the ease of nature’s innocence though, it seems to me that we
living in both pivotal and fascinating days. The good news is that
Europe can take heart from some real achievements in environmental
energy over the last few months.
For example, in the month of May
Germany was almost entirely powered by solar and wind, Britain
functioned without coal for the first time in over a century and
Portugal ran on renewable energy alone for four days straight.
Also, the
EU Parliament has called on the European Commission to severely
restrict permitted uses of the toxic agricultural herbicide glyphosate -
a probable cause of cancer and a substance already found in our
bloodstreams.
Just
across the sea in Tunisia is another development that must be welcome
to anyone who cares about basic human rights. In that part of the
continent that originally sparked the Middle Eastern Arab Spring
protests over five years ago, Tunisia’s once-extreme Ennahda party
"officially declared that it will separate its religious activities from
its political ones...[and] acknowledged the primacy of secular
democracy over Islamist theocracy."
In other words, mosques there will
be politically neutral - a major blow to any recruiters of
fundamentalist terrorists.
But
there are also current affairs stories that are not at all heartening.
Conservative party attacks on the taxpayer-funded BBC TV are continuing
without mercy.
David Cameron’s government is trying to take further
money away from children’s programmes in a move towards corporate
advertising on that great media institution. This idea of complete
abandonment of the public sector is now being taken to it’s logical
conclusion elsewhere. In Gurgaon, a booming new Indian city with a
population of millions they live and work “without a citywide system for
water, electricity or even public sewers.”
It
is exactly this kind of problem that billionaire technology magnate
Bill Gates sees holding the United States of America back. He recently
made the case for public funding of crucial infrastructure, arguing:
““Since World War II, U.S.-government R&D [research and development]
has defined the state of the art in almost every area. The private
sector is in general inept,” he said.
At least North America is
experiencing a resurgence in the sales of books however. In 2015,
incomes for independent booksellers were up just over 10%, and are
remaining strong in 2016. Sadly, this is not the case for the United
Kingdom where over six hundred independent bookshops have closed in the
last decade.
Meanwhile
in Australia, Peter Dutton (a man that doctors voted ‘the worst Health
Minister in 35 years - having cut $57 billion from public hospitals) has
just been put in charge of the area of national immigration. He was
promptly caught on camera making jokes about climate impacts on
low-lying Pacific Islands while on diplomatic visit. Then, as part of
Australia’s right-wing government he made the self-contradicting comment
that refugees “won't be numerate or literate ... They would languish on
unemployment ...These people will be taking Australian jobs."
Over
the summer I’m going to stop thinking about the above news items. I’m
sure there will soon be fresh pieces of our human doings to be amazed
by.
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2016.]
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