Why bother lying?

I think that many people in the world do actually care about the "sustainability" but on the scale of the whole planet it's a small minority. I also think that there are many people who fear what is going to happen to the Earth and, let's not lie, their personal lives in particular if all of the warnings would have happened. The thing is it's got nothing to do with what people do to help prevent it. Not many people actually use bus because of sustainability of the nature but rather because of sustainability of their wallets.

Would I rather drive in the future a Ford/Renault or Audi/Mercedes/BMW? The latter, of course. Those are better cars, just look at their price/social status/reviews. Is it not a sustainable answer? I guess, judging by the main principle - what's good for you is bad for the planet. In case someone doesn't believe me - try to imagine for a minute Earth without any people ever being there. A much greener picture?

Would I live in a small flat in the city centre or in a big house in the country? I'd live in a big flat in the city centre, let's put it this way. We all want to live our private lives in our own houses but as a non-British person I think I lack that ever-demanding "my house is my fortress" attitude I have witnessed on these wonderful shores. Besides, in our time and age many more people can afford to have two houses: working flat and summer house would sound perfect to me. Sustainable? Perhaps no, but I don't see how having too many houses can really be a problem. If a person has enough money to spend on electricity and bills then he can use as much of it a possible as long as those are not public money.

Holiday choice between local but boring (Norfolk/ Wales) and far away but interesting (California/Thailand/S. Africa/Greece)? I'd say as far as I'm not really local to these shores the answer is obvious - the latter one. And it's not really about the interest in something new (although Norfolk and Wales are exactly like Northampton - why bother going there? better go to the backyard) but rather about my own perception of the holiday: warm, beautiful, relaxed. I know some people can say those words about British destinations but generally I hope people will understand me - well, you can't seriously compare Thailand to the Norfolk, can you? Greener way would be benefiting nature? Well, less people would be benefiting nature, and less human activity would do much better to the environment. it won't benefit airlines, their employees and families of those employees.

Smart phone or a dumb phone? I'd go for the latter one because I: a) never had a smart phone, b) never wanted a smart phone - it's expensive and I'm not addicted to texting and poor quality video games.

Would I give up shopping for clothes for a year? Believe me I have even longer periods of time without having to go shopping. I survived. Shopping as leisure is not for me and it's not sustainable for my wallet.

Would I stop eating bananas, oranges and out of season fruits? Sounds as if I'm eating them that often. I'd definitely spend on them more if I could afford it but generally looking at the question - buying healthy food or not buying healthy food? I'd say I would buy it, I could give up on this planet but I'm not going to give up on myself.

Generally, I think, we used to spend less (if spending is the problem here) when all those necessities of today were luxuries. People were flying less, driving less and shopping less because they could not afford it. Modern time gives us a choice if many things. I do not support buying many things and excessive shopping but at the same time I believe everyone has a right to spend as much of his own money as possible.

Am I so naive that I think alternative energy sources can possibly supply our needs in the future? No. Alternative energy sources are like world without poverty - sounds good but not in this time and age. Of course, we can invest much more money into unprofitable, not too worthy and very expensive wind farms and solar energy but at the end of the day you see that without good old oil and nuclear we cannot sustain our economy level.

Are we that lazy/ignorant/selfish that we can't change? I guess no, we can change but we're just not going to. The problem is each and every person, with the exception of fanatics, is selfish and cares about himself/herself first. That is our nature and without it we would not survive. We can always say that the future of this planet is in our hands and if all the ordinary people would change then we all will live in piece with the environment and sustain this wonderful planet for the future generations. It is not going to happen - ask Christians, they tried to teach us kindness and love for 2000 years and yet not much changed. I think that future is in the hands of the elitist group that is called Government and only they can implement changes to this society. Our role is demanding an action from our politicians.

Judging by the previous human experience I can find only three possible ways to engage ordinary people to make changes in their own lives and behavior:
- Government teaches us that by making our little bit of impact we all can take part in saving the planet (it is called a culture or a tradition. Brits have this tradition of recycling and many people separate their rubbish into different bins without even being too concerned about the actual cause)
- Government scares us and tells us that if we're not going to do our little bit then we're going to have to pay (in a soft way - penalty is a worse environment and possible future climate change, in a strict way - penalty is a money fee they charge us for not doing enough "green" things for the planet)
-Government motivates people by offering them "greener" things that cost less for the wallet and has more advantages than disadvantages (that would be the perfect variant but unfortunately at the moment there is no cheaper equivalent to the oil or local tourist equivalent to Greece)

In a conclusion I'd like to say that we all care about our own lives and the only changes people are going to do are the ones that would cost less for them. If the cost of the "greener" environment is slow economy, slow cars, lack of technologies, numerous restrictions and penalties then that's not worth it. I believe people will be able to adapt and invent some "green" cars, "green" factories, better water supplies.
I understand that most of my answers were unsustainable. I do think that until we get convenient AND sustainable things , rather than bad but good for environment we've got now, I am not going to consider "right" way of things. Although I personally don't see a need in buying an expensive smart phone or to go shopping for clothes every day I don't see anything bad in them either. Surely you can't blame people for having extra money. So I believe we all can become "sustainable" one day , we just need to see what we are going to get from it.

An Inconvenient Truth

I have watched only that piece of film that I've seen on the lecture so my entire impression was based on that part. From the personal point of view the film was made well, very good production, camera work, right passages, according to b est traditions of the Hollywood movie-making. Now from the point of view of a geographer:
-message seems to be made very clear, with no chance for the other side ("critics") to reply and no second opinion from many other scientists that claim the climate change threat is not THAT immense (and there are a lot of them)
-do I feel it is a right approach? Well, for the sake of making a propagandist film, yes! Pretty sure that scientific material could be more objective, but if you really want to make an impression then that's the way to go.
-So more information could be included, and at the same time some of his personal issues could be excluded from the film. For example, his political career info is alright for the film, but reminding people that he's lost the election in a wrong manner and to a wrong man - that's all very subjective. The part with his ill kid was added to give the movie a "personal" dimension and make some people cry. It was very irrelevant and a bit of a cheap trick.
-The film was not at all technical, boring or confusing but editing made it hard for me to follow the his thoughts properly. The structure of the film was very dynamic, where he jumps from technical info to his political fiasco, and then back to the planet saving, and then to his son.
-Speaking about the simplicity of the content is unnecessary because everyone knows that that kind of films could not be too simple. It's a political film with a particular issue aimed at specific audience with political views plus at those who knows nothing about the climate change.
-The film was overall interesting if you watch it after news report, but not too exciting to watch it in cinema or buy a DVD.
-The irrelevance is not the biggest problem of the film - they made about $48,000,000 of the profit worldwide, Mr. Gore's back into politics and got his followers, "Climate Change" companies got their piece of the pie in numerous grants and sponsorships, and don't forget the Nobel Peace Prize given to Gore for his efforts.

Sustainability of the place I used to live in.

I used to live in Eccles in Salford (Greater Manchester)  before coming to University of Northampton and I'd like  to evaluate how sustainable is my community on the example  of this place where I used to live for a year. I want to start with some of the statistics I'm taking from the Office for National Statistics. According to the data on  the website the neighborhood is quite deprived, health  is worse than average in the country, life expectancy is  low, economic activity and employment rates are very  close but still lower than average in England and land  use 4-5 times worse with green space being at 19% in  comparison with nationwide level of 87%. Overall I would say that Eccles in not really a sustainable place even though in my neighborhood situation was much better in comparison with the rest of the area. I was living in leafy part of the area with a lot of new developments built there in the last 5-7 years. Close proximity of the shopping area as well as convenient transportation system made it very advantageous place to live in. Bus traffic was quite frequent but at the same time most of the people used cars because of the beneficial location of the place which, while being a main hub for locals of the area to get to work, was also very green with a lot of trees on the sides of the roads and clean pavements. The area I am talking about is laying on the north of Eccles and i dominated by residential buildings. At the same time market street with all the main amenities ,including some restaurants, bars, hairdressing salons as well as  standard post office and bank branch, make this place an attractive neighborhood for living while nearby school and hotel add something extra to the picture of  a local area. Basically hospital would be the only facility missing in that ensemble; I was also going to mention a big shopping centre but remembered that there's only 2-3 miles to the Trafford Centre, one of the biggest retail venues of the country. Overall, I'd say that statistics of the major part of Eccles overshadowed small but wealthy neighborhood I used to live in. Stats of unemployment, land use, economic activity and overall deprivation level are based on the combined data of the whole area and could be easily misunderstood in the leafy part of area where frequent and convenient transport makes no stress to local people,  busy roads are surrounded by trees and small residential place is provided with almost all the main facilities, amenities and activities a single household needs. That's the ambivalent truth of the place on the west of Manchester, place I used to live in before I cam to Northampton.

and just a little pic for the last post

How sustainable is my lifestyle?

The word "Sustainability" isn't the one I would necessarily use to describe my lifestyle but at the same time I couldn't avoid the fact that some of the aspects of my day-to-day living could make some positive impact on environment. For example I use public transport to get to the Avenue Campus (if I'd have a car I'd drive it). Speaking recycling-wise I used to sort the rubbish into different bins once I came to UK but never before (due to worse economic situation in my home country people tend to think about more important things over there and due to much lower level of consumption environment there is still at normal level) and not after I've moved to the Halls of Residence (due to student nature of my life). Yet there's still a potential for some more eco-friendly stuff in my life. Something like turning the light off could save up some energy - energy-efficient economy is the driver of success in sustainable economy - but that same "student life" doesn't help me a lot in this matter because it's easier to explain to a student that binge-drinking is bad than make them all switch the lights off after they leave the room. The same goes with heating problem. I like it that Uni really cares about the students' health and doesn't want them to freeze but starting heating rooms in early October might lead you to over-heating the room (what's now happening in our flat's kitchen) and eventually to losing massive amounts of energy (maybe not "massive" you can correct me on that one). Once again I'm trying to remind myself that it's a Person not the System that should be responsible for changes but at the end of the day it's up to the nature to decide. Nature of people now dominates the environment and dictates that driving comfortable car is good and standing like a sheep in the bus all the way between campuses is still bad, buying two times more products than you need is good and using exclusively recycled stuff is bad, talk about how you care about the ecology is good and actually do something to help the environment is bad.

first one

And the first one ... as a message for Mr Spellman : "It's done, Greg!"