Global Warming causes the Carteret Islands to be abandoned.

I would have thought (hoped) that this story would have been headline news throughout the world, but the news agencies have, in the main, ignored it, so here it is anyway!

The Carteret Islands are part of Papua New Guinea located in the South Pacific being a scattering of low lying islands in a horseshoe shape with a total land area of 0.6 square kilometers and a maximum elevation of 1.5 meters above sea level. You see the problem, 1.5m above sea level.

Some say that the islands' sinking is caused by them being located on shifting tectonic plates, but Australia's National Tide Facility has measured an annual rise of 8.2 mm in sea level on the islands in every year they have monitored the situation. Within the space of a generation, the islands' shoreline has receded over 60 feet. During storm surges, salt water washes away homes, destroys vegetable gardens, and contaminates fresh water supplies and for a population of 2,000+, largely dependent on subsistence agriculture, the impact has been devastating. The image that looks as though it is two islands, is actually of one that is now being flooded as sea levels rise.

So 2,000+ people are, as I write, in the process of being relocated to other locations. How ironic that the Carteret Islanders, people with a carbon footprint among the lowest in the world, are now among the first to have to abandon their islands because of rising seas caused by emissions from other nations.

The photos are used with the kind permission of www.SunComeUp.com and I would 100% recommend, ask, plead, that you visit their site HERE and view the film trailer as it tells the story of the islanders in their own words on their vanishing homeland. It may take a few seconds to load but this is worth any wait. If there are problems in linking from this then the environmental resource contacts at the left hand side also has a link.

The only mainstream journal to have covered this story in depth is The Ecologist, and you can read their on-line report HERE.

Can money make you content?

I am lucky, I remember what it was at one time to have little, come from families that had even less and so can appreciate what we have now.

In the West the appalling poverty and awful living standards that were the norm for my parents childhood generation have all but gone and are now but memories in books and black and white images such as you see, where men could sit up for a nights sleep and get a morning bowl of soup for a penny, the beds nearby cost three pence a night. Double left click on it to see what life in London was like for so many in years past.

Unlike those you can see in that image the vast majority of our people no longer exist in conditions and circumstances that mean they own only the clothes they stand up in and to say that since I have been born standards of living have risen considerably would be an understatement. The ‘fridge and freezer have changed the need for shopping from an almost daily event to a once a week or even longer event, the washing machine has eliminated the drudgery of the washing day my mother knew and the communications revolution has allowed mass access to information.

Women have, thank God, been given their unquestionable rights to freedoms that would have been inconceivable even when I was a child. The car has allowed mobility in a way that would have been in the realms of science fiction in my grandparents’ day and they would have likewise viewed the pill.

So what has gone wrong?

In the West alcoholism is on the increase, as are the use of drugs to relieve stress, depression and anxiety. Anti-social behaviour is no longer unusual, violence is increasing, aggression is the norm on the roads and suicides in the UK are now at their highest numbers in males aged 15-44.

Here we all are, enjoying a material prosperity such as the world has never seen before, yet we have witnessed the loss of a society and community that cares. Society now has unparalleled material wealth yet is the same society that has unparalleled discontent with its lot. Could this be because in the rush to acquire, to possess, there is little room for anything more in peoples’ lives? Could it be that having acquired that new possession the euphoria soon wears off and what was desirable now becomes the norm?

I have seen society change and the driving force behind this has been the acceptance of three principles.

Success is to be measured materially
Material success will bring happiness
Therefore in order to be successful (and happy) you must make your aim in life material goals.

OK, that's a tad simplistic but basically it is what many people believe and to go against this is to be in conflict with what we are fed daily. Look at any TV or newspaper and there will be the message that if you want to have a fulfilled life then you must consume. If you want success then you must possess and if you want status then do both in a highly visual way.

The fallacy is that money can produce contentment, when even the most casual observer can see that this is not true. I have become to realise that there is a far more addictive product than cannabis, heroin, alcohol or anything else available, and that is money.

There is, of course, nothing essentially wrong with money, the problem is that the bulk of our society is addicted to it 100%. For many it completely controls what they do and when things go wrong, more has to be printed for a society that is addicted, obsessed and in love with money. Some grow their own drugs, governments print money in order to satisfy societies major addiction, in fact when I look around today I do realise that “the love of money is a root of all evil” and that indeed “Some people, in their eagerness to get rich, have wandered away from the faith and caused themselves a lot of pain”. **

I am privileged to be a frontline volunteer member of a suicide intervention team, and I can say from experience that “the love of money” and the damage caused by those “eager to get rich” has resulted in a lot of pain to many innocent others. **

Carl Marx once said that "Religion is the opiate of the people". He was wrong, money is the opiate of the people.

** Italics from 1 Timothy 6:10

Incidentally, the facilities you see in the images were provided by the Salvation Army in Blackfriars, London in 1902. The S.A. may be short in liturgy, but they have always been long in action.

Swine Flu – is this the reason why?

In the US state of Iowa there are almost nine times as many pigs/hogs as people and in 2005 (yup... 2005) the University of Iowa, (Centre for Emerging Diseases)warned that these intensive animal farms were a tremendous potential reservoir for the flu virus.

The source of the virus is yet to be fully confirmed but the facts are that near La Gloria, a village East of Mexico City, there are pig/hog farms that intensively produce almost a million animals a year. In La Gloria almost 60% of the inhabitants have been affected by flu symptoms and some have died.

Dr. Gregory Grey at the University of Iowa was involved in a major study that concluded that “virus-laden secretions from pigs may be more concentrated, and reductions in ventilation and sunshine exposure may prolong viral viability. Thus, a confinement operation worker’s probability of acquiring the Influenza virus infection may be increased compared with that of a traditional swine worker.”
The study warned that swine workers could “initiate epidemics” by mixing the viral strains which would then trigger a pandemic. “They may serve as a conduit for a novel virus to move from swine to man or from man to swine,” the study said.

The Mexican factories are alleged to have very low standards of hygiene and were owned and run by an American company Smithfield, who were at the heart of one of my previous postings.

There is a video on that post of Smithfields accepted practices. Please view it, look at the animals conditions, see just what those involved had to say about the effect the factories operations had on their health and draw your own conclusions.

Greed + global warming = 1,500 farmers in India recently committing suicide, (did you know about it?)

This is a complex issue, there are several causes but in the main they are drought, international trade agreements, and policies of international loan agencies (IMF, World Bank). The global warming aspect has meant that for farmers in some areas the water level has gone down below 250 feet where it used to be at 40 feet a few years ago.

The lack of irrigation water will be further influenced by increased global climate change which is expected to raise the Indian Sub-continent temperatures by up to 4°C by 2100 according to a report in The Hindu. This is expected to cause major problems with the monsoon season that is so critical to crop growth and ground water replenishment.

The international trade agreements are mostly influenced by the transnational corporations. A trade agreement between the United States and India, the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA), was backed by Monsanto and other transnational corporate giants.

The World Bank loans to the poor countries pave the way for the transnational corporations to take control and exploit local markets and natural resources. In 1998, the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies forced India to open its seed sector to transnational corporations. This allowed for the seizure of India’s seed sector by Monsanto, its trade sector by Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, and its retail sector by Wal-Mart.

As a result of this, traditional farm saved seeds have been replaced with genetically engineered seeds. Their precarious situation was aggravated as a result of the aggressive marketing and subsequent disappointing results of Monsanto GM Cotton seed, marketed as disease resistant and high-yielding, when in fact it turned out to be neither.

This GM cotton seed is sterile and cannot be saved. The farmers then have to purchase seeds for each growing season, which is a costly investment for them. In most cases this has led to poverty and severe indebtedness. In order to relieve themselves of debt, some farmers have even sold their own organs.

Cotton farmers in Andra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have defaulted on bank debt, and then become further indebted to illegal moneylenders. When these attempts have failed to rectify their financial situations, many farmers committed suicide.

According to the Indian National Crime Records Bureau records, there have been 166,304 farmers’ suicides in a decade since 1997 in India. Of these, 78,737 occurred in five years between 1997 and 2001. The next five years - from 2002 to 2006 – proved worse, seeing 87,567 take their lives. This means that on an average, there has been one farmer’s suicide every 30 minutes since 2002.

These suicides are an example of how global climate change and big business will affect the poorest in society first. Perhaps some of the shame of these farmers’ debts and suicides should be borne by those who over-consume and live for the bottom line only, while others actually pay the price.

For more information see HERE HERE and HERE

This man is a Cyber Terrorist!

According to John Austin MP I had “engaged in what appears to be a campaign of cyber-terrorism, intended to crash my and the House of Commons IT system which threatens to prevent me dealing with the very urgent needs of my constituents many of whom are among the most deprived in the country”. Ignoring the fact that for 22 years I lived in his constituency, what is needed to become a ‘Cyber Terrorist’?

First of all you need to have a concern for the environment that transcends the concerns for the here and now, looks for the long term future and are not afraid to stand up and be counted and take some form of action. If that is you then you have qualified for the above title! I have come to the regretful conclusion that governments and big business, especially the UK government and big businesses, seem to regard environmentalist much in the same way that they regard terrorists. This may seem an overstatement but let’s us face facts, due to the Web and blogs such as this, there is no longer any hiding place for either, the truth will out... unless it is suppressed. This may seem a little paranoid so let me take it further.

The proposed Kingsnorth coal fired power station in Kent UK will emit as much C02 as Nigeria and so several thousand climate protestors peaceably camped nearby and were met by 1500 police in an action that cost £5.7 million. The police claimed that many of their number were injured in ‘containing the protest’ yet these injuries turned out to be wasp stings, headaches, toothache, diarrhoea and so on. To see just how the police handled these horrendously dangerous protesting individuals watch here and for a firsthand account (Adrienne Campbell's writing of her husband's experience of arrest and release) see here.

In London recently there were G8 protests. I will not condone violence from any quarter, but my friends who were there at the peace camp said that the police presence was frightening and oppressive, shades of Kingsnorth, but then Ian Tomlinson, a bystander with his hands in his pockets, simply walking home was attacked by the police and died later, you can see the attack here.

The police had been talking up the threat of violence at the G20 protests for weeks. They briefed journalists and companies in the City of London about the supposed intentions of the climate campaigners intending to demonstrate there, but refused to let the campaigners attend the briefings and put their own side of the story. They also rebuffed the campaigners when they sought to explain to the police what they wanted to do.

My new title of being a Cyber Terrorist was due to me emailing several MP’s about a possible third runway at London Heathrow (something which will flatten a local village and cause even more pollution) and which many others did at the same time.

I was a member of a Christian group that took part in a Climate Change Church service that then joined several thousand others on a march in London on 8 Dec 2007. I was walking down Whitehall, past Downing Street when a police officer a few feet away took a close-up video of my face and using one of those directional microphones listened in to the conversation I was having so I am obviously on a database somewhere...

I believe that the concern that is now apparent from both authorities and big business about people like you and I, who have concern for the future of this amazing planet, is that we now via the web have both information and community, and as such are seen as a threat. Does that sound farfetched? If you think so then see one of my previous posts here, it is anti Monsanto, a company that I regard as often quite evil in the way it does business, and who was the first to reply to this post... it was Monsanto! Some of the larger companies, and perhaps governments, must have a department that trawls the web to search out dangerous individuals such as me in order to repudiate their views and claims, but due to the web, there are now few hiding places.

If it were not for the web then the videos above and the concerns expressed would have never been seen or read, and what then? I have found out, to my cost, that the press and TV rely on their advertisers and proprietors in order to fund them and they are not likely to offend either, especially when the propriators and advertisers activities involve environmental damage that attracts the attention of environmentalists. When that happens the environmentalist concerns are usually rubbished by the media, have you noticed that?

So where do my Christian beliefs fit into this? Easy, we have to stand up and be counted when we see brutality and oppression, and if we do not condemn it, we condone it.

Alone in all creation a chicken cried out at the betrayal of God

Mat 26:34 Jesus said to him, Truly I say to you that this night, before the hour of the cock's cry, you will say three times that you have no knowledge of me.

They sure have been made to pay for it ever since....

Just some of the places to visit before they go under the sea!

The Maldive Islands, they are on average just 1.5m above sea level.
Tuvalu, with its highest point just 4.5m above sea level.
Kiribati, just ½ m more and its arable land will be gone.
The Carteret Islands will be underwater by 2015 and it had 2000+ inhabitants in 2003.
Key West in Florida... although parts of the area are 6m above sea level, less than 1m and much will be flooded.

I wonder which is the one that will wake the world up when the flooding happens?

The cure to the world’s financial disaster is more of that which caused the pain! (You didn’t believe that, did you?)

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal, or batteries run flat, leak and ruin the stuff. Or Microsoft stop providing you with updates, or your SIM card gives up or the goods become obsolete the year after you have bought them and so they all end up stored in garages, basements closets or in units on industrial estates while you are still paying for them on your credit card. Instead store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.

Ok, so that is not exactly what Jesus said in Matthew 6:19-21, but could this be what He would be saying to us today?

In the UK the latest concern is that in reaction to the financial disaster, the British people are saving rather than spending when we are all told that what is required to get the economy going again is to consume again, to buy new goods. Yes, that’s it; the answer to the world’s financial disaster is to replace all that ‘old’ stuff that we all own.

This is of course what every almost advert in any media tries to persuade us to do. That TV that still works is now outdated and certainly needs replacing by one of those latest flat screen models. The latest Apple computer is so slim that it takes up no space at all compared to that ‘old’ one you bought only last year and you can now choose the colour as well. That jacket you have still fits perfectly, but its last year’s style as are those shoes you have on and have you seen just how low the fuel consumption is on the latest model cars?

While this happens and people are being persuaded to ‘spend, spend, spend’ and ‘borrow, borrow, borrow, (which is how the world got into this unholy financial mess in the first place) Planet Earth is treated as a never ending source of raw materials for the manufacture of never ending goods and a never ending dump facility, with many of its people a never ending resource to be exploited, if necessary by never ending violence, in a world where only those people that have the never ending means to buy and consume have any value whatsoever in the economic system.

Most people do not consider themselves to be ‘rich’. They might consider that Tiger Woods or Lewis Hamilton or Sir Richard Branson are, but not themselves, because they have become an integral part of a culture that works to (and always will) leave them dissatisfied with their lot. The fact is though that if you have a sound roof over your head, enough food to eat, clothes to wear, running water, a sewerage system, easy access to affordable transport and a computer then you are in the top 20% of the world’s population. Most people in the West are rich, but have allowed themselves to be blinded to the fact! Jesus is very clear about materialism; a life that is centred on our possessions is a life that is not fulfilled in His eyes.

We are, of course, all consumers of one sort or another, shelter, clothing, and our ‘daily bread’ of food and drink, but it is when we focus on possessions beyond our normal needs that we lose the focus of our lives also. It is then that companies such as ‘Mini Storage’, ‘Self Storage’ and ‘Lock and Store’ thrive and the possessions become the possessors as their owners pay to store items they may never use again. “Store up for yourselves treasure in heaven” He said, He did not say in a container in an industrial unit!

So what would Jesus prefer? Would He like to see us borrow more and spend it so we can mine and exploit both more resources and more people in order to buy more and more possessions and fill ever more facilities full of old stuff? Or would he like to see us being happy with what we need rather than what we want and to get rid of the excess by donating it to charity or sold and the money given to those in need? The answer He gave in Matthew 19:21 to the young man who asked Him what he should do to inherit eternal life was straight to the point “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." The young man went away sorrowing because his real God was his possessions.

My dread is that with all the money that is now being pumped into the world's economy (and just where did it all come from?) and the encouragement to spend, spend, spend we will eventually again be back where we started. In the words of George Santayana “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.

The simple fact is that the less we possess and the more we divest ourselves from our unneeded and unnecessary, the less we will be bound by earthly things and the better life will actually become for us, for the environment, and so for the future generations as yet unborn, who are having their futures decided and mortgaged by the present generation.