We Live in a Beautiful Place Ruined by Cars and Pollution

The beautiful South Downs with the English Channel in the background

We have the sea a couple of miles or so to the south of us, and the hilly countryside about the same distance to the north. You would think that it would be a paradise for cycling in the UK, but unfortunately, that couldn’t be further from the case.

Between the hills and the English Channel are houses, roads and cars as far the eye can see. There are no bike paths, but there are drivers in huge cars who hate you because you’re on a bicycle. The air is thick with pollution from car exhausts, wood burning stoves, petrol lawnmowers, strimmers and chainsaws; even bonfires. I don’t know if the pollution gets worse every year, but it definitely feels like that. And it’s not even just when you’re outside that you feel it. During the summer garden work season, but mostly in winter, you get hit with it immediately upon cracking the window.

It’s really unpleasant, and you really get an idea for how bad it is when you go out at night. I used to like going for bike rides at 10 or 11 at night when it was quiet. At that time, there were almost no cars and therefore no exhaust emissions. But even then, the crisp, cool air was still incredibly smokey. You can only get that kind of continuous daily pollution around here because of wood burning.

In terms of open spaces, our parks are few and far between. They’re small, they’re basic, anti-cycling, unlit (and therefore scary at night); and have barely seen improvement since I was born 34 years ago. There aren’t really any nice sights that you’d find on a casual walk around the town either. It’s nothing like in Japan where you’re never far away from the next temple or shrine, or other beautiful piece of architecture or patch of nature.

In terms of alleyways and other pedestrian infrastructure, they’re narrow, dirty, and dark with high walls. Not the kind of place you’d want to go at night, and not really during the day either. They’re also not cycling friendly as you might expect. It doesn’t compare well at all to somewhere like Singapore, which has its PCN (Park Connector Network). The car free routes connect up parks in the city, as you would expect. They’re wide and open, with space on both sides. It never feels closed in like alleyways here, and Singapore is far from a bicycle friendly city itself. The reason for the huge difference is that a town like Worthing was built to maximise every bit of space for homes and other development. Nothing was left unused. Preserving natural beauty was not considered. They only considered a future of cars and houses. Nature didn’t matter, cycling didn’t matter because cars now existed and were supposedly better in every way.

It’s not hard to see how the way the town was designed and built has lead to one of the least progressive councils in the country, where nothing ever gets done. But the great thing is that, while it would be difficult to fix all of the disastrous design mistakes, there are things we could do to make the best of what we have. Banning private cars, banning wood burning, bonfires, petrol garden tools, private fireworks for example. If we only did these things, the difference would be massive and immediate. It’s not going to happen because of politics, but it can happen because of the climate crisis.

Even just in the last week, we’ve seen widespread flash flooding across the country. We’re seeing it more and more this year and it does feel like something has to give soon. We have COP26 coming up, and while I have no faith in any political action at either the local or national level, as I’ve mentioned many times; it does present a huge opportunity for people to realise that politicians and corporations aren’t coming to save us. We have to boycott business and make the lives of politicians a living hell to the point where they don’t want to stay in office. That’s basically our only chance now.

Has Insulate Britain Achieved Anything?

Before I begin, I want to make clear that I do support the aims of Insulate Britain protesters. I applaud their bravery in blocking motorways around the country, when the risk of violence against them is so high. But has it convinced anyone in the country who wasn’t convinced already? I would say probably not.

We live in a country which has learned nothing from the covid-19 pandemic (which is still very much ongoing, contrary to popular opinion). Our commitment to the capitalist cause is unwavering and the vast majority of the country don’t have a clue about the impending climate disaster. People are still unwilling to switch to EVs, let alone getting rid of their cars for climate change. Not only that, they panic buy petrol and get into fights at filling stations, such is the sheer terror of having to live in a small country without access to a private car.

Under these circumstances, it’s entirely unsurprising that Insulate Britain has been a complete disaster and doomed to fail from the very beginning. Even the leader couldn’t catch a break when he went on Good Morning Britain. The over simplistic media are always more interested in a juicy case of hypocrisy than the overall picture. Not that he was a hypocrite anyway since he didn’t own his home and couldn’t afford to insulate it even if he did. But the media never let an unfortunate detail like that get in the way of a great gotcha moment.

So what have Insulate Britain achieved so far?

  • Made angry motorists even angrier
  • Been called hypocrites
  • Given the government an excuse to crack down even more on peaceful protest in a supposedly democratic country
  • Not convinced a single person of their agenda

Probably the biggest thing they’ve achieved is to teach other organisations how not to do it, as well as giving them a PR boost. Extinction Rebellion are going to be seen in a far more positive light for blocking city centres following this disastrous campaign by Insulate Britain. XR warn people and authorities in advance where they’ll be and for how long (to avoid being accused of blocking emergency vehicles). They also either create a party atmosphere or provide some kind of interesting performance aspect that attracts the media to cover it. They think things through far more, and people will now start to recognise that after seeing IB’s approach.

Don’t get me wrong, XR made some bad choices in the beginning and did some things that had a similar effect to Insulate Britain. However, they’ve generally improved over time and become smarter about choosing what types of action to do and what not to do. IB don’t seem to have learned anything at all.

Imagine if XR had started by blocking motorways a few years ago when people were even less sympathetic to calls for climate action than they are now. It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that someone would have been killed by a motorist. We’ve seen it close to home in Worthing a few years ago when a man was killed by a fellow motorist after he left his car to talk to talk about a road rage incident.

So, what I would say to Insulate Britain protesters now is please find another way for your own safety. Go to town centres instead for example. Blocking motorways, airports, train stations and things like that will not work in this country. You’re putting your lives on the line for no reason. Mainstream British culture still has its fingers firmly stuck in its collective ears and is singing the la la song as loudly as anywhere in the world (even Australia).

Edit: I just saw a clip of an interview with Roger Hallam (co-founder of XR) where he said he would do the same thing as Insulate Britain did (not let a woman through to visit her mother in hospital) and would block an ambulance if necessary. I find that a very odd thing to say when you have an opportunity to distance yourselves from IB as they have been doing recently.

Green Growth And Vaccines Are Both Delusions

When you watch the mainstream media, you’ll notice this striking similarity between the climate crisis and the covid pandemic. The media can’t shake this firmly held belief that we have the solutions to both of these crises at our fingertips. The only issue is that unfortunately, neither crisis actually is actually being improved by these silver bullet fixes.

Solar is good. But not without slashing energy use.

To be clear, we do have the ability to solve these crises, as I’ve talked about ad nauseam. But the solutions are not vaccines and green growth. Conveniently enough, the solution for both is to end capitalism. Sadly though, the media will never tell you that. Or at least they won’t while we still have a chance to save ourselves. Presumably they’ll change their tune once it becomes obvious to everyone that it’s too late to avoid every coastal city in the world becoming a treasure trove for scuba divers.

Boris Johnson at the moment is talking about how frustrated he is with world leaders not doing enough about climate change. So much so that he almost managed to convince me that he cares about the environment. Of course that’s ridiculous. If he was actually mad at other world leaders, he would be mad at himself for pretty much everything he’s ever said and done regarding the climate.

Vaccines are good. But not without masks, distancing and paying people to stay home.

What he’s actually angry at is the possibility that he’s going to look bad when COP26 is a disaster and it reflects badly on him. He doesn’t care if any agreement is based on a fake solution of green growth with a ridiculous target of Net Zero in 29 years from now. All he cares about is that he can take the plaudits for “solving” climate change in Glasgow. Anything that happens after that (eg society collapsing, life on Earth ending) would just be a coincidence and nothing to do with him.

It would be really helpful if very soon we start to appreciate the real solutions, rather than glorifying fake ones.

Electoral Politics Don’t Matter Any More

Even if the Greens or similar left-wing parties win the next election in every single country around the world (which unfortunately isn’t going to happen), it still wouldn’t be enough to give humanity a chance of survival. The climate crisis is far too advanced for that.

What we need is an immediate change to the way societies are run, and that is impossible within the political and economic systems that currently govern our lives no matter where we live. It can only happen now through protest, strikes, and generally refusing to live the way society wants us to.

An example of how useless electoral politics now are is in Japan, where there is a higher chance a far-right nationalist leader will be the new PM than the centre-left CDP forming a government. And there is zero chance of any left-wing party making any real impact.

Recently, we’ve been seeing record job vacancies and employers struggling to attract workers back. People have realised that they are endlessly disrespected with slave wages and poor conditions. They’re sick of it and they want to get off the hamster wheel. And this is exactly what we need; the people to hit the elites where it hurts. Once the ruling class of mostly boomers realise that the game is up (no matter how much they attempt to rig democracy), they’ll escape in the life rafts. We’ll be left with a sinking capitalist ship, but at least we’ll have a chance to swim to the eco-communist island. But it has to happen in the next year or so for it to be salvageable. If we wait another 4 or 5 years for the next elections, it will be too late. Especially because it doesn’t seem likely that the right kind of parties would win even then.