We determine the best way to live our lives and shape our communities by means of a collective of our individual values. These individual ideological preferences are, in recent times, becoming more and more polarised. The political left and right have never, in my lifetime, cleft such a disturbing gap. We struggle to formally agree and pass the most basic principles.

In a climate where there’s an increasing scrutiny and interest in where on this spectrum you stand, I find myself in the strange position of distancing myself from the whole debate even though I feel more politically motivated than ever. This I because my chief concern, one that I believe should underpin all other policies and positions, is the environment.

My commitment to ecopolitics substantiated from my spiritual beliefs and becomes only stronger with the ever-growing destruction of our planet. My pantheistic faith confirms the importance of ecology and that to live our best lives we must ensure that all life holistically excels.

The best of all possible worlds is not one that naturally unfolds under human will. Modern history is an abundance of exploitation, destruction and greed. The twentieth century taught us the slow and painful lesson that the potential to yield global power over fellow man is dangerous if left unfettered. It seems as if the story of the twenty-first century is an extension of this, whereby we learn to use our power to make peace with the earth.

I fear that environmentalism still isn’t seen as a prescient matter, let alone the most prescient, simply because it doesn’t appeal directly enough to us. It is true that other factors appear to be of a greater influence on our quality of life e.g. poverty, healthcare, education, social mobility. But the entirety of our current political system is built upon principles that will ultimately be the demise of life as a whole. We need to rethink the boundaries of our activities, not in terms of fiscal dogma but something that is the foundation of this: ecological economy.

So what can be done?

I think first and foremost we need to have an economy that isn’t based purely on growth because this inevitably leads to increased consumption. For a sustainable planet we need a sustainable economy. A decrease in consumption also has a positive effect on other problems beyond the decrease in carbon footprint caused by lesser manufacturing and movement of goods. We would all be healthier and we would all have more time to devote labour to something more meaningful and useful to society than providing for each other’s material wants.

Then there are the three mainstays of day-to-day life that would require an overhaul: housing, energy and transport.

Housing is an interesting one. How likely are households to make green changes to their property if they do not own it? With an increasing proportion of households privately renting this is a difficult obstacle if using incentives alone. Either steps must be taken to eradicate the buy-to-let market, or power must be exerted on landlords to enforce green measures. The first option is the more attractive to me because it also tackles another issue close to my heart (which I will undoubtedly cover in a later blog) but from an environmental standpoint people are more likely to push their green credentials if they are the ultimate beneficiary. To illustrate this with a simple example: if you privately rented a property would you take the substantial time and effort to cultivate a vegetable garden?

Energy is closely linked to housing, in particular how a renewable supply can be implemented and how to create the motive to do so. An idea I’ve toyed with recently is whether households and businesses would consume less energy if they were off-grid? Would being limited to the output of whatever renewable energy source you had installed on site create a conscious effort to minimize usage? Or is the grid and the ability to mass produce and manage energy production, supply and cost a more efficient means of energy provision than the installation of millions of standalone systems. I would be interested in any research completed in this area.

One reason that I am excited about an electric world is being able to do away with troublesome appliances such as gas boilers and internal-combustion vehicles. My patience with the constant maintenance of engineering that’s so complex it’s beyond my comprehension is incredibly fragile. Anything overly mechanical in today’s world seems archaic!

This brings me nicely on to transportation. If we can guarantee that the energy demand for personal electric cars can be met purely with renewable sources, is this an acceptable green solution? Probably not. Think of the drain on resources current infrastructure creates and then imagine this in future years if left to continue at its current rate unabated. Think also of the resources required to scrap all current fossil burning vehicles and replace them with electric ones, or to a lesser extent the resources required to convert existing vehicles to be electric. I think this links back to what I claimed to be the most important action of reducing consumption. Ideally, we would need to reduce our mileage and use public transport. Using public transport is currently implausible as a sole means of travel, but with enough investment (using a redirection of the infrastructure budget) this could be rectified.

The necessity of less travel dovetails with my final suggestion here. Something that would help reduce our carbon footprint immensely is making an effort to produce and consume as locally as possible. This, like all green measures, isn’t as straightforward as it at first seems. It would be very tempting to embrace this idea and start producing everything that the local population currently demands. This, however, is missing the point slightly. Relying on local production in an ecologically sustainable way means adjusting your demands to what the local environment is able to produce. It makes no sense for Alaskans to start cultivating their own tomatoes as the energy required to do so in near arctic conditions would probably surpass that required to ship them from warmer climates. We would have to accept that this new ethos would be the end of an easy supply of mangoes, cheap plastic toys and flat-pack furniture.

This isn’t everything, merely the most important resolutions as I see them at this moment in time. My quest to understand and action our ecological progress will no doubt continue. I just hope that our ecology becomes our political foundation before the current crisis transcends into an irreversible catastrophe.

This month's favourites:
   Pom Poko, Birthday
   Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
   Murder on the Orient Express (1974)