JiscMail Logo
Email discussion lists for the UK Education and Research communities

Help for CRISIS-FORUM Archives


CRISIS-FORUM Archives

CRISIS-FORUM Archives


CRISIS-FORUM@JISCMAIL.AC.UK


View:

Message:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Topic:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Author:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

Font:

Proportional Font

LISTSERV Archives

LISTSERV Archives

CRISIS-FORUM Home

CRISIS-FORUM Home

CRISIS-FORUM  July 2008

CRISIS-FORUM July 2008

Options

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Log In

Log In

Get Password

Get Password

Subject:

Spirit of the Blitz?

From:

Alastair McIntosh <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Alastair McIntosh <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:17:03 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (79 lines)

Folks ... I'm just catching up on these communications after being away, and
this question from Chris Keene caught my eye:

	"Does anyone have the figures on how many were killed in the second
world war, and how many are likely to die from climate change?"

It's an issue I see raised time and time again, and I fear it's a red
herring within NIMTO (not in my term of office) political time horizons. I
find saying that very disturbing, since our main hope must be that a few
shocks will shift consciousness, but I think there's very real issues of
scale, of timespans, and of human psychology. Here's how I've dealt with it
in part of "Spirit of the Blitz" which is Chapter 4 of "Hell and High Water:
Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition". These paragraphs come from
the typeset PDF and so apologies that the fomatting is lost. It's a chapter
where I set up various "green hopeful" arguments, like "we dealt with
slavery and so can deal with climate change", and I argue, dismally and
reluctantly, that we're just sticking out heads in the sand because there's
no comparison of scale. I'd be interested if anybody thinks I'm wrong on
that and can show why - indeed, I'd love to be proven wrong on it!

Alastair.



‘Then what about the spirit of the Blitz?’ ask the green hopefuls. ‘Climate
change is an even bigger threat to security. If our parents and grandparents
accepted austerity under the Blitz, then surely . . .’ Well, is climate
change really going to hit Britain like the Blitz did? It probably will,
long term, as a slow holocaust, and on a world scale. But will it do so
within the political time horizons or even in the lifetimes of most of those
of us who are around now? Let’s remind ourselves of what happened in the
Blitz.
The first four days of September 1939 are often described as having seen
‘the biggest and most concentrated mass move¬ment of people in Britain’s
history’.18 In response to the terse order, ‘Evacuate forthwith’, issued
from Whitehall at 11.07 a.m. on Thursday, 31 August 1939, nearly 3 million
people, mostly children and their teachers, packed their bags and fled to
places of safety from the bombing. For those who stayed behind, the
Clydebank Blitz over just two nights in 1941 saw Luftwaffe bombs kill 528
people and completely destroy 4,000 homes. Between September 1940 and May
1941 Britain as a whole, with London as the main target, saw 43,000
civilians left dead and over a million homes destroyed. The conse¬quences
linger on quietly to this day. Only in 2006 did Britain finish paying off
its war debts to America. And every night, and perhaps still for another
quarter century to come, old folks who never married go to their beds with a
prayer on their lips for the loved ones lost in those ‘darkest hours’.
‘Lest we forget’: that’s the visceral challenge to the cultural immune
system that drove the spirit of the Blitz. That’s how pressed to the limits
people were. Even then it was a struggle to get everybody to comply with
environmental measures to eke out rationed resources. I have in my files a
couple of cuttings from the ‘Down All the Years’ reminiscence column in the
Stornoway Gazette. One of them, originally published on 7 August 1942, had
the caption ‘Keep Your Waste Paper Separate’. It reported on the efforts of
the Waste Paper Recovery Association - a public agency that we could
prob¬ably do with reinstating today - and said: ‘Housewives and office
workers are still not keeping their waste paper separate from other salvage,
and this is causing serious stoppages in paper mills engaged in work of
national importance . . . Even old boots and bits of machinery were found in
the sacks of waste. As a result production in this mill has dropped 15% and
damage to machinery has been very serious.’
The other, originally published on 7 March 1947, described how Stornoway’s
town council was considering a system of ‘rhythmic control’ for its street
lights. This would use an elec¬tronic signal to turn the lighting on and off
in accordance with need and thereby save energy. The article bemusedly
con¬cluded: ‘With such a handy system in use, it will be easy for the
Council to revert to the old idea of switching off the street lights when
there’s a moon - an idea which once gained for Stornoway the world-wide fame
- or notoriety - of a mention in “Believe it or Not”.’
My point is not to disparage such measures as recycling and energy
conservation. They are imperative. It is simply to say that even when people
are as hard-pressed as they were in wartime, disciplined compliance still
takes effort to achieve. The rhythmic lighting story is particularly
interesting. It shows that social pressure was making a mockery of frugality
even in the early twentieth century. In Chapter 7 we will examine how
pressures of that nature were deliberately cultivated to drive consumerism.
For now, let’s see where it takes us if we face up to the fact that climate
change highlights a profound systemic problem. Comparison with slavery or
the Blitz only masks the complexity of that problem in simplistic rhetoric.

Top of Message | Previous Page | Permalink

JiscMail Tools


RSS Feeds and Sharing


Advanced Options


Archives

April 2024
September 2022
May 2018
January 2018
September 2016
May 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
September 2015
August 2015
May 2015
March 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
July 2004


JiscMail is a Jisc service.

View our service policies at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/ and Jisc's privacy policy at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/website/privacy-notice

For help and support help@jisc.ac.uk

Secured by F-Secure Anti-Virus CataList Email List Search Powered by the LISTSERV Email List Manager