how green is my garden

Reducing carbon emissions and climate change still occupy the news here. Virus transmission, world trade impacts and the teetering state of the economy take up much of the rest of the news with family violence also rearing its ugly head. 

I’m reduced to tears – odd phrase that – my eyes well up, I’m not alone, there being plenty of cause for sorrow. 

And the prevailing mood is ‘Do something, take action, demand change.’ That’s not the only mood. For those struggling to survive each day, perhaps don’t have the luxury of time to investigate what it is the experts say. 

I’ve had that time to investigate ‘where the money comes from and to whom it flows’ and why the Federal Reserve, notwithstanding its Government sounding name, is privately owned. 

Why isn’t this general knowledge when ‘privately owned’ absolutely matters, printing money out of thin air, quaintly called Quantitative Easing, is the equivalent of the banker, in the game of monopoly, having a secret stash under the table. 

Make what you will of that – Empires aren’t too big to fail yet our banks have some Satanic Blessing? 

And that leads on to a cashless society where every transaction is recorded, negative interest rates come into being and you can’t withdraw your cash in protest because there is no cash. 

In his sometimes succinct manner, my musical friend Cliff remarks 

“We learnt at school that plants breathe in the carbon dioxide and breathe out the oxygen which we then breathe. More carbon dioxide would green the planet.” 

I can’t argue with that just as I couldn’t argue with a couple of coal miners who took exception when I walked into their pub with a ‘No coal seam fracking’ slogan on my guitar case. 

They weren’t belligerent, I think they were fed up with feeling as though they have to continually justify their existence while the power we consume comes, largely from their efforts. 

I come from the valleys of South Wales. I’m familiar with coal. There are different varieties and some give off more noxious fumes than others. If we hadn’t used it for heating we’d have died of cold. 

Times change, human needs don’t. 

I explain to the miners that I’m not ‘against coal’ but that fracking is an obscenity. Yes, a coal mine, by its nature, is a messy business with some pollution inevitable but I’m not aware of the dangers to aquifers which fracking entails. 

Fracking doesn’t use ‘waste water,’ it uses chemically laden liquid, delivered under high pressure which, in turns, smashes the ground and must, in that process, compromise the aquifers upon which we depend. 

An apology cannot put this right. By comparison, coal is a Godsend. 

Our Prime Minister, slow to get ‘on board’ with climate change, grins at the camera as he heartily endorses smashing up the very ground on which we stand to get the ‘clean, green energy’ locked up below. 

‘Climate change’ is a slogan used like a school yard taunt, 

“D’yer believe in climate change or not!” 

Phew. Strange thing is, that there is a changing climate.