– if we don’t stop behaving the way we are, life for our species is going to end.

Before you say anything, yes I have already written about this, but obviously failed to explain it clearly enough, because still no-one seems to think there is a problem.

What I am talking about is the impending apocalypse our species is facing. Because even if there aren’t many obvious signs out there, there are certainly plenty elsewhere.

Ask any illegal immigrant if they think the world is coming to an end. The fact that there are so many now, prepared to leave their homes and family, risking death or deportation, should be enough to convince you the places they are escaping from aren’t doing so well right now.

I can see the signs. But then I grew up in London in the 1950s, which is not only a long time ago but a very different place, so I have seen many changes. Most of the things we take for granted now didn’t exist then. People were also a lot poorer. On top of all this World War II was still fresh in everyone’s minds, with plenty of physical evidence in the shape of derelict bomb sites.

There were also a lot less people and it was much smaller. Quieter and safer too, as well as greener, surrounded as it was then by what I call far more real countryside, something that has long gone in the UK.

People survived the horrors of that war by helping each other and looking out for those less fortunate. There was still a true sense of community, reliance. They also had learnt how to trust in their own judgement. Women, for the first time, were needed to do jobs that had previously been reserved for men. It was generally a far better time to grow up in, despite what people today would think of all the things we didn’t have.

Then it all came to a sudden end, when the government decided to embark on a programme of making Britain great again.

The result of this, proving to be even more catastrophic than all the destruction combined of two World Wars. With births soaring exponentially*, and the surrounding countryside given over for commercial development. Suddenly everyone wanted new and there were provided:

airports (& parking)

art centres (& parking)

botanical gardens (& parking)

breweries & distilleries

call centres

campsites & caravan parks (& parking)

churches (& parking)

cinemas (& parking)

container ships

crofts

cruise ships

factories

farms (utilising more of the land, using more toxic chemicals, and intensive indoor rearing)

fish farms

gardens

garden centres (& parking)

gas plants

golf courses (& parking)

graveyards

holiday complexes (& parking)

holiday parks (& parking)

homes

hospitals (& parking)

hotels (& parking)

hydroelectric dams

incinerators

industrial estates (& parking)

landfill

leisure centres (& parking)

local & national government offices

(& parking)

military installations

mines & quarries

mobile phone masts

motorway service areas & truck-stops

(& parking)

motorways

multi-storey car parking

museums (& parking)

nuclear power stations

offices (& parking)

oil rigs

oil terminals & refineries

oil-fired & gas-fired power stations

out of town retail parks (& parking)

parcel depots

parks

petrol stations

plantations

ports and deep harbours (& parking)

prisons & detention centres (& parking)

pubs (& parking)

pylons

railways (& parking)

racetracks

reservoirs

resorts (& parking)

restaurants

retirement villages (& parking)

roads

rocket launch sites

schools (& parking)

sewage & water treatment plants

shipyards

shops

smallholdings

solar farms

stadiums (& parking), sports pitches

(& parking)

storage units

theme parks (& parking)

universities & colleges (& parking)

wind farms

zoos (& parking)

…and a whole load more.

This pace of development didn’t stop either, in fact it not only continues unabated today, but has accelerated. And while most people consider themselves a lot better off, particularly those who benefitted from all the construction work, there was also a knock-on effect nobody would have predicted.

Encouraging everyone to have more children meant that the rate of development had to keep up with the demand. This in turn required more land and more materials.

The latter were sourced mainly from elsewhere (third-world countries), which is why most of us are not aware of the social and environmental cost this causes when we buy anything, it’s all done nicely out-of-sight-out-of-mind. At the same time, building on our surrounding countryside has been consider a good thing because there is so much of it.

Except what we aren’t aware of, is all those third-world countries we have been exploiting for so long, are now so polluted and damaged that normal life for those people has become almost impossible. Hence the rise in migrants. Whilst here in the UK, by building on what was actually pristine ecology, we have wiped out all its natural diversity, that unique coexistence of habitats and species, the complex interconnectedness that had until then been integral to the greater whole, the global organism that provides every living thing with the means to exist (ie air to breathe, water to drink and food to nourish).

If all that weren’t bad enough, this has been happening throughout the world.

It gets worse. At the same time, those of us in the more affluent countries have been getting progressively richer (in the UK, we now have four and a half times the spending power we did in 1970). Which has in turn made us feel entitled to spend all that wealth, adding to the speed of the destructive effect this has on the global environment.

To put all this into some kind of easy to understand perspective, land use for development in the UK (and its surrounding seas), since 1970, has wiped out 41% of the birds, amphibians, fish, land & sea mammals, reptiles, plants and fungi, that previously existed here. In just 55 years out of the millions we as a species have existed.

While in Shetland that figure is even higher. Shetland, where life until much more recently was still small remote close-knit rural settlements. A pace of life that hadn’t changed particularly over centuries. Where few people owned cars so didn’t travel. There was no intensive agriculture. And electricity didn’t fully arrive (on all the islands) until 1967. Then in the 1970s everything changed. When a massive oil plant was built here, and ever since then the local politicians have been rushing to exploit any other part of its natural resources for their financial gain. The result is Shetland now has only a fraction of its once abundant wildlife.

So dire is Shetland’s situation, that in the last 12 months eleven of the remainingbird species have seen their populations fall by48%. Total extinction for the rest is not far away.

Yet, unbelievably, most people still are totally unaware of any of this. The speed of change has grown so fast they simply have to absorb it, and forget how things used to be, or be left behind, so they no longer see the effects it is having on their surroundings. They certainly haven’t noticed (or care) that life has become so precarious it is about to collapse, or that everywhere is rapidly turning into one big endless urbanisation like anywhere else.

So how do we get people to see what is happening before it is too late? How do we get them to think for themselves again? Start working together to change things?

And here is the bit you’ve been waiting for. It’s simple. Encourage them to stop having children. It’s not rocket science. The more children that are born, and the richer they become, the more resources they are going want. Forget all these new solutions we’re being fed, like renewables and green technology. They are just political/ business tricks to take our eye off what is really happening. Climate change and global extinction are real, and they are happening because we have been encouraged to have too many children. Who in turn are consuming the habitat and other species which every living thing depends on for life.

You can’t eat money.

#stopbuildingonthecountryside

#choosetobechildfree

#YouCan’tEatMoney

* the number of people living in the UK

grew by 56% during the lifetime of my

parents.

*

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