Thursday 26 March 2015

Soil, close to my heart

 Soils are the farmers livelihood, their use is critical to the well being of mankind and as a farmer  , I firmly believe we have to , as the old cliche says, we are only custodians and we must protect the land for future generations , and even David Archer has found a new direction in this respect also.

I have been a Green advocate for a long time but have realised that I have not been able to join any grouping as they all fail in various ways in representing what we real need to do , if we are really to address the problem of not only climate change but of massive overuse of all the resources we have on the planet.

Sir, I respect you most highly  as one of a breed  who like me sees that there is not only one solution to be solved , indeed , there are a whole host of solutions to the host of problems we have.
To that end surely we need to address the problem from a completely different approach , and the recent ideas fro Bill Nc gibbon and Naomi Klein   in asking society at large to force the issue is a great step forward , but even this is not much help without a real target  to aim for.

The target surely to to enable all in society to take individual responsibility , whether they are individuals or within a business, they should all have the same aim  of reducing resource use and promoting all living ecosystems.

To enable each one of us to be able to partake in such a vision , I believe we must empower ourselves with the ability to take the right action as an everyday, indeed and every minute event. By this I mean we must let the individuals make the decisions about the the resources we choose to abuse or use wisely.

I firmly believe, to enable all this to happen, that is to revolutionise the tax system, It has been mooted for many years , to have a carbon tax or a resource tax , but they have never gone far enough in enabling each citizen to to equally take an active role through the way we live.
Only by taxing all Natural Resources at source  with a tax that represents the actual and potential damage these resources can cause on the planet's ecosystems and life systems, will we all be able to really understand how our consumption  habits directly affects the planet and future sustainability. This tax must replace all existing taxes , so that each individual has the same responsibilities and will also pay the true cost of the natural wealth they are consuming.

As has just been identified in the case of fossil fuels , that nobody wanted to ask what the true cost of all the damage they are causing to the planet and all the life systems upon it.

This is a mindset change for everyone , and will spawn a vast new era of thinking and action , which is the only way out of the muddle we are in , using mans genius rather than brawn.

The true cost of solar PV or wind power  etc has not really been calculated in terms of ecological costs  and with governments just print money with QE, Just exacerbates the problem and not make us take the real action necessary.

Mankind needs a hard cool look at what we are doing and the likes of the UN and world bank must start to rethink in a whole new direction  to enable us all to partake in the change we must make if we are to have a sustainable future for generations to come

It is the sheer size of the population in the world that is consuming ever more  for less and without constraint that lies at the heart of the problem.

The soils are dying , chemicals not only pollute the soil but kill off the microorganisms that are the soil. A soil without an active flora is dead and produces little.
The  soil is a filter of  contaminated water and air, it also is a store  of vital nutrients, carbon , nitrogen, water and a repository of old plant seeds.

"Long live the soil" man depends on it.




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