WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL ABOUT ENERGY

The big deal is that we are drunk with energy lust. It has gone, like a good claret will go, to our heads. It has allowed us to sit and indulge our every whim without a care for the planet and its essential ecosystems we all depend upon. It has encouraged us to to fell forests and drain the swamps which were the very source of our good fortune in the first place. It has handed us chemical - dependant agricultural systems which expend ten calories of energy to grow and transport to the markets a single calorie of food. It has given us cheap intercontinental flights that are destroying the atmosphere. It has given us the technology to fish out whole oceans of fish stocks, pushing some of our very best food species to the verge of extinction. It has trained foresters to view trees only as crops of fibre, forgetting that a mature tree is giving back more to the soils and the environment around it than it takes. Their blinkered view of a forest as a harvestable commodity for quick profit over-looks the energy cycle we are talking about- the trees ability to transfer the combined energy of sun and rain into global maintenance and long-term stability.

The big deal is that for over two hundred years we have consumed our fossil energy bonanza without a thought for the side effects of air pollution,of carbon emissions, of heavy metals, of toxic chemicals or the impact they may be having on the ecosystems of the globe and all the wildlife we profess to love.

The big deal is that unless we wake up and pay attention to what we are doing, your children and your grandchildren are certain to inherit an appalling mess.

This is an extract from a book by Sir John Lister-Kaye..... At The Waters Edge.

Although not a boating subject I thought it pertinent to included in my blog as it reflects the same thoughts on the subject as mine.