Puzzlement - when action seems to fly in the face of logic

I'm having a confusing morning this morning as I sit in bed listening to the news of the latest Climate Action protests. By now I hope it's nice and clear where I stand on the need for change, the need for us all to do whatever we can to make changes and improve the future. As part of that need I obviously support the right to protest, demonstrate and march, to create beautiful protests like the one Jackie Morris and other artists and writers, poets and performers are coming together and using to remind us why we need to change, what we are trying to protect and the right to point out as effectively as we can that companies, corporates, government and all the individuals that make up society need to make changes. And yet today's targets for the Extinction Rebellion protests seem incongruous with the messages we are all trying to send to folk who have yet to come on board for whatever reason. And, terrifyingly to me, judging by a lot of the reactions I'm hearing and reading on social media they have the potential to have the exact opposite effect to the one we need. To alienate not to persuade, to close people's ears, minds and hearts and destroy the good work of thousands of small local groups and individuals who work tirelessly in their communities to demonstrate the changes that people CAN do..

An efficient, clean, reliable mass transport system has to be the cornerstone to any country's response to cleaning up the air and environment as a whole. People need to be able to get around and the need to do it consistently and safely and know they are going to get where they need to be, when they need to be there and if, by shutting down the very networks that currently do that (more or less) then what are all those folk going to do? They are going to shift to personal transport - to cars and vans that they feel they have control over, to planes that will get them to that meeting in Scotland when they have to be back in London or Manchester or Newcastle that evening, to going backwards and point blank refusing to make any changes to their behaviour. I'm also puzzled when those same protesters start to damage infrastructure and destroy things - things that will then need to use finite resources to fix. I fear a backlash from the current actions and that, in my view, should worry us all...

But what can little old me do....

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the headlines and soundbites around the climate emergency and the attempt to paint small actions as inadequate, ineffective, "not enough". It makes people feel helpless, hopeless and dangerously, gives us permission to bury our heads in the sand and say what's the point? I might as well carry on as I am, after all "they" say it won't be enough and doing or not doing that thing will involve a change, a bit of effort, not doing something I like doing as often as I want to, learning or trying something new and could be a bit scary or different and I'm already busy/tired/poorly/struggling to make ends meet enough as it is....

After all one person not using peat in their gardens isn't going to save all the planet's peat bogs, one person not using herbicides and pesticides isn't going to protect all the soils and lives of all the creatures that depend on the micro-organisms that live within it, one person switching to a re-usable cup and water bottle isn't going to stop the production and dumping of plastics in our ocean, one person switching to the bus rather than driving to work isn't going to suddenly result in improved air quality in all our towns, one person taking the train from London to Scotland instead of flying isn't going to stop that plane taking off and... you get the picture.

But what, for me, is getting lost in all this is the multiplier effect - whether deliberately or just plain ignorantly our media and vested interests are feeding us a line that we just might not be able to make enough of a difference by our own behaviour, that dangerous implication that maybe just maybe we therefore shouldn't bother even trying. And yes, I know there is a danger here of my sounding like a completely paranoid conspiracy theorist but that doesn't change the facts that folk with money and livelihoods at stake will always try to influence the outcome of an argument in their immediate favour - apart from anything else that's human nature - what's in it for me? how will I benefit? immediate self-preservation - it's just what humans do.

However, all these "it's not enoughs" ignore a vital fact, no matter our creed, colour, gender, age, location, beliefs, education, income or any other characteristic we like to label and pigeon-hole each other with, we are a society, a collective of people who share this planet and hold the key to our own survival - the planet will exist whatever we do, it won't be the same but it will be here, it's our species and the other creatures that suffer from our choices and actions, it's our children who struggle to breathe on their way to school, our watercourses that are getting clogged up with poisons, soil run-off and rubbish of all kinds, our food-chain that has been contaminated with plastics and poisons... we have been and still are doing this to ourselves by our own small, cumulative actions and in-actions over centuries and now that we actually understand what is happening and can even see it with our own eyes, feel it with our own breath and know that things can be different if we want them to be, surely it just makes sense that we make whatever small choices or changes we can just on the off-chance that it starts to improve things for everyone...