Being green is still a priority

With new year’s resolutions being made and most likely already broken, one thing’s for sure, ‘going green’ won’t be at the top of many people’s lists

We are a nation of fads and fashions, not simply those that grace the cover of Vogue magazine but also our tabloids and broadsheets. Climate change saw its heyday in 2006 and 2007 with the release of Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and a whole host of other celebrities advocating sustainable living. While the next year saw leading politicians embrace the issue with equal fervour. Angela Merkel was dubbed the ‘climate chancellor’ by German press, whilst our very own Tony Blair likened the cause of climate change to fascism in its need to be tackled.

Promises were made to cut the world’s carbon footprint and more pictures of polar bears surrounded by melting ice caps hit the news desk. Now it seems that green politics has fallen from its lofty heights. Barack Obama came to power in 2008 promising to make combating global warming his top priority as president, endeavouring to enact a cap and trade system to reduce carbon emissions and develop renewable energy resources. However, such plans of investment were noticeably absent from his most recent State of the Union address, leading one to believe it has been altogether dropped from his ‘to do list’.

As with anything that becomes a trend, it inevitability subsides as other problems become more prevalent. 2011 was besieged by phone hacking scandals and Middle Eastern unrest and thus there were bigger problems bombarding David Cameron’s silver plate. The irony being that all trends are recycled. In a few years time we might ourselves once again voting for leaders on a platform of cutting emissions and protecting the environment, but whilst climate change isn’t exactly a new or particularly current issue, we should still care. Like the type of living environmental enthusiasts aim to promote, this is a cause to be sustained, rather than dropped liked the political hot potato is has become. It is still very much a reality that we should not discard like the Christmas trees that briefly dominate our living rooms and then no longer have a place there. As demonstrated by our mildest December ever and even more shockingly the recent tsunami in Japan the effects of global warming haven’t tired, so why should our interest in them?

Tackling climate change however, appeared to be not quite as clear cut and straightforward as initially perceived be. It’s all very well promising to cut carbon emissions 60% by 2050, but when Presidents such as Obama or Australia’s Kevin Rudd fail to deliver the goods, the public no doubt loses faith and moves on. The new health-care reform in America caused enough controversy to last perhaps all of Obama’s first term, meaning it’s unlikely he’ll risk being voted in for a second term by backing such an unpredictable and unpopular crusade as global warming. Similarly successive financial crises in Europe and seemingly never-ending budget cuts have taken the attention away from climate change and made ‘green’ legislation appear indulgent and unaffordable. An economic burden rather than a necessity.

And yet it’s now that the environment needs our help more than ever. In The Guardian’s Environment World Review of 2011 it has been reported that “greenhouse gases rose to record levels”, whilst both natural and nuclear disasters hit the headlines. Just as awareness and interest in ‘saving the environment’ appears to be at an all-time low, sea levels and temperatures only continue to rise. Instead of letting our attitudes change as erratically as the weather, why not make your new year’s resolution to make good on the promises our political leaders could not. Promote pedal power. Keep turning off those lights. Recycle. It may not be news grabbing, but the more consistent we are in our efforts the easier it will become to make a difference. And just think, you’re saving money at the same time and thus tackling both climate change and economic recession, something Cameron, Clegg and their incompetent counterparts are clearly incapable of doing.