None of my friends and young people in the UK today, have experienced something like this, and NO I am not talking about the snowy weather, but the economic crisis. Having officially been labelled that we are in a down turn in our economy, and as the depression starts to hit our every day lives, will people really think about sustainability?
As people stock up and lock up the food cupbords with asda smart price, rationing at each dinner the amount of food we will consume, the electricity to cook it should take a downturn. As electricity bills are posted through the letter boxes, televisions and wii's will be switched off earlier, and the good old monopoly board will make an appearence on the family dinner table. All these bonuses will not only better famalies and society, back to hopefully eating together and being a whole family unit, but also living a more sustainable lifestyle.
If you asked an average family to get rid of the television box, of which their living room is centered around, they would appose strongly. But, re-visit them in 6, 9 or even 12 months, when they may be unemployed, they have morgatge re-payments in their ears, and they are already turning the tv off to save electricty, I imagine they will be happy to sell the tv to you! This only shows, that people in this current time, have not bothered about the actual environment issues they should have been. This could all change in the new era.
Going through a period where, you have to really work hard to get something and not just ask daddy, or put it on your credit card, will hopefully set people back to ways where simple is best. This may indeed help sustainable goals be meet in the near future, as people cut down on car journeys as they simple cant afford it, so they walk their children to school or get a public bus.
The current economic status will cause many bad situations and tough times, but I look forward to the future, where people have got out of bad habits and are living more sustainably. I hope that not only benefitting from a housing market that will crash, (so I can get on the property ladder after university) I will be able to walk to my local green grocers, post office, butchers, sweet shops and news agents to get most of my food shopping for the week. I hope that people will follow suit in this and therefore reduce the pollution of buying vegetables and meet from foriegn countries (at local supermarkets), which may be cheaper, but causing us ( as humans ) to live unsustainably. It would be great to see people, not having a family car, the wifes sports car, the fathers landrover and the old banger for their teenage son, in their drives, but one, maybe two more energy efficient cars. As people look to being more mean with what they purchase, they may be more mean with recycling, and take the time to seperate the plastic and the cardboard from the house hold waste.
All of these ideas that are streaming through my head like a fast flowing river, and may indeed be the effects of a recession. But, I hold some fear, that this idea of a near perfect sustainable way of living under taken by all, is just a huge bubble, that will burst, especially as times get hard.
I look forward to blogging after the economic crisis, and seeing whether sustainabilty goals are actually achieved.
References
The Four Key Areas of sustainable development indentified by the UK.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Environmentandgreenerliving/Thewiderenvironment/DG_069735
1 comment:
You raise a number of interesting issues here. Take another look at the marking criteria for this assignment - make sure that you are drawing upon a range of sources to support your blog (e.g. text-based reports, images, video/audio files).
Faith
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