{"id":6317,"date":"2015-05-08T08:53:27","date_gmt":"2015-05-08T08:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6317"},"modified":"2015-05-08T08:53:27","modified_gmt":"2015-05-08T08:53:27","slug":"a-poor-election-campaign-for-environmental-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/05\/08\/a-poor-election-campaign-for-environmental-consciousness\/","title":{"rendered":"A poor election campaign for environmental consciousness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Wednesday's\u00a0Guardian, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2015\/may\/05\/how-to-break-the-political-silence-on-the-environment\">Tom Burke<\/a> commented on the contrast between the large membership of environment-focused organisations in the UK (4.5 million members, 13% of the population: 10 times as many supporters as all the political parties combined) and the near silence in the election campaign about environmental issues (which I commented on <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/05\/07\/more-manifesto-reading\/\">yesterday<\/a>). \u00a0He concludes it's \"our fault\". \u00a0He also contrasts the strong focus on the NHS (sorry,\u00a0<em>\"our NHS\")\u00a0<\/em>with the weak one on environment, and makes this point:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u00a0\"...\u00a0air pollution costs the NHS \u00a315bn a year. \u00a0This is more than obesity and alcoholism combined and enough to keep the NHS viable well into the future. \u00a0Successive British governments have ignored European air quality regulations they have agreed to with impunity, so these costs are growing not falling.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Do we, I wonder expect environmental NGOs to do our protesting for us? \u00a0If so, we may well be expecting too much as they are, of course, constrained by their not having to be too 'political'. \u00a0The NHS contrast is informative, I think. \u00a0That system is geared up to dealing (or not) with problems once they have occurred, and so the vast bulk of funding goes to hospitals. \u00a0We seem to think of many environmental issues in the same way with prevention seen as more costly than dealing with after effects.<\/p>\n<p>Or is it that our own and family health is just more important to us than the health of the environment? \u00a0More existential, perhaps? \u00a0More immediate, certainly. \u00a0Is this a legacy of the\u00a0psychological separation of ourselves from nature?<\/p>\n<p>I now\u00a0have a new MP; my resolution is to write to her at least once a month asking about sustainability (and learning) issues.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Wednesday's\u00a0Guardian, Tom Burke commented on the contrast between the large membership of environment-focused organisations in the UK (4.5 million members, 13% of the population: 10 times as many supporters as all the political parties combined) and the near silence...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}