A ten year plan to save the planet
With dire planet warnings on a daily basis and politicians, the mass media, corporations, think tanks, scientists and academics all yelling at once on social and traditional media about ways to solve climate change, glaring inequality and all the other world’s problems (or, at best, most of them not caring at all; at worst, making things worse), it may as well fall to an international lottery to determine one winner to sort out the future of the planet. Otherwise no one will decide, and nothing improves, just endless discussion as nature gets decimated daily. (I genuinely fantasise about an eco-superhero coming to save the planet from climate change, loss of biodiversity, oil spills, corrupt politicians, etc – but then thought, the media (i.e. the Daily Mail) and politicians (i.e. Tories) would see him – actually, it would probably be a her – as public enemy number one.)
Let’s pretend I win the lottery and have to sort out the planet. As a pacifist I’m ignoring how 99% of my policies will be unpopular, and therefore how to enforce them.
Anyway, I have a radical but necessary plan to save earth. Politics, cars, technology (I can tell you for nothing right now AI is not the answer to anything), materialism, concrete, capitalism, growth, expansion, plastic, religion, money, education, borders, ownership – this is just the tip of the iceberg but all these man-made concepts are an illusion, terrible for the planet, and they all have to go, I’m afraid. I’m coming from the standpoint of pretty much everything created by humans in the world is wrong (except music, art, literature, film and photography). And that I think society is stupid.
I actually want to do all ten years at once, but even I’m realistic. These things take time, though time the planet doesn’t have. (In reality it will take hundreds of years to wean people off the habit of cars, shops, meat, dairy, crap TV, etc – the most tedious thing about humans is how easy they get hooked to boring, lazy habits. By which time, of course, it’s too late.)
YEAR ONE (Universal Basic Income)
Or should that be Year Fun? Universal Basic Income for everyone on the planet. This is to prepare people gently for what’s to come. The human population gets paid not to work, maybe even have a last holiday or two, and to decide where they want to live. Because what comes the following year is going to change everything.
So quit your crap job, leave your cheating partner, move away from your boring town. Or don’t. (I don’t necessarily advise moving to a paradise island if it means leaving your family and friends network; especially as a million other people might have the same idea.)
Everyone in the world will get paid a decent, living wage – in the UK, say, it would be £30K per annum – to travel wherever they want and decide on their home for life. Camborne or the Caribbean? Haiti or Hawaii? London or Louisiana? You can live anywhere; I’ll be abolishing passports, governments, politics and nations soon (this is so much fun maybe I’ll do it as a boardgame – a kind of anti-Monopoly – just in case it doesn’t happen in the real world).
If this feels like an easy year with no real change, let’s begin banning things – stuff like governments (I would rather just have an online voting system for policies and laws with no leaders, no political parties), police, guns, land ownership, the mass media, barbed wire, landmines, advertising, artificial grass and single-use plastics would be a good start.
YEAR TWO (Cars)
Most humans on the planet won’t like this. Vehicles, including cars, motorbikes, lorries, boats, trucks and aircraft (some exceptions; see below) – are all banned and production on all forms of transport immediately halted. Sorry. At least you’ve decided where you want to live, hopefully around like-minded people in a beautiful spot where everything you need is within walking distance (sort of like the 15-minute city concept). Because this is where you will live and work. Like people used to. If you’ve been lazy and stayed put or picked somewhere less than beautiful – well, you have the rest of your life to make it beautiful. Because you will be making positive changes in the world.
With the blissful lack of transport (think lockdown), workers who still want to work (though there’s no need to work in factory conditions as they still receive Universal Basic Income) can produce more efficient and eco-friendly kinds of transport. Bikes, of course, but I may allow other transport like canal boats and trams.
All car parks are turned into parks. You know, with trees.
YEAR THREE (Return of nature)
Nature vs man-made. Okay, we’re starting to get somewhere. It’s now illegal to cut down trees or destroy wildlife. And to start rewilding, growing fruit and vegetables locally. Cleansing the poisoned land, rivers and streams. Banning herbicides, pesticides and many, many other ‘forever chemicals’. Concepts such as litter, rubbish and general waste (it always seemed very specific to me) are banned. Nothing is wasted; it’s either recycled or, best of all, not used at all.
This is also when all pointless production stops – factories churning out plastic tat, clothes bad for the environment – in fact, a thousand things which are just pointless and harmful to people, animals and the planet. Consumerism and materialism is to decrease by 80%.
YEAR FOUR (Food and animals)
Look, I love meat too but murdering animals to eat them stops in year four. There are alternatives. This is the year when all living creatures have the same rights as humans. Pets, zoos, aquariums, dairy production, abattoirs, any kind of imprisoned bird or animal – they go free. A cow or sheep has as much personality as your precious cat or dog but you’d never eat your pet with roast potatoes, would you?
Fast food places - from McDonald’s to Subway – are all closed down (I know, all you’re really worrying about is the state of the economy. And growth. And tax. Let. It. All. Go.); they are terrible for the environment and one of the main reasons the rainforest is fast disappearing.
YEAR FIVE (Building and construction)
Building and construction is terrible for the environment. I must say I have been inspired by William Morris’s sci-fi novel News From Nowhere (which will obviously never be made into a film, being utopian not dystopian), where, “there is no private property, no big cities, no government, no authority, no monetary system, no marriage or divorce, no courts, no prisons, and no class systems”. People find pleasure in nature, roads are avenues of trees, there are no polluting factories.
The thing about growth is (even green growth) – it’s always got to grow. Things need to be built, goods and services need to be. The thing about saving the planet is the opposite – not only do we need to stop the building, goods and services; we need to reverse them.
So, all building and construction stops. That’s roads, houses, warehouses, shops, offices, the lot. Instead we renovate what we have; all the thousands of empty houses, offices and factories.
YEAR SIX (Banning/Learning proper skills)
You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve toyed with banning – alcohol, professional football, gyms, offices (potentially dangerous leaving 99.9% of the male population with nothing to do) – but what takes their place is so much more fun: actually learning new, useful skills that are good for the environment and the soul.
YEAR SEVEN (Drugs)
Have a break. And some fun. All drugs are made legal., thereby ending a century of corruption, crime and murder.
YEAR EIGHT (Capitalism and money)
You’ve had years to prepare for this so don’t say it’s come as a surprise – capitalism and money is banished. It’s just pernicious and pointless. Obsession with the economy and growth and led to environmental disaster.
YEAR NINE (Beautify!)
Arts and craft. I’m not the only one who equates beauty with happiness and well-being.
YEAR TEN (Population)
Population is another possibly thorny issue. If I were to impose any kind of rules around population control, I’d be accused of Mao, Pol Pot or Hitler-like genocide or sci-fi films like Logan’s Run where humans are terminated at age 30, but otherwise what are the alternatives? It would be great to ban humans, but it looks like they’re going to do that all by themselves. Hence this ten year plan.
I’m so torn with life – are people really happy with life as it is, the shit jobs, the terrible TV, football, gym, inequality, a holiday in Spain once a year, a family you’re stuck with, a crap job and worse friends, cars, roads, supermarkets, exploitation, technology, social media, the fucking Tories, the Daily Mail, really, really, is it all worth the expense of the planet? Is it really that satifying? All your petty aspirations to obtain the 5% of the population’s obscene wealth, their yachts and multiple houses around the globe. I mean, really, you wouldn’t give it all up for a completely different alternative that didn’t involve competition, money, work… everything that is actually meaningless in life.
More and more society just seems this stupid idea to make 95% of us work like dogs to support the moronic 5%. Work, media, government, it’s all just made up, a Matrix-like illusion. I dismiss, with a wave of my hand, hundreds of years of economic and political theory, and say let’s try something different, because everything so far has been crap.
World events have made it pretty plain change is needed: lockdown briefly showed us a world without cars and offices; inflated petrol prices showed us again that cars weren’t the answer; now huge energy bills are telling us to cut back. Then there’s floods and fires. We’re still not quite getting the message, even if the world is spelling things out for us pretty clearly: change your ways.
ALTERNATIVE CONCEPT
There are many, many ways to divide people, based on everything from race and politics to nationality and religion. But the biggest one for me is between the morons (usually the far right), and everyone else who is sensible and just. Well, let’s just split them up and give the far right their own continent where they can indulge in fascism and racism and troll each other, read the Daily Mail, worship morons like Trump and Musk and completely trash the environment. They get to call the continent whatever they want and design their own flag.
Previously on Barnflakes
• Every day we wake up and choose ugliness over beauty
• The Custodians
• Five years ago Boris was a climate change denier, a year ago he didn’t understand it; in a month he’s hosting a summit on it. Be afraid.
• Turning car parks into parks
• G7: all sett to destroy Carbis Bay
• The cult of personality vs. saving the planet
• Climate change crime scene
• Nature despair
• Instagram hasn’t heard of climate change
• Letters of complaint
• Notes on Extinciton Rebellion
• The world’s top ten biggest environmental problems (and how to solve them)
• Notes on dog poop bags
• Don’t blame us
• Aspire to be average
• Busy bein’ busy
• Blight of the plastic bag
• Water as it Oughta