Like many people I have been concerned with the damage the human race is inflicting on our planet for a long time now. Now, the daily bombardment in the media is such that no one can really say they don’t know about the issue. But there are several things that bother me about the impact of the current message being pumped out.

First, although the case for the climate change deniers seems increasingly flimsy there is still a significant number of people who think that the prognosis for disaster has been exaggerated. A recent poll saw that some 60%+ felt this way. So these people are presumably less likely to take any personal action to limit their environmental impact.

Second, there seems to be a view that even if one is responsible for churning out huge amounts of carbon emissions you can make it all better by just paying into a carbon offset scheme – the environmental equivalent of a confessional with a priest! Such schemes have been recently under scrutiny and most of them are seriously flawed – even to the extent that they seem fraudulent to me.

What none of this appears to address is the undeniable fact that we’re living on a planet with finite resources. Unless we slow down our consumption the oil will run out pretty soon and other precious resources will become exhausted. We need to move from a message that simply bangs on about how we can limit the worst effects of climate change to one that talks about sustainability. The two are inextricably linked but no one’s really talking about the second issue. We have to buy less crap and wean ourselves off this stupid notion of retail therapy. One of the reasons that China is opening so many new power stations is because we, in the west, are hooked on all the electronic gizmos and gadgets that the Chinese produce.

So next time you’re browsing around the shops or surfing the Net for more things to buy just ask yourself ‘Do I really need this?’ and ‘Will I really feel better if I have it?’

I think we have to scale down our obsession with material goods or we’ll be facing up to living in a pre-industrial society sooner than any of us want.

Am I going over the top on this?