Ah! Save the planet...yes

Well actually, no, not really. I haven't seen the programme yet but tonight Dr Ian Stewart is going to tell us* we needn't worry about the planet. It'll be fine, long after we have gone.
There's a trick, used in advertising a lot, where, if you aren't buying the product, the advertiser suggests that there's something really quite irrelevant that might benefit you if you did buy the product. Ah! You hadn't thought about how the latest electronic egg beater might improve your sex life had you! (I suggest you don't - in only one second I've had some slightly alarming thoughts on the subject).

Similarly, when concerned people realised that the masses weren't really getting properly anxious about spending the planets hoarded resources like water, and it's rich stores of water as if it were air, and it's precious air as if it were.....er...dust? Might be a goodish supply of that around in a year or fifty. Yes well, when they realised this, they leapt on a tried and tested bandwagon and pointed out that we might be hurting the 'planet'. I mean, like, the 'planet'. You know, the whole PLANET.
Don't you get it you morons they say (only a little more politely)? You might be hurting good ole Mummy EARTH. Well, like, Gaia then. Oh and all it's other little furry, scaly and chitinous denizons. Think about that!

Now, if you sneakily push a few thoughts about sexual desirableness in with whatever ideas you may ever have had about egg beaters (really, don't go there) it no doubt all wanders around inside your limbic** centres and fuzzily combines with ideas of happiness and comforting food and other nice comforting stuff and maybe a touch of evil and you might even look slightly differently at the next eggbeater you see. Especially if it's the battered old thing you've had hanging in the kitchen for 20 years and never use any more because let's face it, a fork works awfully well and is much easier to access. It isn't really an object that's at the centre of your universe. It's not part of the backbone of your existence. It doesn't really matter to the security of your Id. It barely relates to common sense especially after it's been treated to advertising slogans.

The planet though. That's quite important isn't it. Golly, should you be thinking of it as a sentient, nurturing, possibly exasperated, parental being whose feelings have been hurt by the way you've been taking it for granted. Perhaps you should get some kind of image in your mind of a big, sore, angry Mommy getting fed up with the way the kids are behaving.
Or maybe you should be taking a parental, caretakerly view of your responsibilities and add the whole world to those responsibilities (along with the kids, the dog, the car, the spouse, the house, the mortgage, the shopping, and great old traditions of your country). Maybe you should be suffering empathically with the ground under your feet, Buddha-like. In fact maybe it really is time you learnt to walk on water or at least levitate a bit by meditating and purifying your grubby mind of daily mundanities and distractions.

Hmm, already you can see why selling sensible conservation as sentient-planet-saving isn't going to work on a global scale. Who needs to add the whole world to their emotional baggage? Only those who harbour no resentments against Mommy, who already shoulder responsibility willingly or who are already enlightened enough to float.

A good few SF writers have taken the sentient planet idea and run with it to marvellous places far out of time and mind. Sensibly most of them started somewhere pretty far away..at least in another galaxy or under another sun. For the fact is, if you look at the ground under your feet, common sense will tell you it's not hurt by your trampling. Experience will tell you that it's bigger than you are by a very generous margin. If something goes wrong with the way it's arranged, you might get buried. It will stay on top. Cities built on rock may fall, but the rock will still be rock. Cities built on sand or water may...probably will...sink. But when they're gone there will still be sand and water. Grass may die, potatoes may blight and brassicas may succumb to fungal infections but something else will grow. Probably not something you would like to eat but something will eat it.

My point is, it's not time to worry about the future of earth. It's time to worry about us. Puny and insignificant though we may be in the cosmic scale of things, we still want somewhere to live. Preferably a place where eating, drinking and breathing without soul destroying effort can still be organised. Preferably a place with space in it for caring about each other and understanding something other than the sheer difficulty of staying alive. Perhaps even a place where art and sport and play can flourish. Somewhere that the ideas of a philosopher can be as valuable as those of whoever gets the dinner in and keeps the cold out.

It seems to me that if you want to prod the people into living more sensibly, there's no point in using a worn out advertising technique to disguise the problem as one in which the Earth needs to be saved. I say we need to go the same route we went during the cold war...scare people rigid with the truth. Oh and tell them how to build an ice age shelter under the dining table and give out instructions on how to build a biosphere out of plastic containers, safety pins and sellotape. That'll make them think twice.

Oh and on a lighter, but delightful note, I'm just re-reading "Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin. It's very good. I'd forgotten how good it was. I bought it in a 'withdrawn from stock' sale at the library a few years ago. There's a horse, a foundling, set adrift in a model boat, gangsters, a love story, with Manhattan as both backdrop and central character. All writ large and lyrical in glorious technicolour. The characters glow. It's too rich and colourful to seem real but too detailed and intricate to be imaginary. Yet, clearly and brightly, it's both.
There's also a very funny exchange between the author and a fan here. After the synopsis for another of his novels. I think I'll try and get hold of that one too.

*Earth:The Power of the Planet, tonight @ 9pm on Beeb2. I watched it. It was very good and he made the point much more succinctly than I did. However, he had to squeeze it into the last five minutes while standing on top of a rather splendid ruin in the middle of a South American forest on a mountain top whereas I had to fill up a whole post :)
**Not sure about limbic. Maybe some other part of the brain? Any suggestions?

Possibly I ought to admit that my contribution so far to saving us amounts to recycling paper and cans, grudgingly composting veg waste (cos it's a long way to the compost bin on a cold wet morning) and ranting occasionally. Oh and gradually replacing lightbulbs with the low energy kind. Well I try and turn stuff off as well. And sometimes I coast down hills instead of using the engine...it's absolutely amazing how much petrol you can save like that. Also amazing how far you can travel without using the engine if you don't mind going very very slowly now and then.

Now there's an energy saving gadget they could install in cars. A governor which puts the clutch in neutral every time the car is pointing down hill.