Shan Oakes

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

All is Lost

With a title like ‘All is lost’, one might expect a story about the big issues facing us now, and this is what it is – in sharp and ironic contrast to the preceding inane ads for cars, hair products and the like.

This new film is written and directed by J C Chandor, writer of the screenplay and director of the Wall Street thriller ‘Margin Call’. ‘ All is Lost’ is set in a very different context: it’s about a lone yachtsman, brilliantly played by Robert Redford, and it has you clutching your seat all the way through. You live the terrifying and extremely challenging experience resulting from your boat being holed by a stray container in the middle of the vast horizons of the Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles from land.

It seems to me significant that the offending container is spewing out trainers – a symbol of globalized addictive materialism - and, later on, the crippled yacht is almost run down by a container ship with its mountainous cargo of ‘goods’.

Without revealing the ending, the story can certainly be seen as a metaphor for the plight of mankind, struggling against incredible odds to get planet Earth back on course to a sustainable future. In fact the ending can be interpreted differently depending on your worldview: are you hopeful or hopeless?

As a Green, I’m hopeful that we could eventually pull things round. If there was no hope, why would I bother? Am I being unrealistically optimistic in the face of very high odds against, considering the monumental mess we continue to make of our planet? All I know is that if we don’t have hope that we can get back on course, we won’t make it. But it will need us all to do our bit - even if that’s only in how we vote. It’s clear from various polls that more and more people now support green policy, and businesses are vying to become more ethical due to public demand, so the arguments have largely been won - but we need to put our votes where our hearts are if we are to get the policies in place which will rescue us from the increasingly likely world shipwreck.

There are European elections in May, so I’m hoping that 2014 is the year the boat will finally swing round to get the wind in the sails of public opinion to take us in the direction of hope and away from fear, greed and rampant materialism.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Green Tories ? - an oxymoron

Letter to Beverley Guardian

Dear sir

I wonder if our local Tory MP, Graham Stuart, was one of the group questioning the Prime Minister on his lack of commitment to green policies? I have asked him, but somehow I doubt it. Perhaps he would like to let the readers of this paper know where he stands on this crucial issue.

Whether David Cameron actually used the words ‘green crap’ or not, that phrase sums up what is now quite clear: his complete U-turn on aspiring to be ‘the greenest government ever’. He is utterly dismissive about real green issues and the radical agenda that is so desperately needed now. In the face of climate change, and devastation of nature and communities on an unparalleled global scale, he can think only in terms of what suits the corporations which fund the Tories (and cause the devastation) – resulting in our being stuck in the same old paradigm of fossil fuels, fracking, more and more cars on more and bigger roads, stupidly fast trains cutting swathes through the countryside for a few minutes’ saving on journey time (does the frantic rat-race really need yet more speed?), factory-style agriculture which kills the soil and soaks the land and water supplies with chemicals which end up in our bodies, selling off our public services like the NHS and schools, blaming the poor and vulnerable for the crimes of City bankers and corporate tax dodgers - not to mention promoting sales of arms worldwide - often to regimes which use them on their own citizens.

The only way out of this economic , social and environmental mess is through REAL progress: a transformation of the economy through a transformation of our values - and that needs political leadership. The Greens work for this on a European and global level. We need modernisation and sustainability in the best sense: millions of new jobs improving all our buildings to insulate them properly against the cold, a determined push for all the varieties of renewable energy, better integrated public transport and urban cycling strategies ( like they have in places like Copenhagen), promotion of local foods and local communities and excellent public services.

This, though, takes vision and political courage – something which is in very short supply in all the (almost indistinguishable) puppet political parties who dance to the corporate tune of ‘growth’ on our small and finite planet.