Gaia Today - Scott Irvine
There is no doubt that the Earth is sick. She is suffering under the strain of human activity eating into her flesh like a cancer for the purpose of power and wealth. With the successful extraction and refinement of crude oil into petrol and diesel, the motor industry was born in the late 19th Century. The internal combustion engine changed the world forever. Cars, vans, lorries and motorbikes flew off the production line in their thousands each week. Ships and planes followed adding to the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere polluting the air, land and sea. As I have already mentioned, there is profit in war and production of transport and weapons increased tenfold to fight two world wars that made handsome profit for the business and factory owners while the working class men fought and died for their country. During the Second World War, the world entered the atomic age with Japan feeling the full power of two nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war in the Pacific. Pollution from sunken ships contaminated the sea, shot down planes wrecked the countryside and bombs demolished cities and towns. Chemical weapons destroyed lives while Gaia could only watch and grimace from her enforced imprisonment. Surly it could not get any worse for Mother Earth. Most of the world rejoiced at the end of World War II, well those on the winning side at least once the realisation that many loved ones were never coming home or were severely disabled.
Peace opened the door to new commercial opportunities for those who had become wealthy by the war. Factories that had been manufacturing weapons for war were now free to produce luxury goods to a new generation with a disposable income now there were more jobs than workers to fill them. It was a good time to be alive for the victors. The resources for new transport, washing machines, fridges, cookers and televisions were mined without a thought for the cost of the environment. The admen began to convince the population of things they wanted that would stand them out in their neighbourhood. Nobody wanted to be ordinary or average anymore. Transport got faster and evolved exponentially so that renewal became the normal thing after just a few years. Tarmac soon covered the landscape, networking all the villages and cities for trade to expand into every residence in the country. Technology progress furthered the destruction of Gaia even more with the advancement of electronics in the 70’s and 80’s.
The rise of the Japanese motorbike in the late 70’s threatened the superiority of the British bike. The Jap bikes were quick, reliable and didn’t leak oil but handled like a sack of potatoes. Most of the bike gang I was in had Triumph’s, Norton’s and BSA’s which enabled us to become competent mechanics to keep them on the road. Any part needed to repair them could be bought cheaply over the counter making maintenance straight forward and simple. Spare parts could be easily purchased even for bikes that were no longer manufactured with one part interchangeable with the other makes. My friend Rich bought a Triumph Trident, a triple cylinder 750cc that was supposed to be the flagship and future for British manufacturing. It came with an electric start and electronic ignition that done away with the points. It meant no more cleaning and readjusting the gap every time a long journey was planned. Unfortunately, for Rich, the electronic ignition would always stop working whenever he tried to leave Dorset. It was fine just thundering around town, but anything more, The Triumph would lose its spark and there was nothing anyone could do about it, and just as mysteriously, the spark would return without any human interference. Rich then traded it in for a Kawasaki Z1 1000cc four-cylinder Jap superbike. It always left us standing on the straights but we always caught up at corners.
A decade later when the handling had improved, I bought a Yamaha XT 500cc single cylinder adventure bike. It was a beast of a bike that was liable to break your foot if you kicked it over wrong and it kicked back! One day, someone stole the rear light/brake lens, a bit of clear red plastic, which cost less than £5 to replace on a British bike. I found to my disgust that I could not just buy the lens but had to purchase the complete back light unit at a cost for £65. It was the same for most popular Japanese bikes. I fared no better at the breakers with Japanese rear lenses as rare as an Ereshkigal smile. Even if I bought a new unit, there was no guarantee that the lens would not be stolen again so I replaced the complete unit with a new one for a BSA for £25. The old unit without a lens was only fit for scrap.
A further decade on in the 90’s, I was working as a machinist in an engineering factory that made autopilots for luxury yachts. When needed, I would help with the assembly of the units. At its heart was the electronics, which was covered in a hard resin to stop anyone tampering with it. Why would anyone want to tamper with the electronics? When I pushed for a truthful answer, I found out that one of the components had a life span of around five years and the resin was to stop anyone fixing it and having to buy a whole new autopilot.
These are just a few of my own experiences with the bad side of consumerism. Times this by several million for almost all electronic devices since the 90’s and you can start to understand why the amount of waste is piling up across the planet, just for the sake of profit. Rather than being able to repair something easily and cheaply, we have been forced into being a throwaway society in the name of ‘good business’ called capitalism.
My first camera was a Single Lens Reflex (SLR) Zenith. It was old when I got it in the 80’s. It was solid and never let me down. I would have to check the built in light meter and adjust the shutter speed and aperture accordingly. It took time but it gave me an understanding of the connection between light and exposure. You were literally painting with light. The process slowed life down, giving me time to think and assess my surroundings and options. You could take your time back then, move at your own pace with no one pressurising to get the job done now, or in many cases, done yesterday. Plants grow at their own pace depending on the soil, water and sunlight. Fertilizer can speed things up, a kind of steroid for plants, but even then, it would only give what it could and nothing more. It was not punished if it didn’t bloom as well as its companions, or shunned, or deprived of anything if it was not seen as ‘perfect’. It just did its best. It is what it is, it is nature, it is Earth spirit, and it is natural.
Technology has bought us digital cameras, which has taken away the skill of the photographer. Point and shoot, delete the rubbish ones and enhance the good ones on the computer. I have had five new digital cameras over the past ten years having to replace them because an electronic component has broken down and the cost of repair makes it worth buying a new camera. I still have the Zenith and it works as well as it did forty years ago. The same can be said for laptops, which I have had to replace three times in the past ten years and have had seven mobile phones in the last twenty years. Nothing is built to last or be repaired anymore. Everything is disposable, adding to the massive pile of trash that ends up in landfill creating methane gas for a generation or two making the land useful only for new housing estates or shopping centres. New builds have been rising everywhere with the need of homes for rising populations, despite many becoming second homes and holiday lets, especially where I live in Dorset, people will always need somewhere to live. Where soil absorbs the rain and floodwater, concrete forces water to its lowest point causing floods in areas that never used to.
I used to work for a company that created gardens for new builds, turfing, planting shrubs and hedges and in some cases, trees. Many places we worked were on flood plains but no one seemed to care. Once the garden was finished, it was signed off and our responsibility for it ended. It was the same when the new house was finished, it was signed off and the obligation of the building contractor was ended too. Without continued maintenance, the gardens would die before the new owner had moved in through lack of watering in the summer months while we watched it happen from another part of the building site. Seeing our hard work die needlessly because of lack of water was heart-breaking and threatened with trespass if I tried to water the garden myself. I felt as if the world had gone mad! I found out that this policy created more work for our company when the new owners needed a new garden constructed. Profit is paramount to the big corporations whatever they produce. The shareholders have to be paid and the CEO’s need to keep their luxury yachts in autopilots.
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One of the biggest threats we have today is climate change. Many scientists tell us that it is manmade, accumulating since the industrial revolution a mere 260 years ago. The planet is warming up at an alarming rate we are informed on a daily basis. It will be the end of the world as we know it if the temperature rises more than 2°C and nothing is done about it. Yet when the Romans conquered England the Earth was 2°C warmer than it is now with evidence through archaeological digs and research of vineyards as far north as Hull. During the Mesolithic Age it has been discovered through ancient pollen and bugs, macro fossils found at archaeological sites that the planet was 2°C warmer than today. Europe was wetter with evidence of ancient riverbeds unearthed regularly during excavations.
When I was at school during the 70’s, we were taught that the Earth was about to enter a new Ice Age within our lifetime due to the scientific evidence of the time. We were also taught that oil and petrol would run out by the year 2000 so the prices would increase as it ran out. I remember when petrol was 50p a gallon, which seemed to double in price within a couple of years and yet petrol is still readily available and transport exhausts still polluting the air. The planet has had Ice Ages advancing and retreating for the past millions of years without fail, usually lasting for tens of thousands of years at a time. Our last Ice Age began retreating around 10,000 years ago during the Mesolithic Age when the Earth began warming again and great forests grew throughout Europe and America in its wake and contributing to the biblical flood that forced populations inland. On average, the ice retreats have lasted about 10,000 years before advancing south again. Today sees the extreme of our last Ice Age before it returns. No one knows if it will advance gradually over thousands of years or quickly over a generation. It is Gaia’s way of destroying the old so that new life can emerge from the cold. A return to the Ice Age will turn the human survivors into hunter-gatherers once more, having to work together to survive under the guidance of the Earth Mother who will sustain them with everything they need.
Who is to say there was not an intelligent civilisation like ours 100,000 years ago, that succumbed to the last Ice Age. All evidence of it would be lost except scattered bones and stone tools across the landscape. Mother Earth is stirring in her sleep, preparing for a new birth of the world. It is her nature to destroy that what is destroying her, modern human existence.
Ishtar and Ereshkigal by Scott Irvine
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