HORSES OF THE POST-APOCALYSE

The Apocalyptic symbolism of the Bible is closely allied to the arrival of four horsemen. It was therefore fascinating to learn on BBC Radio 4's "Saving Species" programme yesterday that Przewalski horses - brought back from the brink of extinction in the last century - have been introduced into the Chernobyl exclusion zone, a place resonant with apocalyptic symbolism, to graze areas that present fire threats.

On The Edge Of A Nuclear Catastrophe

Today's announcement that Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster is to be upgraded to category 7, the same as Chernobyl, comes almost exactly 25 years after the catastrophic explosion at the Ukrainian power station which led to abandonment of the nearby city of Pripyat (shown here).

This abandoned urban area has always reminded me of Andrei Tarkovsky's evocative film "Stalker", in which a journey in to "The Zone", a place cordoned off by the authorities which appears to have undergone some kind of industrial disaster, and more particularly of "The Room" that can grant the seeker's innermost wishes: perhaps a metaphor for the endless power promised by nuclear energy.

Guided tours of the zone around Chernobyl are, of course, now available, although I suspect that a visit to the room which housed its nuclear reactor remains off bounds to the twenty first century seeker after apocalyptic experience.

Georgia and Solzhenitsyn on My Mind

This blog began with a reflection on Alexandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago". With Solzhenitsyn's death last week, it is again time to remember his legacy.

In his latter years, Solzhenitsyn was felt by some to have become a pawn of the Putin regime. He returned to his Russian "homeland" in the 1990s, having been, by all accounts deeply uncomfortable with Western "materialism" and "moral ambivalence", albeit that Solzhenitsyn's exile to the United States had been brought about by his far deeper antipathy for totalitarian communism. Although it had not started out this way, Alexandr Isaevich had been a supporter of the Revolution, and it was only after World War II that he fell out with the Soviet State, as his understanding of its powerful means of oppression - in Solzhenitsyn's case, The Gulag and internal exile - deepened like an infernal chasm.

It was also last week, that conflict broke out between the former Soviet State of Georgia and the Russian Federation. This is primarily a dispute about territory and "homeland", although the discordant political personalities, and aspirations, of the Russian and Georgian Governments are important. Western material interests too come into play, as Europe is deeply dependent on Russian reserves of oil and gas, and there is some moral ambivalence about the conflict as a consequence. Although some optimism should be attached to the intervention of the European Union, of which, along with NATO, Georgia's present government would one day like it to be part, we should all be ever wary of the potential for Russian oppression.

The Suicide Files@Dark Lyrics

I've discovered the following verses on the web under "The Suicide Files" and "Dark Lyrics". Not sure of their origin (directions welcome), but they they perhaps express sentiments meaningful to an increasing number of young people out there. Maybe some food for thought for politicians returning to earth following exclusion from high office....

The Edge Of Town
The Cul-de-sac jungle is a cruel place.
It's a living rotting failure from a different age.
And if you're looking for the place that dreams go to die,
it's not in the city it's around the outside.
You can mortgage your future for subleached purity
and accept the sterility in exchange for security,
but no matter how many times you run from your fears
the same problems always re-appear.
Day after day it's all just decay,
and the promised land just gets further away.
On these dead lawns lie your father's dreams.
White flight. White blight. White screams.
On these dead lawns lie your mother's dreams

Rum, Romanism and Tammany
Idealism is fucking dead.
Laughed off the stage at countless conventions.
Laissez faire is en vogue again.
It's silver tongue has been heaven sent.
One man, one vote, throw it away.
One land, one hope, throw it away.
When every candidate looks the same, born of noble blood.
So don't fucking talk to me about our tradition of democracy.
Who the fuck am I supposed to believe in?

On the Edge of Town

Leader Thursday April 22, 2004 The Guardian

Appropriately, this week's announcement of the UK's first research centre of suburban studies coincides with a new government report on creating more sustainable cities. The new centre is welcome, as is its director's robust rejection of the suggestion that his discipline risks being branded with the "education-lite" label applied to media studies. Residential districts that now accommodate over half the country's population are ripe for study by town planners, sociologists and architects - as they have long been in America. The Kingston centre's remit is wider still. It also intends to look at the suburb in film, fiction and history. The roots of British prejudice against suburbia - a love that dare not speak its name, says the centre - will repay exploration.

But as John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, declared in the report examining the success of eight core English cities, a quiet urban revolution has also been taking place. The drift away from cities has been reversed. Proportionately, the drift began in the 1930s, followed by an actual drop in numbers in the 1960s. But new populations are being attracted back. Old industrial urban economies have gone, but new ones have sprung up. In Mr Prescott's words: "Our cities are back and the reasons are simple. They remain the centres for wealth creation, trade and exchange." It is not quite that simple because as the Kingston centre will note, the suburbs are no longer just dormitories, but generators of jobs too.

The government is right to celebrate the revival of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool. But big challenges remain, that ministers should not be allowed to duck. Beyond the big eight - the other four cities are Bristol, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield - there are a score of smaller industrial towns in the North where the prospects are far from bright. The government has still not got the north v south balance right, partly because it still does not have a coherent regional policy. The divide is getting wider. Then there is the growth of "doughnut cities" - flourishing city centres with a collar of decay them. Urban renaissance is far from won.

The "Original Planet of the Apes" & Police Treatment of Climate Change Protestors

The original film version of "Planet of the Apes" (not the prequels/sequels or re-makes !) had a profound impact on me as a child. In this film the hero, Charlton Heston, is one of a crew of astronauts who land on what we believe to be a far distant planet at some equally distant time in the future. Only the Heston character, Taylor, survives. At the end of the film we discover that the planet is, in fact, earth : an earth now run by ape men. I will call them "ape men" rather than "apes" because this is what they are. There are 3 species of "ape men", supposedly corresponding to chimpanzees (scientists), orang-utang (politicians) and gorillas (militia). The gorillas are frequently seen chasing humans (now a subordinate species) on horseback.

The image on the front page of the Financial Times today also had a profound impact on me, as a reminder not only of the original "Planet of the Apes", but of media images of the 1980s Miners Strike in Britain, when policemen on horseback pursued protestors. The FT image shows a mounted police officer in riot gear, followed by another, chasing, whilst shouting at, a climate change protestor who is running through the scrub land around Heathrow Airport. In short, this is an ugly scene, particularly so for someone who is an environmentalist, in fact a supporter of the climate change protestors, and a horsewoman. I seriously question whether mounted police should conduct themselves thus, or have we already fast-forwarded into the future ?

Carl Jung on Climate Change

Jung had what he regarded to be a number of prophetic and semi-prophetic dreams during the course of his life. In one of these, Europe experiences a flood of biblical proportions, and, in another, returns to the Ice Age. Perhaps these dream scenarios are not mutually exclusive in the implications for the real world. The consequences of climate change may be more multi-dimensional than we can imagine.

What We Forget to Remember

Former Tory MP and Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo has been involved in a number of rather good radio and television programmes since losing both parliamentary seat and the prospect of becoming leader of the Conservative Party. One of these programme series, "What we forgot to remember", was on broadcast on Radio 4 towards the end of last year. The principle message of the series was that the collective memory of historical periods is somewhat selective, and it is often the case that what goes unremembered can be as important, if not more so, than certain well-reported and remembered happenings.

It seems to me that the United States, notwithstanding the apparent sophistication of its media, has been as vulnerable as the rest of the world to the problem of selective collective memory, even where the events in question are happening in the present.

Yesterday, one of the tele-evangelists which seem to thrive in the US, informed media audiences across the globe - I heard him on Radio 4's PM Programme - that an urban area of the United States (I think a major city was mentioned, but no particular one) would be the victim of some hostile action, possibly leading to the deaths of millions of people. God, according to this right-wing man of religion, had informed him of a forthcoming disaster. Apparently, this kind of prophesy has come up regularly during the the Presidency of George Bush, and, it is said, tend not to be taken seriously now.

However, many major urban areas in the United States are suffering from problems - environmental, social and economic - which are certainly not fully reported in this country, and probably not over there either. "Unsustainable" might well sum up these problems, but it is only when disaster actually strikes, as in the case of New Orleans last year, that the problems are fully reported in the US and international media. Yet the likelihood of catastrophic flooding in New Oreleans has been on the cards for many years : I, for one, remember covering the subject in an "A Level" geography lesson in the late 1970s.

The US just collectively forgot to remember it, and even now, we forget about New Orleans as the urbanisation of areas vulnerable to flooding continues in the United States, in this country, and, most of all, in the rapidly developing countries of Asia.

The question is, do films like former US Democratic Vice-President Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", about the effects of global warming, and actor-film-maker Spike Lee's "Requiem" for New Orleans make any real difference, not only to the political and collective consciousness but to public planning programmes ? I hope so, for as Spike Lee recently said : "Volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods. It’s not just New Orleans, we should be scared because if FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency".... — you saw what they did. Pray to God you don’t have to depend on FEMA. This stuff affects all Americans". Amen !

World War III by Michael Tobias

This book, published in 1998, is not about a literal third world war. It's subject is "Population and the biosphere at the end of the Millennium". With a forward by the conservationist Jane Goodall, and reviews by, amongst others, William Shatner (of Star Trek fame), this is not a work of "science fiction". However, it covers a subject which has become strangely taboo in recent years : human population growth, and its impact upon people and other life on earth.

In a recent - and rather short - interview on BBC Radio 4, a representative from the London School of Tropical Medicine pointed out that "family planning" is the most effective means of reducing child poverty in less-developed/developing countries, and argued that this message still applies to African countries, notwithstanding the AIDS crisis in some of these. He also said that this evidence-based policy instrument has become increasingly difficult to advocate.

Population and demography are certainly complex issues, and whilst it is true that certain countries, such as Russia, are experiencing a decline in numbers of people, overall world population is very much on the increase. Similarly, in the UK, whist Scotland has the highest rate of population decline in Western Europe, England has one of the highest rates of forecast population growth.

Increasing numbers of people raise important issues in the global and international context, as well as for national, regional and local planning, and particularly where there is rapid population growth alongside poor environmental management and infrastructure development. This is indeed an issue where we need to think globally and act locally. However, it is also an issue where policy making is increasingly marginalised, and left to so-called "market forces".

"The Edge of Town" is precisely the place where population pressures are most being felt : whether in "plans" to expand English towns and cities into the surrounding countryside, or to build entirely new ones; or in the slums and shanty towns through which the burgeoning cities of some Asian countries are spreading into rurals areas, often displacing small farmers who have to seek their livelihoods elsewhere.

The consequences of this expansion of human habitat are profound and often devastating. Such issues provide the material of Michael Tobias's book which I strongly advise people to read. The perspective is primarily ecological, and it calls for a fundamental reappraisal of the kind of economic thinking which very much links "growth" with population increase whether at the national or international level.

However, I would also argue that population growth in the form now taking place in some regions of the world brings with it the potential to create the conditions for an actual World War III. For in many of those countries experiencing rapid population increase, there is not a commensurate increase in economic and employment opportunities, particularly for young men. This is precisely the kind of scenario from which major conflicts tends to arise.