Last Thursday was  Global Standards Day with a special focus on fighting climate change.  I guess we need standards to keep us on the straight and narrow – without standards people may tend to be a little relaxed about some important stuff.  It’s OK to be cool about the things that don’t hurt us or our kids or friends- but we should try to protect our planet from over consumption and sloppy management of greenhouse gasses  –  issues which might be happening unless we are alert to what is going on.

Also Thursday 15th October was Blog Action Day 09 (BAD09) – which reached at least 17 million people.

At least three major world governments participated in this year’s blog event – which was all about global warming and climate change. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown posted the first Blog Action Day entry in Britain and was followed by Foreign Minister David Milliband and many others from the UK stationed around the world. The governing party of Spain hosted a bloggers event focused on climate change and transformed their website for the day to promote Blog Action Day. And late in the day, President Barack Obama’s White House blog joined in become part of the global movement of bloggers shaking the web.

Were you there?  If not don’t feel bad because tomorrow is another day and you can still make your voice count.  As Gandhi said – whatever you do will be insignificant – but it is important that you do it. 

We should try to be true to ourselves and think of those coming after us and those people living in low-lying islands in the Pacific who are at real risk of losing their entire countries to sea level rise caused by global warming.  I think as well as needing technical standards such as ISO 14064 to keep us on the straight and narrow we need to think big and not be overly  concerned with  our individual selves ( I do it myself a lot!)

It is interestring that other civilisations failed because of environmental failures

  • the Maya over farmed in their lands
  • the people of Easter Island sent out a man to cut down their last tree

A book by Jared Diamond lists the five factors that drive societal failure:

  • hostile neighbors – probably not a risk today
  • loss of trading partners – also probably not an issue as trading partners are tripping over each other to trade
  • environmental damage – a real problem
  • climatic change – a real problem

and how societies respond to these potentially devastating environmental problems – this is the real problem as countries are argueing over who should do what about climate change – how can we ensure inter-generational as well as international equity in dealing with climate change, unless we all take responsibility? 

The general assumption is that civilizations evolve from benign environments that sustain what we may consider a natural state of being, but where poor resource management will lead to certain failure.  I think we are at the poor resource management stage today – the real question is what are you and I going to do about it?????

I will leave you with this thought from a long time ago- it asks us to think for ourselves and not to be  inattentive of government but to be engaged and active.  The gist of it is – we need to be watchful and cautious – Standards are essential!

“…There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow.  … Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter.  From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger.  I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing.” — Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837