You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone

LGiU’s Kim Fellows blogs about climate change and what retailers, citizens and governments at all levels can do to tackle it – and why haven’t we done anything until now?

When Joni Mitchell wrote about visiting Hawaii nearly 50 years ago I don’t think anyone would have predicted that particular song would resonate over the next 5 decades.

Climate change has been in the news so much over those five decades, peaking in the last five to ten years, that those of us over 50 tend to forget that we have been eco-conscious for a very long time, but the sad fact is we are still consuming like there is no tomorrow, as if we have infinite resources.

Yes, as part of the baby boomer generation, I am a lucky person: I went to university when you still got a grant, and as the first person in my family to go to university I do feel blessed that I was able to benefit from a welfare state that supported social mobility.

However, baby boomers collectively seem to have failed to both grasp and do something about the climate emergency. We protested, from Greenham common, CND marches, anti-fracking to Extinction Rebellion but how on earth have we got to the point that the UN Climate action summit on 23^rd September 2019 is billed as  “the defining issue of our time”.

Why haven’t we as a society tackled this issue yet?

Read the full blog