The View From Above

Sometimes one has to stand back and observe events from a higher viewpoint in order to gain true insight into any complex confluence of events: seeing the whole rather than the components enables deeper understanding of just what is happening at component level. Nowhere is this more true than where our natural environment is concerned, and particularly in the case of the aquatic environment, currently in sharp focus in the media here in the UK. Yes, individual pollution events can be investigated at the micro level, although enforcement appears to be practically non-existent due to under resourcing, lack of funding and poorly or cynically drafted legislative tools. But whilst each incident, however serious its characterisation, is a cause for concern, very often it passes by little-remarked and un-dealt with until it fades from public view and concern. It's only when we pull back and take a systemic overview that the overall impact of pollution can be seen for what it is: a pressing problem that affects us all and which will not go away until fast-acting legislative powers are enacted and the money and resources provided to enforce those powers.

We've seen from various recent documentaries and many others in the past; from public enquiries and official reports over the decades that many such 'micro' events occur with sickening frequency: but the information that provides these momentary 'realisations' is always woefully post hoc and lacks true effectiveness as a result. Public enquiries take far too long to serve any purpose other than historical record. Meanwhile, the pollution events continue to stack up, and the overview is one of lasting systemic damage to the natural environment and to the flora and fauna, including the human race, that it succours. Perhaps the most eloquent and poignant encapsulation of it all is that of the astronaut. Many who go into space and look down on Earth from it experience a Damascene moment which the entry in Wikipedia terms a cognitive shift in the form of 'the overview effect', where the artificial geographical compartmentalisation and segregations our earthbound selves impose on the planet melt back and only the global singularity of our temporary - and only - home remains in view.

It is one system. It is the only system, without which we cease to exist. And from the dispassionate view of someone in Earth orbit it is clearly obvious that everything we are down here, and everything we do, is  ineluctably connected. Putting things off till tomorrow doesn't buy us time, it only serves to leave us with less of it...