Oportus blog July 2023

Growth, growth, growth.

Every day we see the news, we hear of economic growth or downturns and the mood of the article is either positive or negative depending on how the economy has grown or shrunk. More sales, more consumption, more money, more information!

But there is an increasing understanding that we need to consume less, spend less, waste less and buy less – waste packaging pollutes the land, seas and food chain and waste materials get shipped off to poorer countries rather than upcycled or recycled, much of the time destroying the local environment. We go to supermarkets and buy fruit and vegetables, a lot of which we throw away because it’s reached its “best Before” date, then throw away the peel, the pips, the stones which gets thrown into landfill, producing methane and contributing to global warming.

Economic growth has shown itself to be an unreliable marker of “success” for humankind.

The gap between the world’s richest people and the poorest continues to widen, and the effect of our waste in the soil, sea and skies are hitting people who have done the least to contribute to climate change – the world's wealthiest 10% were responsible for around half of global emissions in 2015, according to a 2020 report from Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute. The top 1% were responsible for 15% of emissions, nearly twice as much as the world's poorest 50%, who were responsible for just 7% and will feel the brunt of climate impacts despite bearing the least responsibility for causing them.

The richest 10% of the population now takes 52% of global income and the poorest half just 8%.

The world's richest 1% has taken more than a third of all additional wealth accumulated since 1995, while the bottom 50% captured just 2% (The World Inequality Report from The World Inequality Report).

2020 saw the steepest increase in billionaires' wealth on record while, 100 million people sank into extreme poverty: "After…Covid-19, the world is even more polarised," Lucas Chancel, co-director of the World Inequality Lab, told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

The report concluded that:

• The poorest half of the global population barely owns any wealth, possessing just 2% of the total.

• The richest 10% of the global population own 76% of all wealth.

I think it’s ironic that I’m writing this blog post this week – a couple of days after World Overshoot Day, on which we have used up more natural resources by the 2nd of August than the planet can restore in a year; so we’re now in “nature resource” debt for the next four months. Humanity has burned through Earth’s annual budget for resources in under eight months. In 1971, Earth Overshoot Day took place on December the 25th…so the rate at which we’re using the earth’s resources is accelerating. And we’re filling up our home with waste.

And yet the amazing thing I see (living in a remote and rural place like Connemara) is how quickly and effectively nature can restore itself, if we just get out of the way and allow it to.

Having planted some vegetables and herbs in a neighbour’s polytunnel just six or seven weeks ago, we travelled to London – so didn’t get into the polytunnel for about four weeks – and went to check on progress yesterday evening. we were shocked at what we found!

From a variety of seedlings, some of which were no more than an inch tall, we now have a mini-jungle to sort out! We need to pick and save the basil, tomatoes, onions and lots of other bits and pieces before they go off (and the truth is, they are already in a delicious sauce!). We’re far from experts and are learning as much from mistakes as from successes as we go – only time will tell if the butternut squash plants produce anything other than leaves and flowers - but the nonsense of going out to buy food which we peel, core and discard before going out to buy more of the same, when they can be grown in a vegetable plot, garden or even a pot on a window sill, is becoming more real to us as time goes on.

This is the beginning of an apple tree which was planted from an apple pip last year. Sure, it’s going to be a long time before it bears any fruit, but all it took was a bit of compost and watering every so often. Is there anything you could start to grow from seed? How about giving something a go.

Maybe there’s the seed of an idea you’ve been sitting with for a while, that needs to get planted; a project or business that is lying dormant. Don’t let it go to waste!

Please do get in touch and share your learning.

Until next time, let’s keep learning…