There has been an increased awareness in the UK about plastic waste – the unnecessary use of single-use plastics, plastic straws and plastic bottles in particular. But the British public tend to be easily distracted – manipulated even – by big business, the media and politicians. These news-generators all know the half-life of a particular event is short, and it can be shortened even further by creating noise around something else, as a means of distraction.
Smoke and mirrors. The Conservative governments since Thatcher have shown their increased mastery of this time and again.
It’s for this reason that so much of the public’s awareness of an issue comes in cycles – the same issue, each time being seeming like it’s something new, has actually been highlighted repeatedly over the past 30 or 40 years. Each time the sense of urgency is heightened by the inaction that results in its rise to the surface of people’s consciousness once more.
Take the Earth Summit in Rio, which took place in 1992. It was here that over 150 heads of state signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, aiming to address the issue of biodiversity loss, which the scientists and the public, and consequently politicians, were deeply concerned about after reports came out showing the impact of industrial farming practices in particular on biodiversity.
Yet 27 years later, and the issue of biodiversity loss comes to the surface once more – as if for the first time, as people seem oblivious to the fact that it had ever been an issue before now. This time however a sixth mass extinction of life on Earth is well under way – this time caused by human activities, brining us into the epoc known as the Anthropocene – and there’s no going back.
This is true of so many issues – from climate change to soil degradation, yet we seem incapable of breaking this cyclical nature of important, disruptive events. We seem to willing allow ourselves to be distracted and manipulated.
It’s a failure in our political systems – a failure in leadership, of good governance and representation – and it’s a failure in humanity to rise above its baser instincts, and be all that we can be.
We would do well to remember that inaction and apathy make us just as complicit as those who are actively seeking to do wrong by others or the planet.