Letter to Princess Anne - following her trip to Greece

Dear Anne,

I watched with little interest your trip to Greece to bring back the “Olympic” flame. Unfortunately, there was not much I could do at the time to avoid it. It was covered in all the newspapers, all the television stations and most of the standard web sites such as Yahoo. All the well-paid editors of these organisations told us what a great and important job you were doing and how we should all be so grateful for your efforts.

I ask you to consider the absurdity of your actions and in future to show sensitivity to the minority of people in this nation that have pressing concerns about climate change. Not everyone is bowled over by consumerist propaganda, and some are quite distressed by it. Unfortunately, I can only assume that the privilege you enjoy prevents you understanding we have exceeded all the worst-case predictions on climate change. As a direct consequence, we face the inevitability of our civilisation collapsing by the end of this century, or worse the extinction of all virtually all life on our beautiful planet.

It is therefore totally unacceptable to see you flying all the way to Greece to pick up the tiniest little flame. Your flight would have contributed about 50 tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere. There is the certain irony of the flames in the jet engines sustaining your flight dwarfing the pathetically flickering ember you brought back with you.

Like it or not, you and David Beckham, are amongst the top excess consumers in our society. Relatively simple maths shows that the top 5% of our society are responsible for about 30% of the global CO2 emissions. This group of top consumers are antisocial and destructive. As a key member of this group, you maintain your position in it through a symbiotic relationship with the same big corporations that are threatening us with further unsustainable growth. In case you did not notice, the airline that flew you was BA. While it tries to demonstrate egalitarianism with your outing, it simultaneously subverts the government’s attempts to cut the aviation industry’s carbon emissions. Its sponsorship of the Olympics is merely another element of an ongoing propaganda onslaught to make us believe that ignoring environmental responsibilities is the normality we should all accept.

As well as your own reckless excess consumption, there is also the question of your parenting ability and the morality that you instil in your children. Unfortunately, I could not avoid the reports of your daughter parading the Olympic torch around Cheltenham on her pet horse. Did you suggest at any time to your daughter that perhaps supporting one of the biggest propaganda exercises since the 1936 Nazi Olympics is not the best thing that someone in her position should be doing? I put it to you that encouraging your daughter to support consumption to excess just because the privilege of her birth allows her to do so is no better than someone at the bottom of society joining the riots in the city centres last year to enjoy the same pleasures of unbridled consumption. 

What further irony that as you flew all the way to Greece to get your little spark, and rubbed your privilege into the wounds of Europe’s first failed state, the Home Secretary was putting in place plans to stop waves of Greek economic migrants flooding our country. Her plans will be supported by force if necessary. The sad fact is that your actions support the absurdity of our country happily waving nationalistic Union Jacks as we firmly shut our borders to the desperate and disposed, while allowing the privileged and powerful of the Olympics to indulge themselves at our expense.

In these increasingly troubled times, we should not be surprised if we see a resurgence of extreme right wing nationalism. Nationalism is after all, what the institutions of this country put above everything else and what they are there to support. It seems that with Royal Weddings, Golden Jubilees and Olympics, they have never been so busy getting the masses ready for the forthcoming crises.

I am sure that you must be delighted to be playing your part.

From a citizen of the world, and a subject to no one,

Kevin Lister

Why Gloucestershire should not welcome the Olympic Torch

Sent to all editors of Gloucestershire news papers

Dear Editor,

We are approaching the big day when the Olympic torch will be paraded through Gloucestershire.  It will, no doubt, be accompanied by headlines of how the people of Gloucestershire welcome its arrival and how we are all so grateful to support such an event. Hopefully, before the good people of Gloucestershire jump on the bandwagon, many will at least stop, pause and think what this has come to represent.

It is useful to recall the tradition of the Olympic torch. Adolf Hitler started it for the 1936 games. He also is famous for going on to start the Second World War, gassing the Jews and trying to implement a scorched earth policy. Since 1936, the Olympics and politics are inseparable. It gives odious nations and destructive corporations the opportunity cleanse their image to the world.  The Olympic movement has shown that it is not too bothered which organisation capitalises on this opportunity, so long as the money rolls in.

In a clear demonstration of Olympic amorality, this year they have seen fit to award BP the title of its “sustainability partner.” This is greenwashing on a monumental scale. BP is the company that virtually destroyed the Gulf of Mexico, is destroying the Canadian Forests through their tar sands projects and now threatens to destroy the Arctic with deep sea drilling. They are one of the most polluting and destructive organisations on the planet. Their actions are leading us to disastrous runaway climate change. They are joined by fellow sponsors such as BAA which is arm twisting the government to expand the carbon intensive aviation industry and Dow Chemicals who are yet to adequately compensate the victims the Bophal disaster.

We should be under no illusions how bad the environmental catastrophe is that these large corporations are seducing us towards. Every single measurement of climate change is either at or exceeding the worst-case scenario of the 2007 IPCC report. We have been put firmly on the path to extinction.

To put it in perspective, today’s corporate sponsors of the Olympics are succeeding where their predecessor Adolf Hitler failed. They are successfully implementing a scorched earth policy by maximising carbon emissions and triggering runaway climate change. They are knowingly gassing the planet for today’s young people with critically dangerous levels of greenhouse gasses. By comparison Hitler limited his gassing mainly to the Jews. The directors of these corporations know what they are doing is wrong and immoral, but they choose to continue and hide behind propaganda.  They should take note that the defence of only carrying out orders and pleading ignorance failed at Nuremberg.

As well as the corporate sponsors, we should also be looking at the countries that come to play at the Olympics. Why do we let Bahrain and Saudi Arabia come when they are abusing human rights so violently at home? Why do we let India, Pakistan and Israel come when they have refused to abide by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and are leading the world closer than ever to nuclear war? Why do we let Russian and China come when they concern us so much we are about to impoverish our country by spending £100billion on replacing Trident? Why do we let America come when its corporations have lobbied so hard to stop climate change agreements?

We do this because it is more important the interests of the corporations and governments who profiteer from the Olympic movement are protected than the people they endanger.

The real problem is that our survival relies on us collectively facing up to enormous challenges. It has been said many times that we cannot continue with business as usual. Unfortunately, the message from the Olympics is that we should carry on with business as usual; we should look the other way when we know we should not and we should believe the unsustainable can be sustained.

The sad reality is that the Olympics are an anachronism from another time that we cannot return to.  The people of Gloucestershire should not welcome the Olympic torch.

References:

 E-mail to board of BP directors 

Copenhagen Diagnosis report

Indian violation of the NPT