We are causing devastation to our planet; risking the continued existence of our own and the vast, but declining, number of other life forms with which we share it. There is an ethical imperative to reverse our impact to a level that ensures the continued existence of the planet as a viable home and is compatible with the continued vitality of the planet’s interlinked ecosystems, permitting their recovery.
As a small region, with just 0.13% of the world’s population, we must adopt and implement strategies that address these issues by local action but which set an example to the world. We cannot wait for others to act for us. The time to act is now.
The Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate – the Climate Change Emergency.
The natural environment is being destroyed at an unprecedented rate – the 6th Extinction.
Governments talk fast but act slow. They plan only to the next election; 4, 5 or 7 year election cycles prevent real, effective long term planning.
Non-state activists – Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Extinction Rebellion – send out such barrage of dystopian warnings about the threat to life on earth that the public either switch off or give in to hopelessness.
Multinational corporations are playing a waiting game. To change their ways of working costs money which will harm their competitiveness, but they all wait to see who jumps first risking having billions locked up in stranded unusable assets. Scientists and capitalist industrialists are full of (money-making) ideas for new as yet unproven technological solutions. We – the public – latch on to these ideas, anything that will save us from having to act now or changing the way we live.
Wessex Regionalists are realists. We believe that the answer lies in the people and local initiatives, acting locally while thinking globally; not governments, not activists – just US. We believe there is still time if we are allowed to take the lead, working where possible in concert with other regions, with European and other international institutions but starting NOW.
Wessex is a region with a population of over 9 million. Unfortunately, its carrying capacity at current rates of consumption and technology is probably nearer to half that number. The demands placed on the countryside will not be reversed just by driving e-cars.
The Wessex Regionalists seek to preserve the rural character of Wessex, prioritising small-scale, sustainable agriculture whilst also creating more wild space, including the reintroduction of plant and animal species that had previously become extinct in Wessex. We will require all companies in the region to produce social and environmental, as well as financial, audits.
The London-based parties, fearful of alienating their wealthy donors, can only scratch the surface of the drastic action needed to preserve a habitable planet for future generations. The Wessex Regionalists, funded only by our members, have the courage to act.