With much regret I make this last post.
National Green Standard is no more, well except in my heart and lodged in all the best libraries, as you would expect for copyright reasons. COVID 19 I hear you say, pandemic and more pressing needs have thwarted a potential solution to save the world’s environment, get us thinking about and moving on social justice and ensuring our economic policies and practices all work for a positive and wonderful future.
Sorry to say none of those things are behind this decision. The very simple reason is that the world doesn’t want to be saved, it doesn’t appear to need a route out of climate change, it doesn’t need a sensible, simple tool to help move us from global and economic destruction; which means the demise of our planet, economic disaster and a limited future for our children that is measured in very stark terms.
My journey to and with National Green Standard has been fraught, I’ve wondered many times about what the world will look like in future. I’ve watched electric vehicles promoted as the answer to our prayers – they are not: this is a carbon based solution to a problem they quite literally fuel! Oh and so many other greenwashing paradigms. You see it is easy to say one thing is good for the planet while another is not when you come from a well financed and secure place, it’s much harder to argue against when what you have is passion, commitment and clarity of aforethought. So we celebrate two ridiculously wealthy men in a race to space while our planet burns, dies of thirst and melts its ice caps even as we read this short lament. Imagine the positive changes these two individuals could make to this planet without leaving it for a no doubt thrilling ride into space.
People say one person can’t make a difference, one action can’t change the world that one act isn’t enough to save us from the future we have created. I said different: I created National Green Standard to make a change, provide a positive route map out of chaos, customised to each organisation’s needs, scalable on a global basis and something ready to make the change to a better future.
It was not to be. National Green Standard was born at my kitchen table, not for a government sponsored committee or a global coming together of strategic leaders and environmental champions. I created it! I made it a thing! I own the copyright that I’ve been willing to give away if only the world would take notice and buy into a simple concept: we cannot just set targets and goals, we need a plan to achieve them. National Green Standard is that plan, but no more. I’m not a politician, I’m not a scientist, I’m not ‘connected’, I’m not fashionable and I’m most certainly not able to change the world albeit that I had hoped I could.
I sign off tonight and for good on the basis that the world is running out of time and I have run out of energy to save the next generations. I will use time time I have left to enjoy whatever this beautiful planet can sustain.
With love and care I wish you peace.