In many places, the environment is succumbing under an unprecedented brunt of garbage and pollution produced by industry as well as city and country dwellers. As in advanced countries environmental sensitivity has opened its way into the conscience of individuals, it is often taken into account in the shaping of public policies, but isn’t this attitude sometimes a window-dressing operation?

I know for example that in my town local regulations ban the use of fireplaces in order to keep the level of fine dusts adequately low in winter. How many fireplaces are still present in houses nowadays is a piece of information that I lack, but I’m sure the figure would be staggeringly low. Besides, how many fireplaces are actually used for heating must dwarf that number to an even more insignificant level.

Those of us who do have a hearth – mainly for decoration – know that wood fire gives a warm touch to our living-room, but is rather inconvenient to use: logs have to be bought (or chopped, by the most enterprising) and carried, fire has to be kindled, soot is flying around and ashes are left to dispose of.

When we come to consider the type of heat a fireplace produces, we realise how much we are now spoilt by central heating providing warmth to all rooms and not just where the fire burns, and until it does. It would be optimistic to believe that an urban area resident with a fireplace lights it more than a few times a year and even when he does, it’s for a short time only.

At the end of the day, a ban on the use of fireplaces seems more like an encroachment upon individual freedom than a sacrifice that we would only be too willing to make in the name of the common good. The fireplaces actually used are so few that it wouldn't change a thing to air pollution whether people lighted them all at once or not.

Another example of this hypocritical attitude is the ban on plastic shopping bags that came into force in this country a while ago. The upshot is that to carry our shopping, we are now sold recyclable bags for € 0.15 each. As they never last more than twice – they tear up even if you try not to overfill them –, the real benefit they generate is to the companies that produce them.

On the other hand, you find your dust bin filled to the brim in two ticks when you throw away the containers that held the veggies, the plastic bags that the fruit came in, and all sorts of packing that other goods were hidden in. Shouldn’t they have cut down on the amount of commercial packaging rather than shopping bags?

What we all pretend to ignore is that the real causes of pollution are hidden behind chronic patterns of behaviour or entrenched economic interests, both hardly liable to change: motor traffic, industry, consumerism. Our economic system spins around consumption which is in itself an environmental unfriendly practice.

While I am all in favour of saving what can still be saved by promoting awareness campaigns and boosting the active role any of us can play, I’m loath to be made a fool of. Let’s focus on effective measures and not just let smoke get into our eyes.

• < Prev
• Next >