Friday 4 February 2011

Local or global?

Lots of folk in England (including me) are up in arms about the proposed sale of public forests, to the extent that coalition MPs are under pressure to vote against it. If you want to find out how your MP said or voted on any issue, They Work For You is an excellent resource. So our MP voted with the Government and against the Opposition's call to rethink the policy.

Write To Them is another useful website, which enables you to, well, write to your MP, MEPs, local councillors, or indeed any Lord you fancy(!).

But how many people are writing to their MP about the state of the Amazon rainforest? Billions of trees died in the 2010 drought, and the rainforest could be on the tipping point of ceasing to absorb greenhouse gases and instead increase them, setting up a positive feedback loop and leading to runaway climate change. It's remote, it's unfamiliar, it doesn't figure in our national psyche, but it has a vast impact on our climate and our lives. If only it were as simple as writing to my MP to persuade a single change in policy...

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