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‘What is your Big Issue?’ was the topic we tried to address in our editorial, which was always wide and encouraging. What sets you alight or gets you out of bed in the morning; what ‘rocks your boat’?
In my opinion, those golden days – although they were not as golden as they have come to be seen – are the old way of seeing things. Although some people saw the obvious threat of climate change in stark relief, many of us only have begun to see its catastrophic implications over the past few years. We might therefore have hidden ourselves from our realisation that the whole world – and not just part of it – needs fixing; that actually that was the backdrop of the increasing global crisis.
It took thousands of years for 50 percent of the climate damage that we have done to the planet today to be created. It took the world 50 years to create the remaining 50%. That’s bad news for us all, unless of course we can craft a new way of working globally, individually and collectively to end the dangers of climate failure.
When we talk about the next 30 year of The Big Issue, I believe that we must focus on the future wellbeing of our children. This is why climate change must be a central focus of our collective efforts. My Bill on the Wellbeing of Future GenerationsThe House of Lords now has the House of Commons. This is part of the fight to address climate change, among many other concerns.
The big problem seems to be how do we direct our efforts towards the daunting task of stopping the world from becoming a toxic, overheated wasteland? How can we coordinate, converge and combine our energies
To declare a full-scale war against Mother Earth. As if we were rerunning World War II, but instead of focusing our efforts on the destruction Nazism, we will combine our efforts to eradicate the destruction and destructive behaviour of humanity.
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Our thinking is obsolete. It was probably 100+ years ago. The last 100 years have been the foundations for many of our current problems, politically and environmentally. Our universities and schools are obsolete. We are not providing the necessary converging energy of our minds and materials to take on the task before us. We are looking at solutions that will not solve the big problem staring us in the face: and that is, that we won’t have much left if the natural world is blighted by the continuing consumer blitzkrieg we are waging against it.
Thought, education, lifelong learning, and a convergence of our efforts towards the common goal of avoiding destruction are what we need now.
When I’m asked what The Big Issue should do in the next 30 years, my answer is that it should help us prevent the greatest catastrophe humanity has ever faced. Its playground, its home, and its source of inspiration is in the creation of new thinking that will save the world from a forest fire.
Mother Planet is the Big Problem
John Bird is The Big Issue’s founder and Editor in Chief. You can read more of his words Here.
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