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04/26/2006: "Apathy reigns supreme"

Various parts of the country will shortly be going to the polls for local government elections, which has prompted the usual media discussion over how many people will actually use their right to vote, and brought out the same tired old excuses for not voting - chief amongst them "my one vote doesn't make a difference", or "Party X always wins in my area so there's no point voting".

Every vote counts. It is one more vote for whichever party you support. It is incredibly arrogant to expect your one vote to be the one which pushes your chosen candidate into power. Democracy is (or should be) a result of a consensus of the population. Sometimes you've got to accept that the party you vote for will lose - because more people have voted for another party, or because of the flaws in our electoral system.

Now I'm not a fan of the first-past-the-post system we are lumbered with for general elections. In fact I consider it incredibly unfair (if you don't know why, take a look at makemyvotecount.org.uk). This gives two options. One, that you refuse to participate in the process at all, sit there complaining about how flawed the electoral system is, and waiting for some miracle for it to change. Lets face it, that's not going to happen.

The alternative is to get out there and vote for who you want in government, regardless of whether you think they can win. Firstly, it means you come out of the whole experience a bit less morally tainted. Secondly, since a lot of people don't vote because they think their party "can't win", if they all did it would probably cause a significant upset (I'm sure if all the people who have told me they would vote Lib Dem but don't because there's no chance of them winning actually did so then they'd probably be in Downing Street right now). The worst case would be that it would highlight the void between what the population voted for and who ended up in power.

Not voting won't change anything, by voting you are making a change, however small it seems.

There seems to be a similar level of apathy floating around when it comes to the environment. The number of people who deny the human race is having a negative influence on the environment seems to be shrinking, but people seem to be coming up with no end of inventive excuses not to do anything about it because their individual contribution will not make a significant difference. Certain bits of the green lobby hardly help in this respect by dismissing all the little changes (domestic recycling, etc) as worthless:

"We don't need more carpool lanes. We need to eliminate fossil fuels from our economy. We don't need more recycling bins. We need to create a closed-loop, biomimetic, neobiological industrial system. We don't need to attend a tree-planting ceremony. We need to become expert at ecosystem management and gardening the planet. We don't need another unscented laundry detergent. We need to ban the vast majority of the toxic chemicals upon which our livestyles currently float and invent a completely non-toxic green chemistry. We don't need lite green fashions. We need a bright green revolution."

I agree will all the "we need" statements above, but they aren't going to appear overnight. The desires of the entire western world are not going to change just like that. The 'bright green revolution' will not take place in an instant, it will have to be a slow and progressive shift - and it starts with all the things the author of this piece is saying we 'dont need'. Yes we need to make sure it doesn't stop at that point, and that the need for continual improvement is heard over the inevitable 'trendy green' noise. But sending out a message saying "It's a waste of time doing anything to reduce your environmental impact unless you are going to go the whole hog, sell your car and live in a treehouse." is a recipe for the general public to do nothing.

So make your choice. Are you going to sit around waiting for someone to wave a magic wand that reforms the electoral system, and provides the technology to make your lifestyle sustainable? Or are you going to try as hard as you can to make a difference with the tools available to you, whilst acknowledging that you are just one of the 60m people on this small island on a planet of 6 billion people.

It's better to light a candle than to fantasise about a sun.