Guest election blog – You can bet on this! by Chris Packham

Chris Packham is many things, including a co-founder and co-director of Wild Justice. Here he writes in a personal capacity.

(To the tune of Queen’s ‘It’s a Kind of Magic’)

It’s a kind of chaos . . . It’s a kind of chaos . . . It’s a kind of chaos

(Only instead of being an uplifting 1980’s anthem this is a 2020’s statement of abject misery – more Morrissey than Mercury)

But it’s true, and you don’t need me to tell you that, either from the political or environmental point of view. But just in case you have been on an intergalactic cruise in another part of the universe, here goes

Our rivers and seas are full of shit . . . party-gate

One in six UK species are in danger of extinction . . . Rwanda-gate

It’s the twelfth time in a row that monthly world temperature records have been broken . . . 28 billion green investment ditched-gate

National Parks in nature poor condition . . . the view of the New Forest from Chris’s-gate

Its endless, but let’s not forget the Faroese and Icelanders murdering whales . . . and ditch Net Zero-gate, and farmed salmon, and fox hunting, and . . . and the badger cull, and the glyphosate glut, and, the . . . the total lack of accountability in not just the government but life, and the sickening behaviour of the right wing press. No gate there, apparently its not even a scandal, it’s just a way of life – they pervert, lie and demonise and people believe it. Except us eco-mobbers.

Lovely eco-mob action last Saturday. We were all there in London, not on the cosy pavement but in the road. Mark with family, Ruth with friends, Lucy with a microphone, Tina with a placard and Chris with the headache of trying to make it work. It was telling that finally nearly all the movement marched to the same tune for four and a half hours. What made that happen do you think? Well, I think it was a cocktail of ingredients, some sweet, some sour, but the frilly garnish on top was fear. Because whether we and our supporters like it or not we have maybe, almost-just-a-bit, found the guts to admit that we are not meeting the mark in our mission to properly protect our wildlife. Yep, it’s true and here’s an example of why . . . I sat in my garden working on Sunday. A fair bit of it is given over to wildflowers and it’s doing okay, quite colourful, quite diverse. It was sunny and warm. In three hours I saw one butterfly. One lonely Meadow Brown.

I don’t mind telling you that it made me very scared. I thought that maybe we have already missed our chance to restore nature now. I was going to ring Mark and say ‘I think we might have already blown it. I think it might have gone beyond recovery already’. Whatever, or how-many-ever butterflies you might have seen on Sunday, that is not a good sign. It’s an omen, an ominous omen. A portent, a sign that our wildlife is on its knees and we cannot wait to do what we need to do any longer.

We at Wild Justice try hard to do what we need to do. We need to lead on some issues which others can’t seem to find the gumption to confront. We have to make a legitimate legal noise, get a bit beaten up, a bit ostracised, a bit ‘themmed’ . . . but then after a while people seem to find some comfortable ground behind us and things shift a bit. Maybe Wild Justice are the Just Stop Oil of the conservation movement . . . or if not, maybe the conservation movement needs a JSO type of team . . . now that’s got me thinking.

We set the date for the march and then Rishi organised an election. Thanks Rish, perfect timing, added some real focus to one part of the purpose of the march – to show the next government that a) we are here, b) there’s lots of us (it was the biggest pre-election protest to date) and c) we have united and we will be back. Only next time with some actual focused demands.

One thing that I could smell in the throng all afternoon was discontent. The crowds reeked of it, I could feel the sense of having been cheated, there was a constant murmur of disapproval and a nip of raw anger. And you know what we Brits are like with anger, we let it simmer, we ignore it or even pretend its something else, until it builds up to a point when we suddenly EXPLODE! I wonder what the environmental movement will look like when it explodes? I fear that it might be just as ugly as every other movement that is forced to finally give up on trying to progress through the ruins of democracy, being patronised, ignored, sold-short, side-lined or shunned. I’d rather we get our demands met without a big bang but because we simply have to win our arguments I’m ready to embrace whatever it takes.

That’s why we should all think about the election. We will be banging on the door of the next government within weeks demanding the changes that will not only save our species but secure our planet’s future too. So who do we want to meet when they open it? Who do we not want to be shouting at through the letterbox? Maybe more importantly to us as individuals – who do we want in our constituency office? You know, the real person that we will be able to talk to, inform, lobby or chastise face to face, in the arena that really counts. So who are you candidates? Do they know anything about the parlous state of the planet? Do they really give a monkeys about wildlife? Do you think they actually care or are they just a power-hungry primate who, with one X too many in the ballot box could be more of a problem than part of the solution?

It’s clearly important. It’s probably the most important election ever for us. The climate scientists have given us five years to act, the same five years that our votes will impact on 4 July. It’s your decision. But please don’t fall in with the idea that marking a piece of paper with an ‘X’ will suffice. That’s just like thinking the Direct Debit which keeps trickling cash into your ENGO’s bank account means you can relax because ‘they’ will fix it. ‘They’ will not fix it, neither the government or the ENGO’s will fix it. That will be down to you. So please don’t wake up on 5 July and think that the part of your job as a human who cares about life will be taken care of by the next government . . . because, as your candidate for the LOVELIFE party, I can promise you that it won’t. And you can bet on that!

Remember – they won’t. Only we will. Only you will. Please be willing.