1711.09 WHY DOESN'T THE POISON MATTER?

This post has been in my head for a long time now. I've been toying with coming at it from various angles. Recently though I realised that  doesn't matter which way you look at the subject, as long as you look. 

Everytime it's mentioned in the media there's a little bit of fuss then everyone's head is plunged back into the sand and everyone tries to carry on as before. 

The subject is about as serious as it gets. "Research suggests the air in 44 out of 51 British towns and cities has failed pollution tests". This means that most people are happy to live in the midst of poison just so they can sustain their lifestyles. Some are ignorant as to what they can do, others are oblivious to the facts and then there are those that deny the truth.

Successive governments have come and made promises that improvements will come on some future date thus ensuring it's not their problem. This slow non-action infuriates me. What is it going to take to ensure real changes? The problem when we drill down is money. It'll cost money to instigate any real change. The governments are in the pockets of the fossil fuel companies and the car industry/ lobby who know that to reduce pollution will eat into the massive profits of these empires.

People are also unwilling to change lifestyles. If I asked you to give up your car for the commute you'd probably look at me like I'd just taken a dump in your kitchen. Before you say it I'm not being smug because I cycle but that's not it at all. I've also been known to catch the bus and yes I know that public transport is crap but it's crap because we all let it be crap, we let the transport companies get away with cutting services and unreliability. We could all also turn our thermostats down on the central heating a touch (a talent I learned from my grandad) and use our cars a bit less. We can then lobby our politicians to take big business to task. If we think that it's someone else's problem to sort then we're all doomed.

Personally I'm fed up of cycling through the smog and arriving at my destination with my lungs feeling like I just smoked 20 fags! I've looked into pollution masks but the effectiveness isn't great and you end up looking like Bane on a bike!

So I can only dream of a resolution to this matter, if everyone doesn't at least re-evaluate their lifestyles and if big business isn't brought into line by the leaders of this world then the Earth has some major problems ahead and that makes me weep for my children and their children.