Ronald Allison: The price of the Good Life (From Hampshire Chronicle)

Ronald Allison: The price of the Good Life

4:27pm Wednesday 14th November 2007

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THE thoughts have been nagging away at me for three or four weeks now. About Winchester, I mean, and the fame and the infamy it has recently been awarded.

How is Winchester the best place to live in England when we residents are apparently such appalling polluters? Is it judged to be so good only because the hefty carbon footprint we are leaving is discounted?

How are the results of the two recent surveys linked?

Does the good life we enjoy come at too high an expense to be maintained, or can Winchester practice low carbon living yet still stay at the top of the des.res. league?

Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, but if we are to leave our children and grandchildren a decent environment in which, in turn, to raise their families, we had better get on with it pdq, because it isn't going to be easy to change the habits of a lifetime - our habits that is.

The millions in India and China are already changing theirs and doing so in ways that are probably not going to be to our benefit.

At least, I don't imagine that the first thought of those in Beijing or New Delhi now experiencing the material things we take for granted will be "How will this affect the people in Hampshire?! Mine wouldn't be.

But here, in Hampshire, my mind is now concentrating in a new way on those issues usually labelled green'.

In the past I would sometime walk rather than drive because "the exercise would be good for me".

Now it dawns on me that it might be good for others as well.

That's not too pious I hope, because the sum total of all our efforts will be what makes the difference.

Governments - national and local - will take the lead, perhaps with quite simple actions. In Winchester, for just one example, why not prevent vehicles parking and unloading in St George's Street during the rush hours and reverse the traffic flow in Parchment Street once again?

That would surely cut the daily total of unnecessary carbon emissions from fuming cars - all I guess with fuming drivers. Just stop the stopping.

At least the politicians are saying the right things and, because I have the opportunity, I can write what I believe to be the right things.

The future, though, will be the result of the doing, not the saying, not the writing.

We live in a great part of the country. Quite simply we must stop messing it up.

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