Be The Jam

Perhaps this post might better be called High Horse as I am on mine today. 

 
A battle sometimes decides everything; and sometimes the most trifling thing decides the fate of a battle.

Napoleon Bonaparte 

The overwhelming aim of the trip to the jungle and this website is to raise money for Rainforest Concern to support the work that they do in protecting the rainforest. There is another side to this site, an idea that is why this site is called Be The Jam. It's basically that mankind is destroying the world and the idea that "there is nothing I can do about it" or "it's someone else's problem to deal with" is wrong, the only people who can do something about the state of the world are us, the ordinary people, not the politicians or celebrities or boffins.

When you look at the size of the areas the vast tracks of land that they are protecting from destruction seem huge until you compare them to the areas of land under threat or already stripped bare. It would be easy to dismiss protection efforts as being just a drop in the ocean, an ultimately futile gesture. Surely though such an attitude would be pessimistic to the point of admitting defeat. The world might well seem to be full of big events controlled by powers unassailable by us the ordinary individuals but if you look a little closer you com to realise that life is just made up of lots of very small events that combine together to bring about a result. The Berlin Wall for example fell because the overwhelming desire of the people behind made keeping it up unsubstantial. This is not to say that various non Soviet political powers did no help to create an invironment in which the revolution could take place but ultimately it was down to the ordinary individual to decide that enough was enough, once enough individuals had decide this the tipping point was reached and the swell of public desire to be free was unstoppable. When it came down to it the Wall came due to ordinary people deciding to do something. Right now we are in a situation where our politicians are increasingly keen to set up a frame work  in which protection of the environment is assured, but once again it is down to individuals to act, to reverse the tide.

It all starts with the smallest of actions.

 At the risk of preaching to the converted take a look at this film when you have a spare ten minutes The Curse of the Carrier Bag

Towards the Tipping Point

 You may well have noticed the banner add at the top of this page, it is a link to the Live Earth site and contains information about an event called Save Our Selves (SOS) on the seventh of July, if you can't be bothered to read the site this is what it's about in their own words.

"SOS is designed to trigger a global movement to combat our climate crisis. It will reach people in every corner of the planet through television, film, radio, the Internet and Live Earth, a 24-hour concert on 7/7/07 across all 7 continents that will bring together more than 100 of the world’s top musical acts. Live Earth alone will engage an audience of more than 2 billion people through concert attendance and broadcasts. MSN has partnered with SOS to use its reach to make the Live Earth concerts available across the globe. The Live Earth audience, and the proceeds from the concerts, will create the foundation for a new, multi-year global effort to combat the climate crisis led by The Alliance for Climate Protection and its Chair, Vice President Al Gore. SOS was founded by Kevin Wall, who won an Emmy as Worldwide Executive Producer of Live 8."

Exciting stuff.