One of a series of Blogs as part of a sustainability study course
Sustainability, society and you:  The University of Nottingham

Article 2:12
This from the
UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD, 2005-2014).
“Education for Sustainable Development means including key sustainable development issues into teaching and learning; for example, climate change, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity, poverty reduction, and sustainable consumption.” Etc, etc 

This to me is a bunch pious platitudes by the well educated “Haves” pretending they care about the uneducated “Have Not’s”  The first thing to do is commit to making certain that all humans can read and write properly by the time they are fifteen years of age, then they will have some chance of understanding and incorporating these pious ideals in to their lives

A look at the numbers in the following link will give a better idea of the real situation. One of the numbers gives the following

“Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen”
See, Global Issues: Poverty Facts and Stats

Having watched the videos, all very nice touchy, touchy, feely, feely, stuff showing how the impoverished of this world can improve “their” lot while behaviour of the 25% of the world’s population that live in relative comfort are not mentioned.

Patting ourselves on the back because we let poor black people paint on the walls of rundown buildings, in the ghettoes they are forced to live in, is hardly something that we should be shouting about.

Children scavenging on open, festering, tip heads are hardly something that anyone living in The EU or USA would regard as sustainable for their children.

To coin a phrase from “Oliver” I think they need to think it out again…………

With thanks to xkcd.com

I live in Rathfarnham Village, in South Dublin, Ireland. The Village, 5Km (3 miles) from the city centre was absorbed by the city in the early 1900’s and thankfully  bypassed in the 1980’s, which left the integrity of the old village intact with a pleasant main street and the usual local village shops and restaurants.  It sits at the foothill of the Dublin Mountains (5k)  and “The Wicklow Way”, a 127km (80mile) heritage walk through a national park and across some of the most spectacular scenery found anywhere on the planet

Rathfarnham developed as the service village for Rathfarnham Castle which was built by the Normans around 1199 (first mention in books) to keep the mountainy men from sacking the city so it has been around for a long time

I live in an enclave of 18 town houses with a small 3 story 18 apartments block behind the village and beside The Owendoher  River.  Our complex is called Rathfarnham Mill as it is built on the site of an old Paper Mill driven by this river. There were numerous Mills in the area over the millennia

Behind my house are the Dodder River and Bushy Park, a 445 hectare (1100 acre) recreational and forest park with lots of the kind of wildlife we find existing close to urban populations. The Dodder River (60m/yds from my house) is well stocked with trout which can be caught for dinner on a pleasant summer evening.  So, generally a very pleasant place to live, city life with plenty of interaction with nature.

For pleasure I ride a Harley Davison and in the last 15 years I have travelled 112,000km (70,000 miles) taking in the wonderful wide open spaces of North America, South Africa, France Spain, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, etc. I have spent many wonderful times riding around Yorkshire and the spectacular highlands of Scotland. Too many wonderful places to pick a picture from. The beauty of riding a motorcycle is that, when you are on the road, you are in nature, not just driving through it.

So looking at the above, you would think that I would have to choose my favourite place from all this natural beauty?  In that you would be wrong. My favourite places are Downtown Dublin on Saturday afternoon, Michigan Ave Chicago, in Spring or Autumn and Fifth Ave, NY anytime.

I love standing in front of a large building thinking about the engineering. When hundreds of people turn on a tap, they get water, when they hit the light switch, they get light, the building provides them seamlessly with everything and the real beauty of good building is that the occupants don’t even notice.

And when that’s done, if in Dublin, there is nothing like a pint of Guinness over a good book or an eclectic conversation with a like minded city boy in one of Dublin’s famous watering holes.