Wessex
Full text of Energy and Environment policy update presented at UK Natural Law Party Conference 12th October 1997
"The tendency of the rural population towards the large towns, being really the tendency of water to flow uphill when forced by machinery"
Thomas Hardy
"Tess of the d’Urbervilles"
It is sometimes easy for those who perhaps do not know us very well to assume that the Natural Law Party is just another environmental group or green party.
Certainly it is true that we support many if not all of the objectives that the green movement vigorously pursues, but we have to bring something of greater value to the table at the same time - otherwise our activities serve only to fragment national concern for the environment rather than to galvanise it.
The great contribution that the Natural Law Party brings to the environmental debate, as to all areas of important public and private concern, is the application of completely new knowledge about the nature of mankind and the natural systems that form the fabric of his world and the wider universe.
Although we profoundly share the concerns of society for the immediate and pressing environmental problems that the world faces today, our horizons stretch far beyond their resolution. They anticipate the creation of a world where not only are the current environmental and other problems of the planet laid to rest, but where man and his natural environment are completely integrated on all levels - from the sub-atomic right through to the galactic and universal.
The Natural Law Party’s principal policy objective is to completely redefine what it means to be a human being, and to redefine the vast privileges that attach to our species. At the same time we seek to redefine the responsibilities that attach to those privileges, including our responsibilities towards the environment as well as to ourselves and to each other.
We are able to do this because of our fundamental grasp and experience of the relationship between consciousness and matter, and also of the special reciprocal relationship between the consciousness of the individual citizen and the collective consciousness of society as a whole.
This is based not simply on some vague abstract philosophical concept but on the practical application of reliable programmes. At the centre of these rest the all embracing approaches of Sthapatya Veda and Ayur Veda, in conjunction with the other numerous branches of Vedic Science.
These are unique areas of the Natural Law Party’s platform which apply as much to the environment as they do to health, education and social development. It is vital that we should use every opportunity to speak of them.
All of us in the Natural Law Party are intimately familiar with these concepts and their practical application in daily life. But it is particularly important to remind ourselves of them when considering our approach to the environment, so that when we begin to tackle the temporary and often unpleasant practical difficulties of our time we do not become overshadowed by them and lose sight of our grander vision.
Nevertheless, society expects from all those who participate in the political arena an ability to address the problems of the moment.
So for the remaining few minutes I would like to highlight a few of the practical details of our own platform which seek to deal with the immediate environmental legacies of the past. This remains a necessary part of the construction of a greater future - one as yet unglimpsed by most others in the remainder of the political world.
I hope that by doing this it will become clear that not only is the Natural Law Party the only party with a clearly defined vision of life in the 21st century, but that it is also one which is able to act practically in dealing with the specific legacies of the industrial age.
For the moment it is these immediate legacies, rather than the construction of life in decades to come, which most concern society as a whole. It is important, therefore, that we are able to deal with these practical issues of the moment in ways which give society the necessary confidence in our ability to achieve the more profound objectives that we are also pursing.
I have listed here a number of key policy areas for consideration:
Creating a pollution free environment
· society's misplaced reliance on the use of fossils fuels is a keen candidate for public enemy No 1. Whilst the Natural Law Party will review the taxation system in order encourage the use of alternatives to fossils fuels and other environmental pollutants, our key approach is to promote research into new sustainable technologies in this area.
Energy usage
· in the short to medium term we will promote energy conservation and other related measures, but in reality everyday the earth receives an almost infinite quantity of energy from the sun. The shortage of clean and safe energy on this planet is a myth which the Natural Law party aims to dispel very quickly.
In so doing we will withdraw our reliance on nuclear energy. And we will add to the computer chip revolution a solar-chip revolution, together with other important solar based technologies.
Housing and the built environment
· current government policy has identified the need for the construction of 4.4 million new homes in the United Kingdom by the year 2016. Where are these homes to go?
Received wisdom coming from many quarters of society states that they must be shoe-horned into our existing towns and cities in order to preserve the quality of our countryside. However, even traditional custodians of our rural environment such as the Countryside Commission have begun to question the wisdom of this approach, realising that it can cause more problems than it solves.
It is a basic principle of Natural Law that man must have adequate space if he is to thrive. Our cities have become too vast and too crowded. We will reorganise the structure of our towns and cities.
Combined with the widespread creation of Community Forests we will work for more acceptable development in the countryside, development which is based on the profound principles of Sthapatya Veda and development which makes the countryside a greater not a lesser delight for all to enjoy.
Transport
· It is fashionable in many planning circles these days to assume that further increasing the size of our settlements is the right approach to dealing with problems of congestion and traffic generation. Studies have shown, however, that this assumption is not proven. Solving problems of traffic congestion, noise and pollution requires a multi-faceted approach and a fundamental re-think. As part of this process the Natural Law party will:
- encourage new forms of development and social structures which make it easier for people to live closer to their work
- encourage the development of technologies which reduce the need to travel long distances
- encourage new transport technologies which utilise clean renewable fuels and minimise noise generation
- promote the development of an integrated transport system which encourages the greater use of railways particularly by freight, and the reduction of car traffic in our town centres
Biodiversity
Opponents to the now notorious Winchester and Newbury by-passes have frequently voiced their protest in relation to the protection of rare and important species. And yet it must not be assumed that the Natural Law Party will never build roads. In fact the implementation of the new principles of Sthapatya Veda demand that we do so. Wherever possible we must keep non-local traffic away from our residential and other built-up areas. This does not mean, however, that we will build road schemes which encourage an increase in the overall levels of traffic.
Does this mean, nonetheless, that the Natural Law Party does not care intensely about biodiversity?
Certainly not. Road schemes are a general threat to species and habitats only when local and national biodiversity resources have been depleted to critical levels. The principal factor in this scenario is not of itself the construction of roads and development - for even the construction of the Taj Mahal will have displaced a large number of species from its own site.
The principal factor at play here is rather the nature of our post war agricultural policy, a policy which now embraces the whole of the European Union. Agriculture policy has unintentionally encouraged the destruction of wildlife species and habitats to the point where in many cases their continued existence is threatened.
The Natural Law Party's complete overhaul of agricultural and land use policy will mean that ample provision is made to simultaneously meet our own needs for new development, alongside the creation and maintenance of habitats for other species.
These are some of the key components of our environmental policy. There are of course more besides, many of which are also promoted by other political parties. It is encouraging to see, for example, that in common with ourselves the Labour Party is now promoting job creation and welfare schemes which are centred around the development of environmental task forces.
However, although it is important that the Natural Law Party addresses the pressing problems of the day in these practical ways, this is not the core of our contribution to the safeguarding and improvement of the environment. Many others from right across the political spectrum promote such policies and are able to make a valuable and equal contribution. This we have seen in our global campaign to ban genetically engineered foods.
It is also true to say that as society evolves through the wider application of Natural Law based programmes, our own approaches and those of our political colleagues will in themselves evolve and change, and eventually converge.
We should not therefore be afraid of developing and evolving policy, because the accepted technical and philosophical wisdoms of 1997 will not be the same as those of 2002.
What the Natural Law Party uniquely and constantly provides, however, is access to the infinite resources of Natural Law itself in order to activate and lubricate such solutions. Uniquely, it also provides a holistic understanding of how those resources can be further utilised to bring about a far deeper transformation of life on this earth.
Some time ago I heard John Hagelin observing that at the end of the 20th century we are witnessing the transformation of a mechanistic industrial age into an age based on information. More importantly, however, Dr Hagelin pointed out that because of the inherently abstract nature of information relative to matter, it is only a small step from an age based on information to one based on consciousness. There are perhaps already some encouraging signs of this beginning to take place.
In July of this year the European Commission published its own vision of the continent for the early years of the new millennium in a discussion paper entitled "Agenda 2000." To many it seems a dry and dull document. But tucked away in one small section it draws attention to the specific importance of having what it calls "knowledge policies" - policies that revolve around research, innovation, education, training and human resources. This is a tentative echo of the primary approach of the Natural Law Party.
In elaborating on this theme the European Commission stresses the importance of information and communication technologies.
However, without consciousness information of itself is not knowledge. It is now the task of Natural Law Parties across all European nations and beyond, to ensure that those emerging knowledge-based policies are built upon the most complete and profound knowledge of Natural Law itself - the ultimate human and environmental resource.
Mark Griffiths BSc FRICS FAAV
UK Spokesman on Energy and the Environment
(Introduction
to Sthapatya Veda)
(Introduction to Ayur Veda)
(UK General Election manifesto
1997 )
(Dr John Hagelin - Natural Law Party US
Presidential Candidate 1996)
(Wessex report on the 4th International Convention of Natural Law
Parties )
(Wessex Maharishi Ayur Veda Health Centre opens in Bournemouth)
(World scientists call for action
on global warming at Kyoto climate summit December 1997)