Advice for European Environmentalists and Citizens regarding the Extinction Rebellion protests in European capitals

It is not changes in legal and state regulations, economic principles and the standard of living that the environmental movement should be focussing its attention on. Instead it should be striving to change the worldview of humanity and initiating the dawn of a new, environmentally-minded civilization. Homo consumers must become Eco sapiens, which is the only way to ensure our success. No government can initiate this process, it can only support it. An environmentally-minded civilization is not created by governments or bureaucrats, but by philosophers, intellectuals and environmental activists. The focus must be on educational, rather than administrative programmes. What can we expect bureaucrats to do? They are also victims of the Homo consumers consciousness, and just like the entire world community, they also need to be enlightened.

I watched a series of videos showing your campaigns. Most of the participants were wearing bright coloured clothes. As we know, the textile industry is the second biggest polluter of the environment. It consumes a huge amount of natural resources—water, oil, earth, plants and animals, uses toxic chemicals and discharges a large amount of carbon dioxide. Coloured clothing is manufactured using hazardous and detrimental dyes. I would recommend that the movement’s participants think about the damage the textile industry is causing to the environment and wear only natural colours (black, white, beige) that are not chemically processed. I also suggest that you cut down on the amount of clothes you own, do not fill your wardrobes and suitcases with textiles. If you stop buying them, they will not be manufactured. Today approximately 30,000 tonnes of textiles are incinerated every day, which causes colossal damage to the environment.

Second, many of the activists were carrying plastic water bottles. Knowing how environmentally unfriendly they are, why do you continue to use them? It is not up to the government to ban their manufacture, it is we, citizens, who must stop buying them. The law of the market dictates that if products are not bought, they will stop being manufactured.

Reduce your use of water, do not spend more than 7 minutes in the shower. Humanity uses as much water as there is in Lake Geneva every year. In 15-20 years, there will be no natural drinking water left. Drinking water supplies will be exhausted and only desalinated water will be available, which is hardly good for your health.

Here is an important practical recommendation. You can either independently, or along with your neighbours, take a sample of tap water and samples of bottled water bought at your nearest supermarket (several samples, for testing integrity, marked only with numbers) and take them to a chemical laboratory at a higher educational institution for analysis. This kind of analysis is available to the public and is not very expensive. But the more people you invite to participate in this experiment, the greater the public reaction will be (and the cheaper the cost of the laboratory services, no more than 5 euros per family). You will be surprised to find that the tap water is no worse than the bottled water from the supermarket, and may even be better. Where do you think companies get the water they pour into bottles?

Most likely from the same public water supply...

I implore you not to buy water from the supermarket, particularly in plastic bottles. Do not add to the islands of plastic waste in the World Ocean that currently spread over hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. Convince yourselves that tap water is no worse than bottled water and use it. This will be your small, but very important step toward saving the planet.

And the government has nothing to do with it. I am not defending bureaucrats, deputies and state leaders here, I am saying that we are the ones who need to ensure that environmental standards are observed. Otherwise we risk finding ourselves in the exact opposite situation when people will be unable to enjoy life to the full, be deprived of work due to an abrupt reduction in production and become totally miserable.

To prevent this, we need to begin by changing people’s outlook and ourselves. Read EuRICAA – A Worldview Environmental Revolution: A Code of New Eco Sapiens Civilizational Standards. It is available in English and in all the world’s languages at www.euricaa.com. Tell your fellow countrymen how to change their worldview and advocate an environmental-friendly lifestyle. I offer several important recommendations on how to do this.

- Don’t buy cars, use environmental-friendly types of transport. Owning a car in a city with an extensive public transportation network and convenient conditions for riding bikes and scooters is an environmental crime. In 3-5 years, there will be no more room for car parks in cities.

- Do not eat in restaurants, reduce your food and alcohol consumption. As we know, the distillation of alcohol produces a huge emission of CO2. Have an influence on business, support places to eat that use edible dishes and utensils instead of the usual kind. They are made from food products and are consumed at the end of the meal. This is a good way to save water. A large amount of greenhouse gases is discharged during the manufacture of metal utensils and dishes. The German Füllett Company is already manufacturing bowls made of rye-wheat flour and rapeseed oil and Russian scientists have created safe plastic made from potato starch. In Japan, Marushige Seika KK is making plates out of crab crackers and cups from seaweed.

- Stop smoking! A total of 11.5 million tonnes of lumber is burned annually to dry tobacco leaves, smoking tobacco leads directly to the discharge of 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and approximately 5.2 million tonnes of methane, while 200,000 hectares of woodland are destroyed every year. Cigarette butts are one of the most widespread types of litter throughout the world: they produce 2 million tonnes of hard wastes, 300,000 tonnes of nicotine and 200,000 tonnes of chemical wastes. Seven million people die every year from smoking. Criticise smokers nationwide. Do not buy cigarettes, do not undermine your health—and this industry will die without government decrees.

- Think about what you eat, cut down the amount of meat and fish you consume. Lose weight—human faeces contaminate the planet with heavy metals. In the past 50-70 years, the number of overweight people has increased 400-fold and reached one-and-a-half billion. An overweight person (apart from those who are obese on medical grounds) contaminates the earth with a large amount of heavy metals—mercury, lead, aluminium, copper and magnesium, which modern industry discharges into the atmosphere. Consequently, they get into the soil and then into the human body along with food and water.

- Do not live in houses made of concrete (the manufacture of concrete discharges 2.2 billion tonnes of CO2 annually according to the aggregate data of countries where statistics are kept). If you don’t buy this type of housing, it won’t be built.

- Don’t buy flats or houses with a living area of more than 40 m² per person.

- Don’t fill your home with unnecessary furniture, be a minimalist.

- Do not use shampoo, gels and creams for hygienic purposes, since the substances contain contaminate the water and soil. Use soap, which is much more economical than other products.

- Advocate the prohibition of hunting and fishing, the use of animals in circuses and their incarceration in zoos.

- Do not buy rubber footwear or items made of fur. Cut down the amount of leather items you buy.

- Use reusable bags and string bags for shopping, plastic and paper bags should no longer be part of your repertoire.

- Forego all kinds of plastic. According to the latest results of researchers from the German Federal Department of Environmental Protection and the Robert Koch Institute, 11 types of plastic from packaged products, toys and bottled water were found in 97% of the children tested.

- Lobby for establishing glass depositories in all countries, do not buy products packaged in plastic, paper or cardboard. Glass is an environmentally inert material and can be recycled.

- Cut down on your use of paper. Take books out of the library, arrange for book exchanges with your friends and acquaintances, participate in BookCrossing. Switch to reading electronic books. Totally eliminate the use of paper towels, tissues and paper napkins. Prohibit the distribution on paper advertisements—in your mail box, entrance lobbies, offices. Remember that 7-8 million hectares of forests are destroyed for the needs of the printing industry—to print books, newspapers, magazines, calendars, advertising materials and produce office paper and other supplies. And as banal as it may sound, forests are the planet’s lungs. They can be preserved if everyone begins recycling their waste paper.

- Don’t attend firework displays, don’t buy fireworks—modern pyrotechnics contain organochloride substances and various salts that give off aerosols when burned containing compounds of heavy metals and, in particular, toxic substances—dioxins. Do not attend festivals and shows or the performances of artistes wearing bright, colourful clothing.

Business will independently regulate all the inconveniences related to your new environmental outlook.

You can find other recommendations at www.euricaa.com in EuRICAA – A Worldview Environmental Revolution: Code of New Eco Sapiens Civilizational Standards.

What demands can be made of the government?

Unconstructive proposals, such as “Let’s improve the environment,” will do no good. Formulate clear demands, such as:

- Although we talk about reducing the use of aviation for passenger travel, the European Union has closed all night train routes, forcing passengers to transfer to airplanes again. Demand that railroads run night trains and that new routes are added to relieve airlines: for example: Paris-Madrid, London-Madrid, Rome-Berlin, Vienna-Lisbon, Warsaw-Rome, Vilnius-London, Moscow-Amsterdam. Passenger express trains should take preference over freight trains.

- Insist on a decrease in airplane flights and the introduction of dirigibles with a capacity of 3,000-5,000 tonnes using helium-4. They are safe and environmentally friendly.

- Demand that grants be renewed for creating and installing mirrors at low orbits, 50-70 km, for lighting cities at night and reducing the use of hydrocarbons.

- Visit the EuRICAA website to find out about the technology for obtaining methane from the intestines of cattle and pigs and its use as an energy resource. This is an innovative and free proposal for the entire world community.

- Demand control of space launches. Every rocket or shuttle launch discharges a huge amount of water molecules which destroy the ozone layer of the ionosphere at an altitude of 50-100 km. Every launch destroys around 50,000 tonnes of ozone, creating holes in the Earth’s ozone layer of 50,000, 100,000 and 300,000 km². American environmentalists should pay attention to the Shuttle, the engines of which cause the greatest damage to the atmosphere, since they operate on hard fuel and their jet streams contain a large amount of hydrogen chloride, which is a particularly active ozone-destroying substance.

The environmental movement should be planetary. We are inviting you to become members of the International Environmental Eco Sapiens Hamburg Club and attend the club’s meeting on 25-30 September, 2020 in Hamburg to hold an open dialogue on creating a new environmental Eco sapiens civilization.

P.S. The environmental situation in the world is increasingly convincing me that the International Hamburg Club must be established on a planetary scale. It will be a unique venue for holding regular meetings among environmentalists from all over the world and drawing up new civilizational standards based on joint discussions. These standards can then be offered as recommendations to governments. The members of this club should be philosophers, intellectuals and environmental activists, not government bureaucrats and deputies. Politicians should only be the main tools for implementing the decisions made by the participants of these meetings. The authority of the Hamburg Club in the currently alarming environmental situation must be higher than the diplomatic “all talk and no action” of the UN.

P.P.S. In 1949, Rothschild and Co. erected the building that houses the United Nations, and today Potemkin and Co. are ready to erect a centre for the planetary environmental Hamburg Club in Hamburg.

Make yourselves known, friends! Take active part in the activity of the planetary environmental Hamburg Club.