Carol Royle Talks at the Green Apple Awards

Star of screen and stage, Carol Royle presented the awards at this years Green Apple Awards for the Built Environment, an experience she describes as exhilarating, inspiring and tiring.

During the presentations Carol shared some of her thoughts with the over 200 assembled guests.

Below is her speech, which all found to be thought provoking and insightful.

"You are all here today, precisely because you are all aware of the enormity of the subject of the environment, the enormity and importance of the problems with which we are all faced, and you are here because, armed with this knowledge, you and your companies have pro-actively decided to do something positive about it. I am thrilled and honoured to be here, with you, handing out these awards.

It is not for me, therefore, to stand and talk to you about things that you probably know far more about than me, and indeed, are in positions to act upon your knowledge and wisdom.

So all I am going to do, is share with you, human to human, some nuggets that have struck me, and for me epitomize the situation, and have crystallized just how desperately important change is.

The point which resonates with me most I think, and it is a subject very dear to my heart, is just how intertwined we all are; not just with each other, as I say - human to human, but species to species, species to plants, plants to earth…I have learnt a great deal from that wonderful film ‘Home’, by Yann Arthus-Bertrand - you may know it; I have learnt that humans and chimps share 99% of their genetic inheritance, but the common fruit fly shares 40% of its genes with us, and the sea urchin, a marine creature with no head or limbs, 70%!

And it doesn’t stop there – we are all made of the same stuff, everything we are, everything we touch, everything we eat – we are all one. We have to act as a whole, nothing is more important than something else; every species has a role to play and a place, none is futile or harmful, we all depend on each other.

As well as all the obvious changes that we simply have to make in methods of agriculture, in the energy we use, in the food that we eat, in the products we consume, we have to realize that we, the ‘wise human’, cannot be happy just to dominate and control this planet, we have to learn to be its guardian instead, for the few decades we are here. We have to learn to respect and care for all its species, and not to exploit them; to tend the earth, and not to drain it; we have only one planet, not the 6 that we would need by 2030 if we continue as we are – time is running out.

Our planet has already had 5 large scale episodes, the most extreme at the end of the Primary Era, some 250 million years ago, wiping out 80% of species, then in existence. We now seem to be at our 6th episode; some species are dying out 1,000 times faster than the natural rate. This phase is not due, as before, to natural catastrophes, or the impact of meteorites, or natural climate change, this one is totally attributed…to the human being.

Life on our planet began 4 billion years ago. Mammals around 200 million years ago. Dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago. We, are only 200,000 years old, yet, despite our vulnerability, we have taken possession of every habitat, conquered swathes of territories, and in the past 50 years alone, the earth has been more radically changed than in 0all the previous generations of humanity.

In spite of all that we call ‘advancement’, and ‘civilisation’, 5,000 people a day die because of dirty drinking water, and 1 billion people have no access to safe drinking water. Humanity’s water consumption is used by agriculture. And yet…it takes 175,000 cubic feet of water per day to water a gold course in Las Vegas, the average consumption of a town of 12,000. It takes 530 gallons of water to produce 2lbs wheat and 2,640 gallons to produce 2lbs meat. Soya is grown on reclaimed land from the Amazon, which has been reduced by 20% in 40 years, to feed meat, that is raised and killed in terrible conditions, and fed anti-biotics and hormones, yet 1 billion people are going hungry – meat production is taking the food out of people’s mouths!

And since 1950, fishing has increased 5 fold, and all current fish stocks are threatened with exhaustion.

The disparity between the poor and the wealthy worldwide has to be addressed, and by means that will necessitate re-thinking what we actually need in our cultures.

If our governments and corporations see, recognize and change industry, agriculture and our approach to consumption, extraction, production, distribution and disposal, (we cannot continue with ‘designed obsolescence’), greenhouse gases will be eased, and so then will climate change, allowing our precious top soil to reconstitute itself.

1 major river in 10 no longer flows into the sea for several months of the year; half the world’s marshes have been taken. In Siberia the permafrost is melting under which lies methane, 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Ice caps are 4% thinner than 40 years ago, one can go on and on, as you know.

Humans have a wonderful capacity for ‘denial’; we are all capable of it on various levels, putting difficult and unpalatable thoughts out of mind. Dictators are adept at it, leaving their minions to do the dirty work; we’ve all met some doctors who are great at it – they develop a less than empathetic bed-side manner – how we cling onto the empathetic ones! Slaughter-house workers, vivisectors, and often those in suits of authority. It is part of the human’s way of ‘surviving’, of ‘protecting’ itself, but this time, denial will leave us unprotected and be the human’s demise.

We have to develop our potential for empathy and understanding. People, like you, are trying to do this, and change the wrong directions we have been taking, aiming at sustainability, land conservation, re-cycling, education, and development of new methods of energy.

Unlike the dinosaurs, mankind possesses the means to counteract our problems. We cannot be like those civilisations that disappeared – Easter Island, Maya, Babylonian, Greenland Vikings. We have 10 years to reverse these trends, and, thanks to you, we are moving in the right direction.

You may have heard of the ‘haiku’, a short Japanese poem, getting straight to the point, in only three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively.

I would like to leave you now with one I wrote for you last night –

We are all here now,

Ordained by some strange, great force.

Please let’s stay, always."

Carol Royle - www.carolroyle.co.uk