Rav Casley Gera

I recently enjoyed the Environment Agency report 50 Ways To Save The Planet, given away with the Guardian a few months back. It’s a refreshingly positive approach to climate-change pamphleteering, with the emphasis firmly on answers. It’s also a bafflingly varied smörgåsbord of solutions, ranging from the mundane - put a jumper on before you turn up the heating - to mad-sounding hi-tech schemes, like using giant space mirrors to reflect the Sun’s rays away from the Earth. Amidst the sci-fi technology, though, one suggestion caught my eye: No 23, for the Government to legally require one-third of all park land to be converted to “public fruit and nut orchards and community held allotments” for the production of food.

While the high-tech schemes for reducing climate change might grab many of the media headlines, it’s ideas like this that show the environmental movement at its most radical.
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Ever since Barack Obama emerged as a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination commentators have been falling over themselves to evoke the memory of John F. Kennedy. Obama’s youth, short time in the senate, and relentless message of change all stir memories of the handsome young upstart who squeaked the presidency in 1960. With the endorsement of Obama’s candidacy by several senior Kennedys in late January, the comparisons became more high-profile. “A president like my father”, Caroline Kennedy called Obama. The New York Times evoked Kennedy’s most successful book when it referred to Obama’s race speech as a “Profile in Courage”.

With JFK still generally revered by most Americans, particularly the white working-class voters Obama desperately needs to win over, it’s a comparison Obama’s people are happy to see made (despite the odd snipe by commentators). The truth is, though, that John F. Kennedy and Obama came from very different places politically - and had very different concepts of “change”.
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