GREENSCARF is the beginning of a new venture, writing and on line, not film making, my previous profession.

My 'GreenScarf' project comes from trying to understand a modern feeling -- shared by many -- of being trapped in 'environmental' problems no one seems able to solve, often even address. Insects are declining -- what do we, individuals do? Micro-plastics are in human tissue....The horror of nuclear was will not leave us.... I am trying to address, through human stories, here a historical one >>>>the nature of this trap.

We invent things, cars, a power grid, atomic weapons for our own benefit, only to find they have problems, for example, produce an excess of carbon, for which there is not, as yet, any right way to go back or go forward.

Humans are trapped in the technologies we develop?

Yes, no, maybe.

I think it is a problem. It's poignant.

I -- say -- have a job thirty miles away, no public transport. I don't want to use the car, and have no other access to work. Buy an electric car? Maybe it helps.

I should have a job closer to home. I was turned down for them and offered this good opportunity. I have to use the car. It is no good telling me there should be more buses. There are a few buses but we've built factories and shops in such a dispersed manner than buses can't serve them all. I could get to work by bus if I had three hours spare each morning. 

I am part of a generation that built these dispersed offices, factories, houses on the assumption that getting around by car was efficient -- it is. I -- this generation -- don't mean malice. I can't afford an electric car -- this present one is not paid for yet. And there are no jobs close to where I live.

I think I am saying that 'the environment' is inside and not outside us, that the problems we create, too much carbon release, too much packing used, new houses we need where there used to wild meadow... these -- our 'footprint' -- is not developed with malice.

Our central heating, our shopping, our transport, even our flights abroad are what we need. If we can cut back on them, there is certainly not much popular will for that. Look at the biggest recent protest in Europe, the yellow jacket protest. It was against a French government plan to raise fuel prices. The government wanted to reduce gasoline use or make people drive less fast. France was brought to a standstill by what to some was a reasonable green proposal.

Governments that promise growth are elected. While they say they will integrate that growth with green plans, there are only trivial signs of this. The growth comes before the green. Carbon use goes up year by year in a decade of pledges to release it. Look at future predictions for the growth in air traffic or plastic.

The graph of expected use goes up and up and up.

What can we do? Hold up the motorway and get eight years in jail for demanding an end to oil.

Even if footprints are reduced (carbon per person in Britain is well down) the world is, rightly enough, pledged to pulling people out of poverty and that means, unless you are starry-eyed, pushing them into carbon use.

I feel this trap and I've tried to write about it in historical setting and hope to use the GreenScarf concept to see if there are new ways of looking at the problem.

As said, the first GreenScarf story I have developed is historic. It is about individuals not inclined to take an interest in advanced weaponry, yet seeing that, with Germany attacking, the greatest scientific power, not to develop such weaponry may lead to a defeat by fascist armies.