The SNJ columnist Karen Eberhardt-Shelton was born in California but grew up in England.

She now lives in Stroud and is currently working on an education project called Learn, Think, Act and is hoping to develop an eco-community land trust.

Her thought-provoking columns will focus on how we all have to take responsibility for our actions and for our planet.

Nature does it - why can’t we?

I MADE a double-sided poster to take the anti-incinerator demonstration in Gloucester on Wednesday.

One side said ‘Incineration = regression, not progress’ the other (both in big black letters) said ‘Incineration equals ignorance’.

It was a treat to see it on my TV screen during the 10pm news on BBC1.

But despite all the posters, vocal outpourings, even some singing, during the actual two-and-a-half hour debate and discussion session in the council chambers, with some 70 of us protesters allowed in. The ultimate outcome was 24 for the motion 27 against, and one abstention.

So we lost. But not entirely.

There’s still more to be done.

I haven’t been in a formal setting like that for a long time, so many suits and ties, the humourless head man controlling the whole thing, no chance to speak up.

The pro-incinerator clan consisted primarily of Tories and Ukippers and their statements were all written down, pre-prepared – insinuating that apparently logical and sensible factual material offered by opposing councillors carried no weight, and thus should be ignored, along with objections to contractual information involving huge sums of money being withheld.

In the end, none of it comes down to connecting related issues to the bigger picture.

For example, population growth.

As the entire scenario expands and bears the weight of more and more, if we can’t sensibly deal with waste issues now, how on earth will we manage 25 or 50 years on?

Why isn’t there a serious focus on eliminating whatever can’t be recycled?

All plastic containers, and plastic that’s used once, then chucked in the bin?

This use once, throwaway madness is about as detached from the real world as it gets.

You won’t find any non-usable litter lying about in front of a fox’s den or a crow’s nest.

If a wolf in Yellowstone eats only half a rabbit, a coyote will soon come round to clean up the rest.

Materials that can be recycled would make the waste disposal system vastly more practical to operate and less of an eyesore; the plasma set-up would produce clean energy; bio-waste would be used for compost, and if kids in school learned how senseless and disrespectful it is to litter, maybe the size of our IQs would begin to qualify for admiration.

In the end, it’s nothing to do with weather, the share index or mouldy cheese.

Bad news and difficult schemes can land on us like pigeon droppings out of a clear blue sky.

It’s not that a bunch of bad people are necessarily going around doing bad things in seemingly nice communities, overall, it’s the accumulation of obnoxious chunks of dirt that eventually add up to a big lump under the social carpet.

Instilling another incinerator in the mix makes the carpet more lumpy. Along with various other manoeuvers detached from common sense, the lumps add up, until finally, we can’t help but stumble.