In a summer like no other, the only thing more startling than the searing heat has been the actual human people bathing in lukewarm insouciance and casual denial…
And it really has been – a summer like no other.
This has been confirmed by climate scientists, meteorologists, ecologists, “ists” that I don’t even fully comprehend because their expertise is so complex, as well as -I don’t know; A few other tiny details…
Details like facing down a prevailing wind roughly the temperature of a hairdryer whilst trying to unglue your shoe from a melting pavement.
Tiny details.
Like the impossibility of sleeping, pant-clad, on a lumpy sofa with three fans pointing at you while helicopters fighting the surrounding wildfires circle Apocalypse Now style outside your window.
Like not using a car with no air con for a long journey in case it breaks down on the motorway and you end up being airlifted to hospital with heat exhaustion. ( I mean, this actually happened to a number of people, but obviously, I’m just being dramatic)
Like the summer being too hot to let your children spend significant periods of time outside…how this affects them… how it affects you.
Like being too hot to eat properly.
Like plodding around with bottles of frozen water attached to your person as though engaged in some kind of middle-aged SAS training.
Like continuously spraying your children with tepid water as though they are fragile tropical plants.
Like trying not to look visibly worried in front of them when the view from your window starts to resemble a dystopian film and the permanent sirens begin to form a a weird trance soundtrack.
Like obsessively scrolling the live wildfires app, because the living room stinks of smoke each morning, your chest is tight, and you want to make sure that whatever is currently on fire isn’t the mountain that you live on.
Like worrying desperately about anyone older, younger, or vulnerable. Unable to put on extra layers to keep out the cold, unable to go somewhere different to escape…
Because there was no escape. For Weeks….
As I say, TINY personal experiences that may have been just slightly indicative that something over and above the norm was going on.
Experiences that are but a fragment, but the everyday tips of an iceberg now penetrating the helm of infrastructure, nature, and indeed life as we know it.
And yet…
And yet and yet and yet….
“It’s called summer“
Sir, your garden is on fire.
Sunbathers at the gates of hell…
We are all capable of getting sucked into internet rabbitholes, mouse holes, or sometimes rhino holes….
But during the worst of wildfires and heatwaves, there simply wasn’t a hole big enough to contain the sheer quantity of dribbling stupidity I had the misfortune to expose myself to.
Should I know better than to read comments under local news stories?
Ye-es, yes I should.
The trouble is, ignorance, usually in it’s colourful costume of occasional grammar and a style of spelling where letters appear to be fired from a canon in the frenzied hope they might land in the correct order, has a weird kind of magnetism.
It’s like not being able to look away from a person falling over in slow motion.
I have heard people denying climate change for years. I am familiar also, with the parents who turn up at the school gates dressed for the bahamas looking cheerfully relaxed in near 40 degree heat while the rest of us wonder if it’s sweat running down our legs or if we’ve actually done a wee.
Somehow though, this year, THIS SUMMER, I genuinely didn’t expect this kind of behaviour to continue…
In fact, in this respect, at the school gates, it didn’t.
On several days, the school had to close, due to being genuinely unable to safeguard the welfare of the children.
On one of the heatwave days though, the school did open, it was somewhere in the high 30’s, humidity about 90 per cent -and suddenly – everyone was behaving differently.
Even the tropical worshippers had ceased to worship and started to plod.
Parents moved slowly to collect their children, walked slowly – with quiet, concentrated deliberation – not wasting effort on chatting to others.
The air was eerily silent, thick with heat – pensive – with the energy and effort of people trying to cope with the day.
That was a real sign that something was new here...
But online, a different world view remained buoyantly in force, heatwave after heatwave.
Gary from Leicester was wondering why people were complaining so much when we were having a nice proper summer for once.
Towards the later end of the summer, the Welsh valleys began dealing with devastating wildfires.
“The worst thing about these wildfires is that people will start blaming them on “climate change”
The local social media was alight with commentary, 70% of which was about as helpful as a miniature water pistol.
There was much anger and outrage about arson. Helpful indignation about rampaging young people out of school who should be put under curfew, sent to corrective institutions or generally suspended by their boot straps from the local clock tower.
The 99 per cent of kids, (many of whom coming from struggling families with little money for summer), who weren’t running around setting fire to everything excluding their own arses, must have felt terrific about the daily societal tirades against their freedom.
I am not, in the least, saying that arson was not a huge problem this summer. Crimes need to be dealt with appropriately, but some of the causes for these behaviours (disproportionately higher in the most impoverished communities) need to be recognised and addressed with more urgency.
The point the over-excited corporal punishment enthusiasts often tried to make was that it was arson, rather than “climate change” that posed the problem.
Seemingly, they were unable to make the tiny leap that however the fire originated – it only spread like Sonic The Hedgehog with a flame thrower due to the country being drier than a cactus’ armpit.
Grass, it transpires, isn’t generally supposed to just fall out of the earth when you sneeze in its general vicinity.
Dust devils, don’t seem like they should exist in a world outside of looney tunes, let alone casually turning up at picnics in UK parks.
The landscape has achieved a state of dryness last seen when the pink panther floated out of the tumble drier.
This makes it fragile, fearsome, and most amazingly of all, flammable.
Wildfires, manmade or otherwise, have never before spread across the country like these did.
The physical realities of the wildfires in the South Wales valleys…
In my own stomping ground, there are mountainsides where the heat from the continued fires has kept peat beneath the ground smouldering for weeks.
It slowly burns through the soil back to the nearest watercourse or the mineral layers beneath, creating cavities for future land collapse, releasing incredible quanities of stored carbon – which the land will no longer be able to absorb – and destroying the ecosystem of the soil completely.
Huge swathes of grassland and forestry have been destroyed, with an obvious and devastating impact on wildlife.
With peats incredibly slow growth rate – the soils and environments will take centuries to recover.
And what of the impact on people? On our health?
Well physically, as a bare minimum, the prolonged heatwaves and wildfires drastically raise the rates of serious illness due to heat exhaustion, and seriously deteriorate the air quality across swathes of the UK. They also put many people in physical danger great enough to require evacuation.
And mentally?
There are local farmers, already at the end of their tether from drought ridden crops, who endured weeks of fear and sleeplessness, often personally firefighting to save their land and their livestock.
There are whole village communities – where families have lived for generations – whose surrounding valleys are now black and desolate.
The rugged green mountainsides we associate with the Welsh valleys, and their people, are more than a view, they are part of their identity – their everyday – built into the communities personal ecosystem.
I drove past some of the devastation from the fire in the Llanwonno forestry a couple of weeks ago – looked at the rows of terraced houses that now looked at a black mountain – and couldn’t imagine waking up to such a heart-breaking change in perspective.
It could have been my new view.
And I, like many others, have been by turns unable to go walking due to the heat, or in some cases, nervous to walk on the mountains because of the fires.
Walking is my therapy.
Outdoor exercise – access to nature – is vital to the mental health of the nation.
But what about…? other ridiculous deflections from the climate…
As well as putting the bikini on and getting the barbecue out whilst getting angry about kids with sticks, some of the other pearly nuggets of social commentary that scored top points this summer were the conversations that suggested the wildfires were a government led initiative to clear land in order to build data centres…
Enter the conspiracy theorists…
Okay…so you won’t believe the climatologist about the causes and effects of the warming planet, but you will believe the revelations on You Tube of “Dave’s ConspiraPeas” (because they will probably turn vegetables against us next and also he thought the name sounded clever.)
Some bloke who is qualified by having examined the field opposite him with a phone app, possessing a piddling little microphone he is able to leak verbiage into, and looking really earnest and confident while imparting wisdom of such apparent national significance you should probably sign an NDA.
Well, … he’s probably the one to listen to then.
Here’s the thing though, everyone knows the internet is awash with the flotsam and jetsom of intellects that have skipped several centuries of evolution.
But this thinking, or anti-thinking…is apparently hiding all around us… in plain sight…
Oops. I have become a conspiracy theorist about the presence of conspiracy theorists… Easily done.
I recently had a conversation with some seemingly friendly, articulate, educated people….. whe- en….several of them casually mentioned that they didn’t “buy in to the whole man-made climate change thing”.
The reasons given were that the climate of the earth had undergone enormous shifts over many millennia, ice ages, volcanoes, etc, and that data on the behaviour of said climate had only been collected for an incremental fragment of that time.
What was happening now therefore, was merely part of the natural cycles of the earth.
Science on the effect of carbon emmissions on global warming, furthermore, could not be trusted, due to data manipulation by those wishing to make money from green energy (It’s funny that, because I always thought fossil fuels also had a reputation as being a nice little earner?)
Whatever shape the future is taking, someone will need to lean into it to make money. That’s business, that’s industry – and there are good and bad ways of conducting it, whatever your market is.
Somehow, manufacturing data that carbon emissions are exponentially speeding global warming in order to sell an electric car doesn’t feel like a full and compelling argument though.
Could promoting a green agenda not be allowed to benefit the planet and industry at the same time?
If industry is promoting green products and living – Surely it’s because it has no choice – based on what science tells us?
The purveyor of above conspiracy dismissed mainstream media as unreliable, having – apparently – their own, more specialised, sources.
Presumably MI6…or Dave’s ConspiraPeas…
The Dustpan of doom
I asked a straightforward question.
Regardless of what we believed the causes of climate change to be, if we knew the Earth was warming at the rate projected, and that actions we took had the potential to either accelerate or potentially slow this process, didn’t we have a good incentive and duty to do anything we possibly could as individuals?
To make the Earth greener, more liveable, for the sake of ourselves and our children?
The answer I received, in retrospect, might be one of the most depressing status’ of engagement I have come across.
I was pointed to the emmissions produced by the U.S.A, by China and others being so astronomical as to render it redundant for anyone else to try and do anything.
“It’s like turning up to the site of 9/11 with a dustpan and brush”
I found this answer strangely chilling.
It sails blindly beside the point so neatly that it is like it has attached itself to the truth in passing, but inadvertantly reversed the direction…
Because of course… if sixty billion people turned up with a dustpan and brush…
Do we imagine that we are completely divorced and voiceless from any public decision or action?
We are not separate, defenceless blobs of humanity upon whom the scales of the future are placed.
We are part of the scales.
We can tip them.
Every extra person that picks up a dustpan.
That campaigns, that recycles, that re-uses, that plants and grows, that raises awareness, that helps wildlife…
That simply recognises the problem – that asks what they can do – whether from armchair, political forum, or mountaintop.
That speaks about idiotic or lazy viewpoints, knowing full well the potential backlash…
People talking about this summer – about climate change, – get accused of fearmongering. Still.
Personally, I have no wish to monger fear. I would rather monger cheese, or something else generally cosy and reassuring. And I would prefer to write about landscape and wellness and nature…
….but some things require facing, require saying…
Require an old-fashioned dose of galvanising vitriol.
It isn’t just our landscape that needs re-greening…it’s our brains, our drive…our engagement…
The views I heard this summer – whether scepticism of a problem existing, redirected anger, or conspiracies that exploded in other directions – have something in common.
They are all fundamentally an abdication of responsibility wrapped in a gift bag of having a strong and loud opinion about something.
A separation of the individual both from the omnipotent, (and occasionally fictional) machinery of government, and from the sustaining earth beneath their feet.
When viewed collaboratively, an individuals actions and choices have as vast an impact as those of a country.
No corner of the earth is actually small…including our brains.
And gentle action in unison becomes a thunderous wave.
People need to get on their surfboards…the emergency is here.
Re-igniting passion and connection…
I believe it should be hope, not fear, that drives us to pick up our surfboard, our dustpan, our pen…our weapon of choice.
And real hope, is not blind optimism that the problem is fictional – that it will all be alright in the end – or that someone else will sort things out.
Real hope lies in connection and engagement. It requires presence, and effort. Actively facing difficult realities with flexibility, innovation, and a resilient spirit.
When nature is thwarted, as far as she is able, she will generate new pathways; shedding leaves early in drought, blindly changing the direction of root growth to avoid the path of concrete deep beneath the earth – finding ways to adapt, with intuitive green tendrils.
For as long as she can… at least.
If the lowest tiers of social commentary are anything to go by, large numbers of the humanity portion of the Earth have instead taken up an airplane about to crash stance – inserting their head firmly between their knees and being surprised when the only thing they can see is their own arses.
We need to take a leaf out of nature’s book. Fire up new synapses in the parts of our our brains that have dried out – that have forgotten that nature is not a separate entity.
We are in this together.
The climate crisis is an emergency, and should be treated as such. We cannot avert it, but we can adapt, mitigate, restore, nourish, in whatever ways we can.
Access to nature is such a privilege, a resource and life-blood to our health and wellness.
Yet at times this summer, it has felt like the Earth has been on a personal mission to strike us down.
Is this really a time to be saying there is nothing I can personally do?
If we care at all – From the welfare of nations facing oblivion, to the plants and trees, the people on our doorstep – we can all make tiny differences that become part of a thunderous wave.
Look at the yellow fields and hills.
Do one small thing as of today.
I want my mountains back, I want my pathways, I want the trees I pass everyday to change colour in autumn with the excitement of the season, not wither at the begining of August.
I want to protect what protects and nurtures me.
So what will I do? Personally?
Well, for now, I will start taking a litter picking bag on some of my walks, removing rubbish from the mountains whenever I can manage it.
I will take more part in local groups and organisations working to protect the climate, the environment, our local landscapes…
Despite not enjoying confrontation, I will engage – not run away – from the fiery debates.
I will continue trying to grow vegetables, flowers, trees.
Try to waste as little food as possible.
Maybe even monger some cheese for good measure.
And I will publish this…
Other recent posts
The Call of The Valleys – Walking a landscape to belong
Walking – The gentle therapy with warrior power
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