The climate crisis is literally at our front doors but it's been easy to ignore while it was mainly affecting poor people in countries ‘over there’. The notion that wealthy, heavily consumerist nations are predominantly to blame is a truth that has been wilfully ignored.
Following the hottest summer in living memory in
2022 and the decimation of important insect species / wildlife and the
increase in flooding – even the hardest-hearted, most deluded must now
accept that this is personal. It’s here.
The day before New Year’s Eve I walked home in cold heavy
rain past the swollen Water of Leith which had burst its banks despite recent
expensive and disruptive flood defences. I encountered a woman trying to
‘sweep’ road water away from her front path where it would have had easy access to her front door.
She complained to me that she’d contacted the council and they’d done nothing… Then I looked along both sides of her street.
It was an increasingly familiar and depressing sight.
Front garden after front garden was paved over or
block paved or concreted or gravelled. Hedges were ripped out as per my own
neighbours, losing precious urban species habitat, often for vehicle access. God-forbid
any living thing should mar these sterile monstrosities.
Any chance for excess water to be absorbed naturally
is blocked. Each front garden turned into an ugly water-repellent void where
run-off water gushes into roads and along to drains that can’t cope.
The people responsible for her immediate minor
flooding were the woman’s own neighbours.
I wonder if 2023 will be the year we finally take
personal responsibility for our immediate environment if not the global one. I include the mountains of toxic dog shit and plastic litter.
Looking to move house myself, I note with increasing
sadness and bemusement the number of homes Estate Agents describe as “well maintained” that
are green-free horrors. Too many garden make-over programmes? Have these people
succumbed to the idea that concrete is an easy maintenance option – because its
not. A wild garden always looks kind of nice. Weed-broken concrete or block
paving pretty soon looks like a slum.
Often these places have no trees or vegetation or
hedges or even grass. More and more brick and concrete. Surely in 2023 this is the
opposite of “well maintained”. Instead might we say ‘unaware or uncaring people
live here’ or ‘clearly these people have children who don’t need to breathe
air’ or ‘these folk have not heard of the climate crisis’ or ‘these people own
a well-stocked boat’ or ‘these folk haven’t worked out that we need
biodiversity’… This is a sad house.
Yes we need industry to pick up the tab on a grand
scale – we need the polluters and environmental vandals of the wealthy West to
pay for the global damage it has done and support the poorest countries on the
planet; we need to ignore the MAD ads for cruises and cheap holidays but most
of all we need to understand the very personal nature of the climate crisis.
It is literally at our front doors…
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I recommend My BOOKS to you as always (UK/US and expanded distribution from you fave online bookstore) but, in view of
the topic of the first post of 2023 I'll specifically flag up these two -
Casey & the Surfmen (audio version bandcamp)
Zero One Zero Two (goodreads)