An Exercise in Futility
July 2024
We have re-elected our new MP. It was never going to be me, but I stood as a candidate anyway to try to raise some sense of urgency about the Climate Crisis and I would like to thank all of you who voted for me. Every one of those votes was thoughtfully cast, out of deep concern for our future.
After giving my usual talk recently on ‘Adventure, Activism and the Climate Crisis’ an octogenarian asked me, ‘What hope is there?’
If you are hoping that Climate crisis will go away, then I can assure you it won’t.
If you think that technology will enable us to continue ‘business as usual’, then I’m afraid that is a false hope too. There is great technology out there, but the levels of investment to get it scaled up in time won’t happen without political leadership.
And if you are hoping that it will all be over when we reach net zero, the fact is that net zero is just the start of the race your grandchildren and great grandchildren will have to run to start getting the CO2 out of the atmosphere.
There is a better, fairer, more harmonious world out there. An economy that works in harmony with nature. Where people don’t build their wealth out of other people’s poverty. I trust that our new government will take significant steps towards it!
We need a new Realism. It is not possible to negotiate with storms, wildfires, droughts, floods and extreme weather events so let’s focus on the Realism of the Planet and then plan how our man-made economies and financial systems need to change.
Sailing around the world I experienced profound connections with the energies of our overheated and polluted planet. In the Arctic last summer, my beard growing longer by the day, I began to see myself as The Ancient Mariner.
You will remember how he stops the wedding guest and ‘holds him with his glittering eye’. He has his tale of Man’s abuse of Nature, symbolised in the albatross, and the price he and his crewmates had to pay as a result. Like him I have a terrible truth to tell that nobody really wants to hear!
So far man’s greed, arrogance and selfishness have determined our course. Until that changes, I will play the Ancient Mariner, telling my inconvenient truth to whomever will listen!