“Not surprisingly, this sense of bleakness and futility has seeped into wider culture. A recent international survey of young people found that 75% believed “the future is frightening”, 56% thought “humanity is doomed” and 39% were “hesitant to have children”.

Climate change is a critical issue and one that will require considerable political will and social resolve to challenge. Hallam and Franzen and similar thinkers insist that only an apocalyptic vision will persuade people to take action. In reality, as the environmental journalist Hannah Ritchie has observed: “Once anger transitions into hopelessness, we struggle to achieve much at all.” Telling people that there is no future is hardly conducive to getting them to act to change it….”

(This from here.)

We need the next generation to dream of different, better ways of being. We need them to revolt against the world we have made, to tear down our institutions and make their own.

What skill set will let them do this? Pessimism is almost not likely to help.

As a father of two now adults, I have watched them struggle with these ideas. The problems of the world are so hard to take on when you are struggling aleady with your own becoming.

A few years ago I wrote this for my son;

.

Brave

.

You were never bold. As a boy you

Beheld the world from distance, as if

The cliff edge was closer. But

Behind those beautiful eyes were

Lands of your own making, where

Wild beasts roamed, unfettered.

.

Why do the small cruelties outweigh a

Thousand kindnesses? Why do

Softest souls wound deepest?

Would that it were possible to stay

Inside those dreams you had

But only half remember.

.

But you were always brave. It requires courage

To take a good long look but then still leap.

Sure, the horizon seemed no closer after the

Small steps, but you made them anyway.

And when days are dark from the doubting,

Take shelter my son. It never rains forever.

.

The life singing in you is not just journey,

Nor located at some distant destination.

It is here. It is now. It’s what happens

When wounds half-heal but bleed not

Blood, but good. It is not in the width of things

But their depth. It’s a rediscovery of love.

I have written before on this blog about how the ancient myths from the beginning of Genesis might be read as an allegory of the rise of mankind, from our start as hunter gatherers, to farmers, to accumiulators, to city builders then to the destructive rise and fall of empires. You can read more about this reading of the Bible here.

You may wonder what some ancient stories from the Bible have to do with climate change?

I think the stories we tell each other in order to make sense of our world matter, and perhaps none more than our origin story. We have been raised on the idea of human progress, defined technologically. Even with the destruction of world wars and the real and present realities of climate emergency, this myth is very hard to counter. We still hear grand plans to solve our problems technologically; some brand new carbon scrubbing technology, or brand new electric cars.

But what if we need to go back to the beginning? What if the problem started when we forgot the theology, the ecology, the politics and the economics of the garden of Eden?

What if, as we ate the fruit of the tree in that ancient story, we separated ourselves from the harmony and balance of the ecosystem that sustains us? What if this was our ‘sin’ all along, and that these sins are now finding us out?

.

The fruit from tree of the knowledge of good and evil

.

We ate then separated

We were in leaves, we were in tree

We were not I but we were we

We saw beauty rise in everything

Like birds we were not taught to sing

We were not young nor were we old

We were the way a thing unfolds

The way a breath is whisper soft

The way small feathers stay aloft

We were not here we were not there

Our garden covered everywhere

We ate then separated

.

We ate then separated

We formed in tribes, we played with fire

Always motivated to acquire

We gobbled down small chunks of knowing

And knew where every wind was blowing

We knew each sin we should commit

And just how atoms could be split

We built a house behind high walls

And stuffed it full from shopping malls

We ate then separated

.

We ate then separated

But hold a memory deep inside

Of how the soil did once provide

Of how the speckled forest floor

Embraced tiny mushroom spores

Of how the stars were mystery

And love made electricity

Of how each body is but host

To the spirit and the holy ghost

We ate then separated

Most of the problems that our world is faced with at present are economic ones.

Or to put it another way, the way we organise our economic relations at both macro and micro levels is both the cause and the sustaining circumstance of global warming.

Or to put it one more way, any solution to the climate emergency has to be an economic one.

These things being said, where are the economic solutions? Why are different economic arrangements being not being openly discussed and debated in the mainstream media on a daily basis? Where are the breakthrough ideas? Where is the careful economic critical analysis of just how our economies are bringing us towards disaster? More importantly, what might be the best economic solutions?

Part of the problem is political. After all, economic theory is mostly seen through the lens of sectarian politics. ‘Progressive’ left wing solutions have been so effectively dismissed, vilified and undermined that it has become entirely logical to dismiss them as crackpot communism. Consider the efforts to introduce a version of the Green New Deal both sides of the Atlantic and the partisan campaign fought against it.

Another part of the problem is that the power of wealth suffocates all threats to their own ascendancy. This is not always deliberate (although often it is) rather it is an emergent quality of privilege and systems that have evolved that enshrine inequality and over consumption.

Then there is something about the nature of economics itself as an acedemic discipline. Remember the Post Crash Economics Society? The study of economics has too often happened within the comfort of its own establishment. There are many notable exceptions but the students revolted for good reason.

Having said all that, the ideas are there if you look for them. More than this, I would argue thtat we MUST look for them. We must find a way to educate ourselves so that when we hear both political parties talking about national debt and gross domestic product as the main economic factors that determine and justify economic policies we can scoff in their faces from a position of knowledge. With that in mind, the point of this post is to propose a couple of places to start.

Firstly, the world being done by the New Economics Foundation. You can read their latest e zine here which gives a good spread of articles from a different perspective.

Next, consider the brilliant work done by Thomas Piketty. Here is a TED talk he did about the role of wealth in our societies, and how this is pulling us towards destruction.

Finally, one of our own Kate Rowarth, who has given us a very simple and powerful model that might replace our dominant neoliberal hegemony. Here are 7 short vids that might change the whole world- start with this one and follow it through.

Climate change will effect us all, but not equally.

It is a present reality for many places in the world- not just the high-profile disasters like forest fires and flooding, but also the encroachment of sea over low lying pacific islands, or threat to many marginal ways of living through altered growing conditions or depleted wildlife. It is likely that we will see more political/economic instability as resources become squeezed.

We have been told to expect mass movements of refugees as people are forced to move away from places that are no longer able to support them, or as they are displaced by wars of unrest. But we are used to refugees, right?

.

Other

.

I am not like you are

I breathe under water

I make mystery prayers

To a god you don’t know, and

I lurk at your border with outrageous demands

I see what you have and I hold out my hands

.

I am not like you are

My skin is of scales

Should your tongue cut me deep

I will not feel pain, so

I climb in small boats and I sneak across sea

I see all that you are and I wish it were me

.

I am not like you are

I ate my own child

I walked through the fire but

Others were burned, and

I swarm through your neighbourhood, take over your town

The house that you live in is where I am bound

.

I am not like you are

I walk on all fours

I beg and I steal

But still feel no shame

I snatch what you offer, give nothing back

Wait the right moment when I will attack

Pandemic

.

Did we learn?

Did we listen to the deep rumblings

In the ground beneath our clay feet?

Or are we unteachable, even

By the old year passing?

.

They say that hindsight

Is always twenty-twenty, but

What if they were wrong?

What if, when eventually unlocked

We carry on regardless, as if

The plastic pot we feed from will

Always cost nothing, and as if

That last Advent candle

Will burn on forever?

.

Can collective stupidity of this kind

Have any hope of vaccination?

It is as if the only infestation

That matters on this planet is human

The pandemic is not sickness after all

It is cure

We need to talk about hypocrisy.

hypocrisy hɪˈpɒkrɪsi noun

The practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case.”his target was the hypocrisy of suburban life”

It is a word that I have heard often used in and around the climate debate. The gathering of world leaders arriving by private jet, only then to be whisked around Glasgow in massive convoys of gas guzzling luxury vehicles. The eco-warriors who chug around in old vans and take sneaky foreign holidays. The virtue signallers who fill their expensive houses with eco-technology and their garages with Tesla supercars whilst having a carbon footprint many times that of their neibours.

The COP has started with some interesting announcements. Two proto-fascists (Modi and Bolsanaro) have made big promises. Even BJ has said things that make people like me nod in agreement. Now we just need action.

I have even heard Rainbow Warrior called hypocritical for forcing traffic to stop over a bridge whilst it sailed upstream to protest outside the COP. Or protesters who glued their hands to the road called hypocrites because an ambulance might have to take a detour.

Then there is my own hypocisy. I grow my own veg, try to live simply and in ways that do as little damage to the environment as possible. I write pompous poems and try to convince others of the rightness of my cause. I have decided not to fly anywhere ever again. Meanwhile I drive a diesel car, and live a live of comfort that most of the world could not dream of in my own house, surrounded by my own land. Even though I try to eschew consumerism, I am not immune to the allure of gadgets, even though I already have far too much stuff.

But there are worse things to be. Better to reach out towards something good than never reach at all.

.

Thorn

.

It has been said there are three kinds of people

Hypocrites (whose actions never match their ambition)

Cynics (mostly only adept at calling out hypocrites) and

The morally pure who could throw that first stone

(If it were ethically permissible)

.

Me, I know what I am, for

Like St Paul, if I rise on my own pride

A thorn in my side soon bursts my bubble

I crash back to earth and lie

Motionless

.

But intent is not nothing

Better hypocrite than cynic

For there is no fool more foolish than

Those who only see the fool in others

Who see a brick as something to throw

When in fact it a palace in embryo

A school seed

It is the foundation of my teetering tower

So, great men and women are meeting in Glasgow, with the fate of the world in their hands.

Meanwhile, other forces are pushing back. Using the same spoil tactics developed by the tobacco industry, the paid-for ‘think tanks’, stacked with sypathetic pseudo-science aimed to cast doubt and confuse; the politicians in the back pocket, the media outlets primed and ready to push an agenda suited to those whose power and wealth is threatened by a change to the status quo. (If you want to know more about exactly how this works, I would suggest watching this BBC film.)

Here is another poem. My retelling of the Gaia myth.

The woman beneath the hill of the world

.

They say the earth is a woman

Wrapped in a gossamer layer of

Brown-green skin

Runnelled and pooled by

Salt tears

.

They say the woman is barren, for her sterile

Soils are not fed from the falling leaves

Now the trees are gone, and

Long tresses of her deep green hair

Have been stored as silage

.

They say the woman mourns her children

Whose bones now brine the ocean, and

Whose dawn song is no longer sung

Whose savannahs have all

Been stolen

.

They say the woman speaks to mountains

But they no longer listen; that she

Looks for signs in distant stars but their blink

Is blurred by all the smoke from her

Burning forests

.

They say the woman would write her story

Except that the black ink in her wells

Have all been pumped dry, and the

Tail-feather-quills from her favourite flightless birds

Have all been plucked away

.

The woman has not gone yet, they say

For she has nowhere else to go. There are

No lands beyond these fields for her

No other ground she could lay down

So beneath her hill she stays

I was talking to a friend about how we do not notice change happening all around us, as if we are pre-programmed to assume stasis, even though our whole lives have been subject to continual change. We do not have to ponder long to consider how the world has changed in our own lifetimes. I am 54 years old, so was born before the internet, before mobile phones, before global warming was first widely identified (we commonly mention the first 1971 climate change conference) and before ABBA even.

I say this as we all have to live with the ever present reality of impending ecological disaster brought about by global warming. It can be overwelming and almost impossible to imagine both the scale of what is coming and how we might change the arc of recent history. Yet change IS possible. The pandemic should have made this clearer than ever.

If we add just a few generations into our change concept, then the human impact on the world around us becomes impossible to ignore. Rather than reading this as a death spiral down towards destruction, we have to remind ourselves that what is made by human hands can also be unmade, reshaped and reformed.

I am also still constantly wondering what it means to live a good life in our changing context, because personal change requires some level of aspiration. What models of goodness still apply? What do we aim ourselves towards and measure ourselves by?

The old religious ideas of goodness seem mostly irrelevent, with their emphasis on personal salvation from (mostly) sexual sin, rewarded only in the next life. I would suggest however that these models of goodness were always at best a contextualised, partial reading of the texts that they trumpeted so freely. Other kinds of goodness were ALWAYS there, but we have to reclaim them, place them front and centre and then allow them to reclaim us.

In many ways, this is what this blog is all about. I do not say this because I can claim any personal victory or success over my own demons, but rather because the journey has to start from where we are.

Today, on the teetering edge of the COP, I offer you this thought. What if goodness might require a letting go of old binary/dualistic ideas of good and bad – seductive and ego-satisfying as they always are – and deliberately moving towards ideas of deep connection, non-violence and partnership with the world and with each other. In the words of the book ‘against such there is no law’.

More than this we have to consider how this might change and challenge our attitudes. I would suggest it might be important to look in these directions;

resilience in place of growth

collaboration in place of consumption

co-operation in place of competition

wisdom in place of progress

balance in place of addiction

moderation in place of excess

vision in place of convenience

accountability in place of disregard

self-giving love in place of self-centered fear

Spiritual rather than material satisfaction

(Adapted from CAC post)

This is just idealistic nonsense, right? Well, perhaps, but remember that change is shaped not just by power and progress, but also by the cultural context. The industrial revolution was almost entirely protestant Christian. It is time to move beyond this towards a new vision of goodness. We do not have to look far, but we have to look hard.

Truth is dead.

At present it seems that truth has never been so partial, so sectarian. Truth is what our tribe wants it to be. It is fed to us by algorithm. It has no external frame of reference.

But if you know the truth, it will set you free. What does this mean? It is perhaps not surprising that these words were spoken in the context of Jesus challenging religious dogma; blinkered narrow views that victiised and enslaved others.

As we run up to COP26, one of the greatest obstacles we face in trying to commit to real positive action is the way that truth has been deliberately distorted, by politicians, think tanks and faux-acedemics, all in the paid service of the oil industry, who have spent millions to muddy the waters.

1984 and more

The field was full, said Spicer

The NHS is broken

The Holocaust was fake news

The world is not warming

(And I never touched that woman)

Wealth trickles down

Poverty is the direct consequence of indolence

I did not say what you heard me say

And should you contradict

Future truth will land only in the laps

Of some other network

Ignore those all those pinko academics,

for I have alternative facts

from the University of Google

Conspiracies are the spice of my digital life

This kind of toxicity resists all known antibiotics

It seems that even silicon

Can fester

Reality is inside the human skull said O’Brian

It has no external dimension

With a dismissive flick of my hand

I remake the laws of nature

1984

And more.

I have been thinking about the old religious word ‘resurrection’. Like many of these words, it has layers of meaning. It also becomes a hermaneutic through which we understand other meanings. It shapes the way we see.

The raising of life from death. The coming of spring. The restart after failure. The hope that seems hopeless.

Then this phrase, which for some reason always breaks me open; Behold, I am making all things new.

Behold. I am making all things re-newed. It is not over, it is still becoming.

My faith flickers only, but… Amen.

Resurrection

.

I care not for carefully crafted theories of atonement

Make it myth or firmest fact, or just

Some old and cold convention

Don old bonnets or blue bunny suits

Cantata or carouse it

But me, I search the sky for hope

I long for resurrection

.

I long for greens at the tips of trees

For stirrings deep in soil

For a pulse aflutter under brand-new skin

Marking the end of unpotential, when

Spring is carried in by warm winds

And souls unfold, like leaves

Like lengthening days, reaching out

For resurrection

.

Roll away the stone

For behold, all things are made again, and

We all need second chances

.

After longest silence comes the song

Comes the knowing right from wrong

And the grace to make things better

Lets make messiah from our mud and blood

And practice resurrection