NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

I don't know how historians of the future will look back on the current period of time and how they will analyse it. What will they make of our species knowingly engineering an environmental breakdown, of the cover-ups, the denials, the greed? My fear is of a dystopian future, the obscenely rich and powerful living behind heavily protected barriers where new technologies and limitless money can stave-off the worst of the deprivations that the vast majority of the population suffer. I used to think that 'climate change' was going to be fed to us as a gradual process, the hotter summers, windier frontal systems and heavier rain incremental and slowly accepted. But not now. These life-threatening increases in temperature; the alarming melting of ice-caps, glaciers and permafrost; flash floods and landslides that are not generational events but are now annual ones - I haven't even mentioned crop failure, water insecurity and societal breakdown. There is no 'new normal...

When I was growing up there was a common question - in real life and on the TV - that was asked of older relatives and family friends, and that was "What did you do in the war?" It would not surprise me if future generations have their own version of this, that along the lines of "What did you do during the climate crisis?" And, if you are going to be asked that question, what do you think your answer will be? Most people, sad to say, are not really interested in the drivers of climate change. They might be nudged into some sort of response when something directly affects them - the shops run out of ice cream and cold drinks if it's too hot; their fence gets blown down when it's too windy; or there's a hosepipe ban because it's too dry. When these irritations stop (which, at the moment, they do) all talk of a climate crisis is then relegated to media chatter, becoming just a background noise to be ignored alongside Brexit, boats crossing the channel ...