A recent trip to Exmoor – involving petrol
I sometimes feel like I am living in the last gasp of the “having your cake and eating it too” era. The planet is approaching a climatic tipping point – if not past it already. Widespread war is sparking ever closer, several bushfires punctuating an arid landscape of hatred, seemingly only a matter of time before the dots are joined into all-out conflagration. There is so much loathing, indecency and disinformation online that it’s hard to imagine a time when we were mostly a civilised society, let alone one governed largely by truth and common sense.
And yet. Some of us lucky few, in calmer pockets, still have our interesting jobs, our comfortable houses, our collection of “nice things”, access to forests full of serene greenery, gardens full of songbirds and butterflies, shiny cars and far-flung holidays – pleasant pastimes that nevertheless drive the aforementioned carbon-dioxide-fuelled apocalypse. But we do it anyway. The world is horrible. But it’s also beautiful.
These thoughts come and go as I live my life, a cycle of worry and complacency. There was an article in the Times yesterday about the Profumo Affair – can you imagine any politician these days resigning in scandal because he’d had an extramarital affair or consorted with Russian assets? It seems laughable now. No, he’d just shrug and go on, safe in the knowledge that the furore would die out in a few more news cycles. Maybe that’s no different from me: I am horrified or enraged by some injustice on the other side of the world, but then go outside and hoe my rows of lettuces and enjoy the feeling of autumn sunshine on my face.
Of course, we all try to do our bit. Our family has a 20-strong array of solar panels on our roof, an electric car, a rigorous recycling regimen. We do the little things: we don’t own a clothes dryer, but string up our laundry on the line. We have our milk delivered in reusable glass bottles, grow our own fruit and vegetables, keep laying hens and busy honeybees, make our own alcoholic beverages from garden produce, use metal water bottles and portable coffee mugs and sturdy shopping bags. The school run is on foot; the London commute is by train. But this is nothing when we fly to that conference or beach, or order more stuff that we don’t truly need.
Perhaps because I consume a lot of science fiction, whose forte is laying bare the stark differences between the present and some speculative, inevitably worse-off future, I am hyperaware of how good I have it right now. We are extracting every last pleasure that our way of life allows, heedless of the damage, and yet we still – mostly – can find beauty in which to immerse ourselves. My family and I regularly camp in the woods, swim in rivers and the sea, fish remote trout streams, stay in rural areas and eat in country pubs that haven’t changed much in hundreds of years. The air is usually fresh, the stars bright. Wild animal life is everywhere – lazy circling kites, damsel flies, beetles, long-tailed tits, painted ladies. I imagine my ancestors reading my journals (if such fragile paper survives conflagration) and marvelling at the miraculous bounty we enjoyed – both of the earth, but also the activities we pursued that slowly killed it.
It’s like living perpetually in cognitive dissonance. My human brain is not equipped to embrace the contradiction 24/7 – instead I enjoy the good parts, and try to forget the bad. Most days, I just get by, my life so full that I rarely have time to regret. I’m aware that, in the grand scheme of things, my time here is nearly up, and all of these problems will be passed down to my son alongside our estate and possessions. But it seems too late to change, and any drastic changes I make will not even register against the backdrop of 8 billion others on this planet. In the meantime, it seems only right that I do the best I can: cherish my family, enjoy my garden, try to be kind, chip away at the science whose ultimate goal is to help people.
On the individual human scale, I have to feel that this is enough. But history may not judge me so leniently.
