The thing I worry most about for my kids is not Brexit or Vladimir Putin or ISIS or Donald Trump; not directly at least. No, I worry most about the destruction of the natural environment: habitat loss, biodiversity destruction, ecocide and climate breakdown. Regardless of what else is happening, if there isn’t a planet that is habitable, then all of us are up the proverbial creek without a paddle. The impact may be proportionately worse for poorer people and those in particularly vulnerable places in the world, but ultimately nowhere in the world is immune from the impact of the environmental disaster that is happening right now.
I believe that this is the most important issue of our era – the later stages of the fossil fuel age where humans are coming to realise the consequences of burning all of those fuels that we found in the ground. Yet given the lack of column inches in newspapers, minutes of news broadcasts and documentaries, and statements from political parties, you wouldn’t realise that this is such a critical – possibly existential – subject. It reminds me of the Jaws films – the people of Amity cannot admit to the fact that there is a killer shark in their waters as it would destroy the tourist industry in the town. Chief Brody is treated as a pariah for daring to publicise the fact that the shark is out there. Well, climate breakdown and ecocide is the killer shark in the waters and people are putting on their dark glasses and pretending that there’s nothing to worry about because they realise that business-as-usual can’t happen if a genuine solution is going to be found for this crisis.
Yet I am optimistic. I feel that most people want to do the right thing, yet inadvertently end up contributing to more environmental problems. It needs to be made easier for people to begin tidying up the mess that humans have made. I am as culpable as anyone – we all are. And that is one of the reasons that makes it easy to feel powerless. I care about wildlife yet I feel that I am doing almost nothing to improve the situation other than making regular contributions to wildlife charities and trying to teach my children respect for the natural world.
That’s why I and my family are going to London this weekend to attend the People’s Walk for Wildlife. I’ve no idea how many other people will be there but I feel that I want to put my hand up and be counted. I asked my eldest son (6) how he felt about it. He said he wanted to do it as well, because ‘he loves nature.’
I think that there is a lot to be hopeful about in the UK: the decarbonisation of power and the growth of renewables; the increase in electric cars; the growth of cycling and cycling infrastructure; huge interest in the rewilding movement; and the mainstream recognition that plastic pollution is choking our habitats, for instance. But all this is a drop in the ocean compared to what needs to happen. Some of these things are detailed in The People’s Manifesto for Wildlife.
I hope that the walk this weekend helps to persuade more people in the mainstream media and political parties that these proposals need to be considered much more seriously – and urgently – if as a nation we are to arrest the decline of our natural environment and actually start to improve it.