It’s human nature that we need to see something before we will believe it.
If a plumber comes to your house and tells you a pipe is likely to burst and it will cost £500 to fix the problem, you’ll be dubious. If the same plumber comes back when you’ve got water pouring out of your ceiling you’ll be throwing money at him saying you wished you’d known in advance that this was going to happen! The same applies across the board, we get told something might happen and ignore the warning, only to think ourselves hard done by when the thing we were warned about becomes reality.
So why are we ignoring issues like climate change and the destruction of our natural world?
We are told that we need to make immediate changes or the world won’t be habitable within 50 years, we carry on as normal, we are told that most species have declined by 60% in the last 50 years, we carry on as normal, we are told that we need to reduce waste and that our oceans are becoming clogged up with plastic and other rubbish, WE…..CARRY…..ON…..AS…..NORMAL!
If we weren’t also seeing the impacts then maybe I could understand, but what about the things we are seeing, why aren’t those making people understand?
I don’t think of myself as being that old (41) so talking about how different things were when I was young seems like a strange thing to do, but sadly the changes are evident, even in my lifetime. When I was young I remember England having distinct seasons, in the winter it snowed, in the summer it was warm and in the spring it was wet. A freak weather event was a big storm or a really bad winter, and they were few and far between, so they were remembered. Now, we don’t really have seasons and aren’t surprised when we have a winter without a frost, never mind any snow, or 30°C temperatures in March! We used to think of a 100 year flood as something that actually happened once in a hundred years, now we aren’t surprised when we get a couple of them each year.
From elsewhere around the world we see horrific photographs of polar bears and other animals that rely on the ever reducing sea ice starving and eating rubbish to try to survive, and seem to think that it’s in some way the species fault, not ours. We see wildfires destroying huge areas of land and brush them aside as if they were nothing. We see photographs of beaches completely covered in washed up plastic waste, and just seem to believe that its someone else’s problem.
Even a pandemic didn’t help to open people’s eyes. Everyone talked about how lockdown allowed them to have a greater connection with their local environment and to appreciate the green spaces in their local area more. Then lockdown started to lift and everyone thought themselves hard done by for being at home for three months with the government paying their wages and couldn’t give a s%*t about their local green spaces, or anyone else’s, because they needed to get their hair cut and have a holiday.
If we go back to the plumber analogy, I fear we are at the point where the ceiling is sagging and it won’t be long before the torrent begins, but in this case we won’t be able to throw £500 at a plumber to make everything right. Before long we will be in a situation where we won’t be able to go back. We will be left telling our children stories of the animals that used to roam the countryside, like the hedgehog and the badger, while we float around our living room on a coffee table during the third 100 year flood of the spring.
Climate change is not a problem that we can choose to ignore and it will just go away. We all need to take action now to have any chance of even slowing the changes that are happening. And we can’t bury our heads and think that the changes will be years down the line and therefore won’t affect us, or our children. The changes are happening now and are only going to get worse, our generation might get off lightly but what type of world do we want to leave for our children!