The Green Desert

When Jair Bolsonaro was president of Brazil, he was frequently challenged on his encouragement of deforestation. His stock reply was an accusation of hypocrisy; “you have cut down and exploited your forests, what shouldn’t we do the same?”.

Sadly, he has a point.

Britain is by default a forest area. Left to its own devices, some density of woodland would cover almost all the land. Only mountain tops would be bare. But Britain is not an untouched paradise, human beings have been clearing land for farming and housing, cutting trees for ships and housing, and interfering with the landscape for thousands of years. Whereas Britain was once almost entirely covered by trees, now only 13% of the land is wooded. This is one of the lowest woodland levels in Europe, much of which is industrial plantations of non-native softwoods. Woodland in Britain is horribly depleted and regarded as little more than a cash crop.

This attitude ignores the wonderful richness of natural woodland. Trees grow slowly, over many seasons. As they grow, their leaf mould creates a rich, fertile environment for shade-loving plants and fungi. This in turn provides food and shelter for animals from bugs to deer. A woodland can be a beautifully abundant, self-regulating ecosystem if it is allowed to develop and exist naturally, without interference.

The picture above is of the South Downs looking towards Cuckmere Haven. Two thousand years ago, this would have been a forest of oak, beech hazel and alder. Deer, bears, wolves and auroch would have lived here. It would have been a delight. Now it is a sea of grass, home only to sheep and passing birds.

It is right that the South Downs is a national park, to protect it from further development. But what is being protected? The national park is a monument to 200-year-old farming practices. So much more can be done. If the land is protected from the destructive teeth of sheep, it will regenerate and return to its forest state. More carbon dioxide sequestered, more diversity, a thriving ecosystem, more wildlife, and more nature for people to enjoy.

It’s not enough to preserve what is left of the natural world, it needs to be actively restored. A green desert isn’t good enough, we need the return of the wildwood.

Shell

Why on earth do we tolerate oil companies? Yet they are all around us, in every town.

Shell is a familiar oil company brand. The red and yellow livery is warm and distinctive. You are always close to a Shell petrol station. But this company’s business model is based on profit before human life. Shell’s business is extracting and selling fossil fuels, the source of the excess carbon dioxide that threatens the future of human civilisation. But no one talks about that threat, it’s not part of everyday conversation.

Newspapers love to play on people’s fears: covid, refugees, cancer, and the cost of living crisis. But the biggest threat to the future of humanity comes from highly profitable, multi-national companies whose product destabilises the climate of the only planet on which we can live. Despite the existential threat that companies like Shell present, they are seen as respectable businesses. Members of parliament sit on their boards and receive donations from them.

This is the insane Orwellian world in which we live. Carbon dioxide emissions are not regarded as a deadly serious danger that must be reduced as much as possible. Fossil fuel businesses operate within hopelessly inadequate rules and can claim to be law-abiding providers of jobs and tax revenues. Those who call out the scientific consensus and demand change are jailed and reviled.

This is the extent of the journey we need to take. It’s time to stop accepting oil companies as urbane and respectable members of the business community. Rather, those who run them must become pariahs and those people who work for them must have just options to transition to other work.

Trails

Surely the sky should just be the sky. When it breaks free from the trees and buildings, that should be the end of artifice. Beyond the skyline, the sky and only the sky.

Yet the industrial growth society extends into the sky as well. A blue morning sky is riven with vapour trails. They point to business meetings in Brussels and deals in Dubai. Holidays in Hawaii and family gatherings in Finland.

I don’t mind these things but let me look up and be at peace as I gaze into the blue yonder. Let me look up at the heavens and marvel as my ancestors did.