A love affair with place

When we talk about relationships, we are normally talking about relations between people. Equally love. And when we talk about falling in love, a few characteristics typically come to mind: a sense of longing, a sense of 'nothing else matters', inner joy or peace, aliveness, and so on. Well I have to admit it - I've been there - been to that place - and that place is/was actually a geographical place. I fell in love with a City - or part of it - located 3000 miles from home, and I became addicted. Each time I left my other place, I had longings to go back. I felt an immediate sense of aliveness and vibrancy on arriving, and each time I returned home to Norwich I felt empty again. Something was missing.

Over a period of years this resonance with my other home, as it became, was so strong that I began to wonder whether I really belonged there, and not in Norwich. The thought of upping sticks certainly passed through me more than once, but against it, tugging the other way, were all my family and friend and campaigning connections in Norwich. After quite a process of examining exactly what it was which attracted me - what characteristics of Chris-ness were getting amplified and expressed when I was in this place - I began to realise what was going on.

Not long after this, timewise, in 2005 I was unexpectedly elected as a Green Party County Councillor, and with it a whole set of new responsibilities and transparency of values kicked in. By this time the awareness of flying in aeroplanes as a destructive pastime had really taken hold - and so now, I was faced with another dilemma to add to my list. Having let go of the idea of moving home and country, and promised myself I could survive and keep my attachment going by annual visits, I was now faced with the shame of knowing how destructive such visits would be, given the necessity of travel by air.

Here I need to digress a little. Volumes have been written on the ifs and buts of flying, some of it sound, and some of it highly misleading. The essence of air travel is speed and distance - that's the whole point - and of it's nature, anything travelling at high speed and over a long distance will use extremely large amounts of energy.

Try pushing a car. Then try pushing a jumbo jet. Then imagine this jet being propelled at 500 m.p.h. for hundreds or thousands of miles. Actually in my case, traveling to my special place involves, per person, about 3.5 tons of emitted CO2. So getting on this aeroplane and traveling for about 6 hours each way, I, personally would be responsible for emitting the same amount of CO2 as my house now emits in 7 years. To make matters even worse ( for my conscience), there is something called the 'forcing factor' when emissions are made at high altitude - which roughly translated means that carbon emitted at altitude, has 2.7 times the effect as that same emission would have on the ground. Put another way, this one trip would involve more carbon emissions than an average Tanzanian in their entire lifetime. And when it is widely regarded that a truly sustainable, long term, per person per year emission rating is 1.1 tons, there really was no way I was going to continue my addiction.

So then began the painful process of letting go of my attachment to this place, and of the dear friends I had made there. Actually, I still feel in some way connected with my friends, thanks to the wonders of e-mail and skype. The whole process has helped me realise just how difficult it is for us as individuals to kick the carbon habit, and how, over time, our lives have become dependant to such a degree on using energy and carbon. It wasn't exactly like coming off an addiction to ice-cream - although my special place had plenty of that in quantity and quality - more like coming out of a relationship. Sometimes I still feel that pang...to impulsively arrange a trip....but then I really do get that image of struggling sub-Saharan people in drought areas, whose circumstances are undoubtedly in my mind partially brought about by our addiction to carbon and guzzling energy. [ It's no co-incidence that all the major NGOs doing work in areas like that campaign vigorously on climate change issues].

Oh yes, and I've grown to really appreciate Norwich too!

My special place, if your really interested, is Boston - that's Massachussetts, not Lincolnshire.

Oh… I wasn’t expecting that.

So, this week, I've talked about about my holiday and how good it was to take the car and ferry rather than flying.
Then I thought I'd work out the carbon footprint of both and see how much I saved, to nicely round off my blog week...

2009
	Miles	CO2e (tonnes)
Flights		0.33
Rail	167	0.02
Car (Eire)	620	0.16
Total		0.51
2010
	Miles	CO2e (tonnes)
Ferry		0.226
Car (UK)	660	0.17
Car (Eire)	620	0.16
Total		0.556

OK, so the numbers are only fractionally different, and are based on one set of calculation engines I found on the web. But it does highlight the difficulty of making decisions when the information is not readily available or not actually embedded into our daily decision-making processes. I was pretty gutted when I did these calculations last night.

I can rationalise it. Possibly overall, a ferry lasts longer than an airplane and so the embodied CO2 is less than the plane journey. Maybe the full end-to-end infrastructure of air-travel is overall more damaging than car / ferry travel. Possibly the fact that we have to hire a car in Ireland if we don’t take our own makes a difference. The simple truth is that I just don’t know. And we, as individuals, as societies, cannot make proper decisions unless all the facts are in the public domain and fully transparent.

So, what will I do next year? I’m inclined to still do the ferry / car journey again – it was certainly a better experience for me. The rest of the family may feel differently. We’ll have to see.

Notes: Carbon Footprint measured in tonnes CO2e. Flight & Car carbon footprint measured at http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx. Flights are return Stansted to Dublin and include multiplier for radiative forcing. Rail is return Norwich to Stansted. Ferry is return Holyhead to Dublin. Ferry emissions from http://www.carbontracking.com/reports/irish_ferries_emissions_calculation.pdf

Do you believe in dog?

I found out the other day that my contribution to global warming is much greater than I realized. I was minding my own business having a nurse take blood from my arm as part of a drugs trial. Anyway she says to me ' i will be back in a minute, I just have to give this sample to the courier he's waiting outside to take it to Gatwick'. Part of me thought ' I cant give up the drugs trial so i might as well forget the whole green thing as i will always be part of this project that relies on flights to Geneva'. It got me thinking about how much we rely on the pharmaceutical industry and how that relies on oil.

What is my inevitable positive response? Well I have invented a new therapy that does not rely on oil ( I should say that i may have invented it or i may have been told about it and forgotten that it was someone elses idea).

All you need is a dog. Preferably your own or one that you can borrow for a while without the owner wondering where it is. Get yourself in a comfortable position and snuggle the dog into you so you can feel him breathing. Close your eyes and focus your attention on the dogs breathing. Ideally you can feel the breath on your skin (with our dog is it better if you cannot smell the breath). While you are doing this note the feeling of his fur and the weight of his body against yours. Simple! Gradually become aware of the room again and try to keep the feeling of relaxation with you as you go about your daily life and coping with the evil look from the other dog you own who did not get the same quality time with you.

Seeing the world, differently

What was your best journey ever?

Not the best holiday, or the best place you’ve ever been to. The best journey?

In my time, I’ve flown all over the place. Heathrow to Bangkok on Singapore Airlines where even economy class felt like staying in a posh hotel. LA to Heathrow where a most unexpected British Airways upgrade taught me why those with the money always turn left when they enter an airplane. I’ve experienced the other side too – Nigeria Airways, Libyan Arab Airlines, the ubiquitous and universally hated Ryanair, and, quite the worst in my book, Monarch. Flying is certainly an experience. But even the best flights I’ve ever taken don’t even get a look in compared to my best journeys.

To talk about my best journey ever, you have to get much closer to the ground. And get on the train. Say you love trains and people think anoraks. And even I can’t get too excited about the 06.57 Norwich to Peterborough that I sometimes have to get for work.

But… Cairo to Luxor on the exquisitely old-fashioned overnight train. Waking up a stone’s throw from the Valley of the Kings.

The Transalpine Express that crosses New Zealand’s South Island Alps, leaving the fertile Canterbury countryside on the east, travelling up to snowy Arthur’s Pass in the mountains before descending to the wild western shores of Greymouth.

The rickety and crowded Bangkok to Petchaburi train, full to capacity with locals travelling for business or for pleasure. The frequent stops at tiny villages to take on yet more passengers, food-sellers, freight.

Even thinking about these journeys makes me excited, nostalgic. I can’t wait do to them again, maybe this time with the children. And do more. Trains across India, Helsinki to Moscow, the Trans-Siberian. Wherever there’s an epic train journey to be made, I want to be there.

However, there is a snag. Before you can take one of these trains, at the moment, you first have to take a plane. Some of the reasons are political; you’re never going to take the train through Iraq or Afghanistan at the moment. Some of the reasons are more to do with the society we’ve built around ourselves. I work full time. I get six weeks holiday a year – more than most. But spreading that over Christmas, Easter, summer, the school holidays, isn’t easy, and like most people, I’ve convinced myself that if you want to go somewhere, you need to get there as fast as possible so that you can then relax. Wind down. Chill out.

But the destination isn’t the same as the journey; in the same way that going on holiday isn’t the same as going travelling.

Travel is an essential part of the human condition – if it wasn’t, we’d still be crowded into Africa’s Rift Valley, having not moved for millions of years. Travel broadens the mind, opens your eyes to other cultures, helps you find yourself, or lose yourself, helps you to realise just what we have living in England. Without travel, we would stagnate, become insular.

So, what if we were able to change the way we’ve been taught to think over the second half of the 20th Century and into this one. Taught that the only way to “escape it all” is to fly thousands of miles to a sanitised tropical enclave where any interaction with the “picturesque” local culture is from behind the glass of the tour bus. What if we didn’t need so much to “escape it all”, and instead take all the opportunities that we could to explore it all. Take the time to travel, overland by bus and train, over sea by boat and ship, and really get under the skin of this beautiful and diverse planet that we share. Change the pace of our lives so that travel isn’t something we just squeeze into whatever time is left in our busy lives. Isn’t the bit we have to endure between leaving work and hitting the beach.

I love Norfolk, and Britain more generally too, yet even so, I don’t want my children to go no further than our beautiful shores. I want them to explore the whole world. I want that still to be an option for them when they’re old enough to do it, as it was for me.

So what do I want the future to look like? A future full of “best journeys”, where flying isn’t even part of the equation. Where we have time, and can connect to all parts of the world by train, by coach, by boat. Where we can explore all the places that we, in our previous lives, just flew over and missed out on. That would be a future worth making.

(picture courtesy of http://www.tranzscenic.co.nz/)

Bird Singing in the Dark

I discovered so much of who I am,
Sitting in deserts in the sand,
Nothing and no-one to get in the way, no bills to pay.
I love lying in the sun and swimming in warm sea,
I don`t want to think about all the places I will never see,
Living is hard and flying is easy..
What will you do ?
What will we do ?

(Flying by Shannon Smy, Seize the Day)

I’m in Chapelfield Gardens dancing next to Christine at the Zero Carbon Festival, as Chris Keene’s epic journey from Wales to Copenhagen passes through Norwich. I’m at Speaker’s Corner holding a Climate Emergency banner with Mark, just after John McDonnell's speech about the third runway at Heathrow. There’s the same song playing and the same movement happening inside. It’s a feeling I haven’t experienced yet in Transition. The song is about giving up flying, about the singer not flying to see her grandmother in America, and her sister in Australia. It’s a real song. And she’s out there singing it on show to the world.

Flying is a burning Transition topic because it’s so high-carbon. In our Transition Circle meetings it was the one subject that silenced the room. Because if you’re cutting your carbon emissions by half the national average, as those of usin TN2 decided we’d do this year (and a further half next year) there is no way you can fly. In December Not Flying was discussed at length in Transition Culture with 83 comments. In January Adrienne Campbell of Transition Lewes spoke eloquently about her difficulties with other people flying in her blog, 100 monkeys. How far does our conscience about the planet take us? Does it give us the right to challenge each other? Or is something else happening we can’t see just yet?

Tully’s right, flying is not just about figures, useful though they are. It’s about ethics and relationship and the fact that when you stop flying you’re not just giving up pleasure or people you’re giving up whole continents. Whole parts of your being that flourish in the big wild places, that can expand to the further rim of deserts and oceans and climb the mountain peaks. All the ancestor places, medicine places, wisdom trees, dreamtime.

The airports are gateways and run like a litany over my tongue: La Paz, Kingstown, Santiago de Chile, Kauai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney, Dehli . . . I’m like one of those shops with outlets in every destination. I could hide it. But that would be lying. I could off-set my conscience and say these flights were for work. Which they were. But the fact of the matter was I loved to fly. I was a travel writer both trade and by inclination and for ten years I lived out of a suitcase.

I took a lot of planes. I was only was in danger once (nearly crashed in El Salvador en route to Honduras). Only lost my cool once, riotously drunk and delayed in Newark one snowy New Year's eve (did the conga round the Virgin Airways jumbo with my fellow passengers - Ay! )Shortest flight? The one in the picture that took me from the Caribbean port of Cartegena into Gabriel Garcia Marquez country. Longest? 24 hours to Lima en route to Macchu Picchu and the rainforest for a fashion shoot. Lots of fashion shoots and interview work, dragging vast blue Globetrotter suitcases and typewriters (this was before internet). Difficult photographers with delicate cameras. Immigration snarling at us (won't miss those guys). Paris, Milan. New York (again). A host of American runways rising to meet me: Los Angeles, Alburqueque, Phoenix, Des Moines, Dallas, Houston . . .

I didn't get security with all my travelling, but I had a life that I wanted to live and I got to love the world the way some people love children, which is to say absolutely, knowing that you give part of your heart away when you do. I couldn’t have gone without those aeroplanes, that’s the truth of it. And so rather than sorrowing or hiding the fact, I’ll come clean and say I am thankful that I could. They were the best of times. There isn’t a day really that goes by without my thinking of those places and thanking this beloved earth for letting me experience her in all her absolute glory.

I know now that nothing will replace the feeling of Mexico, nor Arizona, nor the sound of tropical rains falling. To cope with the reality of that you have to access your heart. Only your heart can cope with that kind of loss. Because travelling takes you to places inside yourself that Western rationality and justification don’t go.

For a long time I wrestled with what I had gained from staying home in East Anglia for the last eight years (with the exception of one flight to India, one train journey to London) and I looked about me and I couldn’t see it. How was my life better? Was I now looking forward to an increasingly depressing life without any money or work or heating, or the ability to travel much beyond my own lane? Or was I missing something? And I lay awake for hours last night thinking. And then I got it. When I stopped flying around the world, I came home. Because there was nowhere else to go. I had come to the end of the line. And I realised that to live a good life, I had to love that place at the end of the line. And that was hard.

Life is hard and flying is easy. One day you wake up and realise that the future you took for granted went and disappeared, and only when there was no possibility of escape, did you face reality and begin the real work which is to see the world afresh with your heart. Right here, now.

It’s a small inner revolution that will turn everything around. But so long as we can fly away from difficulty, keeping that sparkling holiday destination in our minds, we won’t land and engage in this task. We’ll keep flying off into never-never land. Our obligation as human beings to value life on earth – which all civilisations ignore - has to be fulfilled. To love youth and success in our culture is easy, to love your own reflection in the mirror, with its wrinkled face and second hand coat is hard. To stay indoors in your coccoon, surrounded by shimmering screens and soft music is easy, to speak with your neighbour and the one you live with is hard. To love the places that are Not-Home, those beautiful deserts and mountains, those Other landscapes and cultures laid out like delights in a bazaar costs us nothing. To love this polluted, crowded island with all the responsibility for Transition on our shoulders costs us everything.

But looking at the earth, and the course our Titanic culture is taking us what else can we do? Arundhati Roy wrote a beautiful line that's often quoted and forms the last line of 'The Transition Timeline': another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe. In the big green places where the tropical breezes blow through the papaya trees you can feel this breath upon your whole body. In East Anglia in February, with people pressing in on all sides, it’s a struggle. But sometimes you get a little help.

Three thousand miles away in Africa the migrants are preparing for take off. By April thousands of them will be touching down in Southern Britain. They’ll be following the flight paths of their ancestors and arriving in woods and scrublands as they have for thousands of years. One night I’ll wake up and steal down the lane and as I turn the curve of the road by the barley field, I’ll hear a sound that goes out for miles across the dark land jug jug jug. And I never know whether it is this song with its two hundred variations, or the fact this small insignificant brown bird sings at midnight that grabs my imagination and my heart so. But whichever, I know somewhere inside we are like the nightingale. And insignificant though we all are in Transition, grounded and struggling, we have to know that when we make our downshifting moves, our heart-felt decisions, we are like the bird singing in the dark and that there are people who are listening out for that sound.

Because when they hear it they'll know that after a long, cold lonely winter, our Spring is truly come.

On the road in the 90s: taking the plane from Cartagena to Mompos, Colombia. Sacred fig tree. Mompos.
The trip to Mexico that changed everything. Café in Valladolid, just before visiting the ancient Mayan cenote.

It's a big elephant

I know that facts and figures aren't everything, but if we're going to think about why flying is such a big issue, we need to put it in some kind of context. I do believe that flying is the elephant in the room when it comes to cutting our carbon emissions, and it's a very big elephant.

The average citizen of the UK is responsible for about 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year. The world average is about 4 tonnes. We all need to reduce our emissions to 1-2 tonnes a year if we're going to give the planet a better-than-even chance of sustaining human life. In my family I reckon we're down to about 4-5 tonnes a person so far - including one tonne per person for travel, one for domestic energy use, one for food and one for everything else we buy.

The trouble with flying is that it blows these efforts completely out of the water. Now, don't be fooled by the figures some airlines etc may quote for the carbon emissions of flying, which may refer literally to the amount of carbon dioxide created when the aircraft's engines burn kerosene (fuel). The trouble is that the plane's effect on global warming comes mainly from other sources, mostly the effect of the water vapour that those engines also produce, and the fact that they produce it at high altitudes. There's some debate about exactly how damaging these other emissions are, but the consensus seems to be that you need to triple the figure for carbon dioxide alone, to get a reasonable idea of the plane's overall contribution to climate change.

This means that the contribution I make to climate change if I fly to, say, Italy and back, is equivalent to about 1.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide - more than my "travel" budget for the entire year. If I fly to New York, it's over 4 tonnes. Australia, 11 tonnes. So, if we succeed in getting our personal carbon footprints down to the kind of level the Government has signed us up to - say 2 tonnes each - that flight to Australia will cost you 5 years of doing absolutely nothing - no eating, no heating, no car, no nothing. Even the flight to the USA will cost you 2 years of total abstention. And yes, the industry is working to reduce its footprint, with bigger planes, straighter flight paths and less stacking, but those are only going to deliver marginal savings, they don't change the game.

So I think it's clear that aviation has no place in our future. It's simply impossible to achieve the kind of carbon reductions we need to make, while flying anywhere.

That leaves us all with the question of how quickly we're willing to make the transition to not flying. Some of us might say "Lord let me be chaste, but not yet". Others of us might argue that we can't suddenly stop flying because we arrive here with circumstances we can't immediately change, like close family in foreign countries that we want to visit. And that's a tough one. My own family moved en masse to the west of Ireland, and I've decided that from now on I'll visit them by car and ferry, or bus, or train. If they'd moved to the USA, I'm not sure what I'd decide. (In fact, previous generations of my family did move to the USA, including my own parents until just before I was born, and people generally just accepted that they'd see each other very rarely, if ever again.)

I don't want to make any absolute judgements about whether other people should ever fly. I've decided that I won't, but I understand that people might feel a need to fly to visit distant relatives (occasionally!), or for certain kinds of work that might possibly be worth the environmental cost. But I do think we owe it to each other, to the planet and especially as Jane says to the planet's poorest people, to think very long and hard before we buy a plane ticket.

No easy answers

On Monday Jane asked if flying could ever be justified. I think the answer is yes but because flying is such a complex issue I‘m going to use this toad to make a simpler example. For some years I have been setting up toad patrols near to where I live and I usually walk or cycle to get to the patrol. About a week ago I was asked to help set up a patrol at Costessey, which is too far for me to cycle in the time available – so I have used the car, four times so far. Twenty helpers have been recruited in a week and we expect to save hundreds of toads – the migration will start very soon.

The point is that I decided that the pollution caused by my car use is justified by the toads saved. How do you value the life of an English toad against the global consequence of me creating more CO2? I doubt if anyone has done those sums but there must be situations where flying is justified for some people because of what they can achieve for the greater good.

In any event the goal is to educate the people of Costessey so that next year they are self sufficient toad patrollers and the same applies on the global scale. We can’t wind down a world wide economy, built on ever increasing consumption, at the touch of a button but we need to use our dwindling resources wisely to build a resilient future for all.

What we can do now is to change peoples' perceptions of what it means to have fun. I recently recently posted on the Freegle Cafe that I had spent the day moving donkey dung in a wheelbarrow and someone replied that was not her idea of fun. I suspect that had I jetted off to spend the weekend on a tropical beach then she would have considered that to be more interesting

But the reality is that I hate airports and I hate crowded beaches and I hate resorts where you feel overcharged and exploited. And sitting in the sun is no good for your skin.

So I actually enjoyed petting the local donkeys and I enjoyed giving their owner some of my potatoes in exchange for the dung to fertilize next year's crop. It all happened within walking distance, nothing was consumed and I got some exercise.

Oh, and the donkeys got some carrots.

The elephant in the room: flying

This is the first in our new series of killer questions – the elephants in the room, those topics that are just too vast and difficult to deal with, so we never talk about them. We’re bringing those elephants out into the open one by one! Do join in the debate and post your views, for or against – or even a definite maybe. What’s important is that we get the issues out into the open.

Our first elephant is flying – is this a complete no-no or are there times when it has to be done?

If we’re serious about carbon reduction, then flying is a big target. Our Transition Circles have made a commitment to cutting our carbon consumption by 50% of the national average, Norfolk's 11% by 2011 and Britain's 80% by 2050. We can turn down the heating, leave the car in the garage, switch to energy saving lightbulbs – all these things make a difference. But it’s a drop in the ocean compared to flying: it’s mega carbon whichever way you look at it.

Right, those are the facts. I knew all of this and still stubbornly took two return flights on holiday last summer. My argument was that I had worked hard; I deserved those holidays and I couldn’t spare the time to travel overland. And it was so much cheaper to fly than to go by train or road. Of course, I kept quiet about the flights and felt rather guilty, but still would have carried right on…. until a fierce email debate broke out behind the scenes in our Transition community.

All the rationale about simply reducing carbon had no effect on me. I was doing my bit in other ways, such as drastically reducing my London commute from 1000 miles a week to almost nothing, so surely a teeny weeny flight to Istanbul and another to central France was not so very bad. Not like crossing the pond or worse, jetting off to some fragile environment like the Galapagos islands.

It was Chris Hull’s thoughtful comment that stopped me in my tracks:

“For me, the major reason why I have changed the habits I have, albeit modestly, and why the climate change battle is worth fighting, is because the poorest people of the world are already being affected by climate change through no fault of their own. There is now not much doubt, for instance, that the droughts ( and therefore famines) in sub-Saharan Africa are due to the seasonal shift (south) of rainbelt over that part of the globe happening less frequently due to climate change.” Chris recommended George Monbiot's book 'Heat' if I needed more evidence.

I didn’t need any more evidence. I’d crossed my personal Rubicon. No going back. No more flying. Unless… unless…

I can see situations where flying could be justified. Not for my holidays, where the Man in Seat 61 can sort out my train journeys for me to any of the places I want to go to: anywhere in Italy, in particular; Andalusia; Provence; even North Africa. No problem. Not for my friend K, who has more money than sense and recently flew to Scotland for the day to attend a rugby match. Not for most of the Prince of Wales’ jollies. We won’t even mention all those captains of industry with their private jets.

But what if the flight was connected to work? Say, someone had to attend a conference a long way away where their contribution would make a real difference to society? Or your employer simply wouldn’t accept business travel that didn’t involve flying when the rest of the team was travelling that way and you really had to be there?

Or if there was a family emergency, or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see loved ones? It's not always so clear-cut to make the decision not to fly. As it happens, it is clear-cut for me at the moment. I can't see a situation for myself when I would ever need to fly again.

But it’s easy for me to set my own rules. I’m self-employed; my children are grown up. It’s not so easy if you have a young family or others to consider.

What do you think? Is flying permanently off, as far as you are concerned, whatever the circumstances, or do you see situations when it could be justified?

Pic: Dumbo the flying elephant © Disney

Calling An Amnesty and Other Prodigal Returns

Your carbon debt is HUGE,” said Josiah on the telephone this morning. We were discussing last night’s Copenhagen Climate Emergency in Norwich and Tuesday's post about bathing in the hot springs of South America. I was about to leap to my own defence, armed with a “yes but I don’t have any children” or one of any number of possible parries. But I resisted the temptation. Because Josiah and I are co-ordinating the Second Transition East Regional Gathering in Diss this week, because we’ve been working at each other’s kitchen tables over the last year on local and sustainable food and all things Transitional and because, well, I like Josiah and his two boys, Reuben and Tristram and I'm looking forward to meeting his daughter, Iris, (now two weeks old) .We’re on the same road together. We can’t afford to fall out with each other.

Besides, who hasn’t got a huge carbon debt in the Western World?

We need to be prodigal and return to our senses, but we’re not going to do that if we are burdened with a debt we can never repay. If you undergo a radical change of heart, you don’t want to have to deal with accustations and judgements for your past follies as you walk back down the mountain. At the Climate Change talks last night it became clear in order to keep our emissions below that scary figure of a 2% rise in planetary temperature, we are going to have to drop our fossil-fuelled lifestyles pretty damn quick. And those of us who have used profligate amount of oil in the past, have lived in the fast lane, know the ins and outs of priviledge and glamour, know exactly how to do it. Because if someone like me can change, anyone can.

The fact is we didn’t know until now. We were brought up in illusion. I had never considered carbon emissions until I joined a bunch of community activists in Oxford and someone said something mildly about how much fuel aeroplanes use. The year was 2001 and I had spent the last ten years travelling in aeroplanes, buses, trains and cars across the Americas. When you know you know and you can take action - so long as you are free to do so. One of the speakers last night was the economist and driving force behind the New Green Deal, Ann Pettifor. She is famous for leading a worldwide campaign to cancel approximately $100 billion of debts owed by 42 of the poorest countries Jubilee 2000. The moment you cancel the debt, you can start to liberate yourself from the constraints of Empire.

The consequences of our life-style have now become clear. Since the 70s our carbon use has trebled. Climate change is directly due to our increased consumption, our flying round the world, our industrialised agriculture. None of us knew this at the time. Not because we were ignorant but because we are products of a civilisation that has deliberately blindfolded us to the effect of our actions, distracted us with entertainments, numbed our emotions with feel-good highs and hostility. We can do something about those things. We can wake up and not take those flights. We can ask questions rather than escape into our minds. We can join up and share food and houses and tools and fires. What will hold us together is our human relationships. The feeling that we want to see each other again.

So this is a call for amnesty for all prodigal sons and daughters. Forget the debt. Come home.


Above: reeds at Minsmere Marshes, Suffolk - the plant tribe at the root of Western civilisation and the world’s first source of paper by Charlotte

Below: Me, Josiah and Reuben with a pan of nettles for soup - Spring Tonic Walk, April 09 by Helen