In Today’s Climate

In our polarised world, it is perhaps inevitable that young people are being conditioned to blame and attack older generations for the climate crisis. It is more fashionable to opine than to listen (in my opinion, haha!). Where we used to learn from the wisdom and experience of our elders, now we deride them. We know best – and we are missing an opportunity to learn from grandparents.

I look at the way my parents live and think that if we all consumed* as modestly as they do we would not have got so deep into this mess in the first place. They grew up with post-war rationing and it has conditioned them for life to take no more than they need and to avoid waste. They make do and mend. Whereas my daughter’s generation and my own, with our phone upgrades, lifts to school, convenience foods, air conditioning, cheap flights, disposable fashion, built-in obsolescence, home-delivered pizza, abandoned-tents-and-plastics-at-festivals, blah blah blah…

Clearly it is critical that governments and global business change direction, but it is only really money – very big money – that talks to such interests. It may make us feel better to protest in public, but we have limited influence at that level. At the consumer level, however, we each hold the keys to change. Each one of us can Just Say No. Most of us won’t, of course. Much easier and more eye-catching to go on a march and blame somebody else.

Rant over, now a nice (I hope!) poem about making that choice.

*Give or take essential health care

 

Walking Pace

Walking pace is fast enough for me.
Passing at this speed I see
the bark and single leaves on trees,
marks on wings of butterflies,
beetles, lizards, bees.
Park myself. Take time. Identify each species.

Last year, in a worldly whirl,
we flew off on vacation,
cruising over countries never seen,
missing out the richness of all the life between
familiar scenes I thought I knew
and our exotic destination.

Now, my feet in contact with the ground,
a wealth abounds in slowness.
I stay close to home,
where a modest garden’s grown
a myriad of mysteries
and miracles unknown.

Exotic garden visitor