A Future Please

I have a little helper once a week now. She may only be nineteen months old and it might all take a lot longer to do but she has great potential as a poultry keeper and shepherdess. With a little training she might also become a gardener. Wednesdays belong to my granddaughter Olivia. She joins me quite early in the morning as I open up the chickens and the ducks and check the sheep. She toddles across the field, waits while I turn off the electric fence, toddles into the chicken run and watches intently as I open the flap to the coop and the birds spill over each other to get out. I watch her, (as only a nan-nan does) as she stands in the middle of the flock of hungry, clucking hens as I collect the eggs and sort out their food. Then it is the field again and into the duck enclosure and a repeat performance as the ducks scurry across to the pond. Straight in, heads down, tails up, ripples on the water and lots of chuckles from a small person.

We then check the sheep; a long walk for someone with little legs, but these are friendly Shetlanders and they cross the field to say good morning and stand still for Olivia to stroke their tight springy wool.

This was my childhood too. I was born here and I grew up surrounded by these hills, this valley, this same sky and this chalk grey soil that sticks to my boots as I move around. I probably never realised how lucky I was as a child to live here surrounded by pigs, chickens and growing things but some sort of chemistry took place because I loved it. I missed it desperately when I was away from it, and when I returned a long time ago, I stopped still and grew roots. I am tethered here.

Boring? Yes. Some people travel, others stay. And I am glad I did because, something from here has rubbed off on me; something which has opened my eyes to what an amazing world we are surrounded by. It feels like an extra sense; a fifth dimension and I have always wanted to share it.

Perhaps, that is why I spent a lot of time trying to show children how incredible our natural world is, trying to foster a connection between them and what is around them so they appreciate it, because from appreciation grows love and the urge to protect. If you don’t connect with something then you don’t care about it. Today we spend more time watching virtual reality than watching sunsets, and this connection with the natural world is slipping away from us and with it the desire to look after the planet on which we live.

We need to rebuild that connection. We need to protect our world, our home, perhaps more at this particular moment in time than ever before. Our planet is now in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals in the past half-billion years. We are currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we are now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens becoming extinct every day. The future is bleak with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by the middle of this century.

I guess I want my granddaughter to feel this connection. I failed with my children, I was too busy bringing them up! This is my second chance. Which is why, as we sat munching biscuits, I was pointing out the great tits balancing on the bird feeder.   

I guess I also want her to learn about how we grow things, and how we rear our food; where it comes from (and I am not talking here about the shelves of the nearest supermarket). I feel I need to provide her with a survival kit for the future. Others will equip her for life in a fast-moving technological world, I want to give her knowledge that will help her if that world collapses around her and she needs to go back to basics with a handful of seed and a spade without a computer or a lithium battery to help.

Because her future scares me. Last year the International Panel for Climate Change predicted that we have just twelve years to reduce our carbon output dramatically if we are to limit our global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. Such a rise is not good but it would make life on earth bearable. If it goes above this figure the future for us as a species, and the future of everything that lives on this earth is bleak beyond our imagination.

At the moment things are not looking good; there is denial, ignorance, complacency. Our government is obsessed and immobilised by Bexit, local government is poorly equipped to deal with crisis and more preoccupied with scoring points off its political opponents than literally stepping in to save the world and the vast majority of people have no idea of the scale of change that needs to take place in their daily lives if we are to get close to lifting the dark clouds that are building on the horizon. 

Like many other people I feel so helpless to change anything. I can get involved in a local group that are pushing for our county and district councils to declare a climate emergency, I can take to the streets with a banner, I can try to reduce my own carbon footprint, I can plant a tree but I can’t overturn the world, shake it, scream at it to wake up and really seriously do something. I can’t close down oil fields, decommission gas power stations, cover a country in wind turbines, plant continents of trees, persuade people to stop consuming so much. I can’t save this amazing, intricate world and the beautiful things in it that I love from destruction.

All I can do is hug my granddaughter close, whisper I am sorry to her, pray and show her how to sow a seed in a pot.