Recently, I moved to Cumbria. Just in time, it seems, to experience the highest level of rainfall ever recorded in the country. I’ve known and loved the lake district for a long time, but I have never seen it like this. For the past few days, every road has been a river, and the rivers themselves have become Himalayan in their rage and their reach. Every hill and mountain has had rills and torrents cascading from it and the fields have become meres. Five bar gates peer forlornly from the middle of wide and expanding lakes. The stream that comes down from the moor behind my house diverted itself at the weekend and chose a course that sunk below the building and welled up through the wall of our garage. Meanwhile, in the village on the other side of the common, an elderly man was lifted to safety with a Sea King helicopter; a common sight in the county over the last week.
And it’s not over yet. Roads are closed, bridges are down, trees have fallen, town centres are swamped and another 100mm of rain is on the way. It should reach us tomorrow. I am very aware of being one of the lucky ones. There are hundreds of people across the county who have literally lost everything, and a few who have lost their lives. I lost a few boxes of junk and my broadband connection.
In the same week this has happened, we have been treated to news about an argument between a gaggle of climate change deniers and some scientists, whose leaked emails they have stolen and published. To the deniers, this is the final proof of a giant global conspiracy by eco-socialists to tax and regulate them on the back of an invented scientific theory. To those of a calmer and more analytical frame of mind – such as my friend George Marshall, who analyses the situation here – it seems to be yet more evidence of the inability of a large swathe of the human race to look the future in the face.
Here on the Dark Mountain we have been accused by some of hysteria, scaremongering and apocalyptic fantasies. This is par for the course for anyone who takes a realistic look at the future these days, but sometimes, sitting in a warm room in front of a computer, with a full stomach and a well-tended landscape outside, it can seem to be true. I have found myself, at times, wondering whether I am some sort of dilettante, paying games with darkness just for something to do. I have wondered whether I’m right; whether I’m getting carried away. Come on, I have said to myself. Calm down. That’s hardly going to happen, is it?
It’s easy to feel like this. Immediate comfort is a wonderful drug that can blind you to anything else, and especially the end of it. But it turns out to be wrong, and I can see some of the reasons why it is wrong from my window as I write. And I wonder how many pensioners will have to be rescued from their English country cottages with military helicopters, and how many A-roads will have to collapse into the white torrents beneath, and how many National Trust tea rooms will have to be submerged before it starts to sink in that it can happen here.
It can happen, and it is happening, and it will go on happening more and more. Because this is not a ‘one in a thousand year flood’ as the newsmen keep telling us. This is the present and the future; the descent has begun, and the electric cars and the conferences are not going to hold back the waters. The world we knew is not the world we have in store for us, and the future … well, the future is probably best left to Leonard Cohen:
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it’s overturned
the order of the soul
It seems to me – as someone who engages with climate change denial (http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/10/how-not-to-take-on-climate-change-deniers/) – that contrarian hostility to the facts has reached an unprecedented intensity. Even as the evidence mounts of tipping points reached and exceeded (http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2253774/insurance-giant-warns-tipping), even as extreme weather incidents predicted by the IPCC begin to hit home in the comfortable west, so there seems to be a concomitant rush towards a pathology of denial. The DECC confirms this in its latest survey of public attitudes, which shows how much ground has been lost to the likes of James Dellingpole, Christopher Booker and (add your Telegraph/Daily Mail/Spectator bloviator here).
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn135/pn135.aspx
This makes for truly dismal reading. But then environmentalists have always had a tough sell on their hands: who would WANT to contemplate a future as shitty as the one we’re creating? Today, at least, I’m out of answers. This may be because I continue to entertain hope that we can change course. Can I be a Dark Mountaineer if I still dream of life in the foothills?
Hi Gregory,
I think Dark Mountaineers all find their own altitude. Personally I am ensconced on the side of a moor, and finding it wet and windy enough.
Sure enough, we need to change course. I’m sure we will. I just don’t think it will be the course we think. There can still be hope in it though – the ‘hope beyond hope’, as we have taken to calling it. I just think that first we need to let go of impossible dreams, and dream some possible ones instead.
Gregory,
I read your Prospect piece. The comments were quite ridiculous. It is not up to the climate change lobby alone to provide evidence that CO2 is causing the problem: both camps need to provide evidence, because both are stating an alternative hypothesis (humans, or, nature) against the null hypothesis (there is no climate change at all). Well, the evidence for climate change is overwhelming, and as yet it is not abolutely clear what is causing it. But to state that the earth’s climate has always fluctuated, and thus the climate change contingent need to prove otherwise is nonsense. It’s equivalent to saying that white middle class men have always been responsible for the greatest number of murders in the UK, and although murders have risen by 20% this year, one would need to prove that other people are now committing the murders, if we are to NOT concede that white middle class men are committing all the new murders. In other words, white middle class men are guilty of the rise in murders until we prove otherwise.
Of course, the other nonsense in the climate change deniers’ argument, is that if humans are not causing climate change by CO2 then we should carry on as normal. What about a bit of common sense? What about some human dignity? What about a bit of restraint? What about not being such twats? It is clear to me that the amount of stuff, waste, activity, and the like, will have negative effects on such a perfectly balanced system as the earth. I’d rather respect the earth, than treat it like a meaningless object. Lots of people today treat most things like meaningless objects, except their flash cars, or plasma screens, or their fancy homes. We would do well to remember that the earth is the fanciest home imaginable.
If not then I think it appropriate to evoke Larkin’s sentiment to his friend Kingsley Amis: “I can’t see why there’s all this fuss about the human race perhaps being wiped out in the near future. It certainly deserves to be.”
HI Paul
i read your article in the guardian today.Very well written I thought but you deserve a clap for the patient and dignified way you dealt with the inane and totally depressing responses, from a select few who as you have said are not prepared to take a look at the near future thatis coming quickly i fear.
Paul,
‘Changing Course for Life’ is the title of my recent book (www.changingcourseforlife.info) and it is significant that ‘changing course’ appears to be at the heart of Dark Mountaineers collective unconscious; or dare I say collective conscious?
Changing course begins with practical steps. So
I have started an experiment on my farm whereby locals are invited to grow their own food on allotment style plots. I am offering 5×10, 10×10 and 10×15 yard sizes at an average rent of 40 pounds a year. The plots must be managed ecologically and a basic list of common sense practical actions adhererd to. It will be managed on a renewable annual licence basis.
So far 25 locals (within 6 miles) have applied to be’plotters’ and the scheme will kick off as soon as we can get the various plots marked out.
I can envision that this could spread – and that gradually a sizeable piece of the farm could be housing a hundred or more such plots. And out of these might grow a seed bank; cafe; various artisan shelter responses to the new neccessity that is upon us; a small shop selling surplus fruit, veg, eggs and more… a non prescriptive, non-civilised community steadilly growing up on the land.
It is undoubtedly the case that getting involved in soil, seeds and fresh foods is a basic way of anchoring otherwise turbulent and unfocussed lives. It is an antidote to modern urban living and one which the collective psyche appears to be demanding more and more. And the physical world equally.
If any Dark Mountaineers are moved to head in this direction, I would suggest that Changing Course for Life might prove a good introduction. The author can be contacted via the book’s website.
Sincere hopes for an abatement of the rains and a well supported breathing space for the hard pressed Cumbrian community.
By the way Gregory, I didn’t mean the comments in your Prospect piece were ridiculous, I liked and enjoyed your article very much. I mean that the comments left by readers were (some of them at least) ridiculous. Much like mine it seems!
Ta.
I agree with much of what you say.
I don’t think art will change the world though. Indeed the apotheothesis of story-telling seems to be a professional risk for storytellers (and to my mind part of the civilisational illness which you describe.)
Reading what you say about the lack of writing on the current state of the world, I would almost think you had never read Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake: far more pointed, acerbic, funnier and actually thought-provoking than some of the, to my taste, more turgid eco-poetry quoted in your manifesto.
I’d have thought market-gardening was a more useful response to the current state of things than poetry, but there you go…
Donald – actually I haven’t read the Atwood yet; it sits on my desk as I write. We have discussed it before on this blog though. As for art changing the world – well, not on its own, perhaps, but I think that re-evaluating the stories that lie beneath our civilisation is vital. At present we treat our myths as facts, and it seems to be to be one of the roots of where we have come to. Personally, I think that both poetry and gardening have their uses. I am proud of the fact that I can both write a poem and grow a plot full of vegetables. Badly in both cases, but life is a learning process.
Sorry to be rude about anyone’s poetry. I know my poetry would be so bad that I don’t even attempt it. (I’m tempted to have a go at learning the accordion, but I think that’s also very difficult to do well – though perhaps not so much as poetry). Good luck with the vegetables though.
I do wish you well, Paul and Dougald. This sounds like a brave and thoughtful enterprise, and our fragmented society needs to be viewed by clear-sighted, committed people like yourselves. I love what Tom Hodgkinson is doing, and the news of that excellent writer Tobias Hill’s prospective woodland community is inspiring. ‘New stories’ – new narratives: yes! My only concern would be that this might turn into yet another talking shop or shunt itself into an increasingly narrow margin, where poets do little but talk to each other. Please don’t let that happen!
‘Art changing the world’ would be nice of course; but ‘artists’ changing the world is the only way the world can change (for the better). I use the word ‘artists’ in its broadest meaning.
Those who can actually envision a future of beauty and creativity have to get on and build their visions – preferably together – or at least by taking leadership positions in socio economic, cultural and environmental arenas and promoting the holistic solutions wihout which no progress can be made. That’s what its all about. Am I wrong? Why does it sometimes seem that an almost endless state of (sometimes cleverly disguised) prevarication hovers over this process?
Like Minnie, I would be sad if the inspiration that I have personally gained from the Dark Mountain Manifesto resulted only in a talking shop. But I am sure that is up to us and how we spread its message. (Though I confess I got separated from fellow dark mountaineers for a while in the white-out of ‘Dark Mountain at Diwo’ – never mind, I’ve found you again now). I am concerned though that like-minds communicate mainly to like-minds in this debate, environmentalists to environmentalists, academics to academics, intellectuals to intellectuals, policy makers to policy makers. And for the wider public lagging far behind, the sceptical voices now have the most appeal.
I agree with you, Paul, that Cumbrian floods are a precursor of worse to come, but for many years ago I lived in the Lakes and in South West Scotland and remember much extreme weather. The same will be true of other living memories all over the UK. Sadly drawing conclusions in public about as yet unproven climate change events may only feed the agendas of sceptics and prolong their opportunities for scornful derision.
I have written on this – and on your Guardian article – here. (I sent to the paper but without success!):
http://jontybarrett.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/russian-roulette/
Please don’t misunderstand me – I am a fully committed Dark Mountaineer. It’s just that my ‘mission’ in communicating crises is to extend the skills and knowledge of mountaineering to those who have never even thought to climb a mountain before, let alone to start the ascent in such bad weather. It’s becoming more difficult to persuade them to set out as the sceptics advise that the storm clouds will pass and meanwhile it would be sensible if we all stay safe and cosy at home.
More from that Leonard Cohen song. The response of the deniers, perhaps? -
When they said ‘Repent, repent’, I wondered what they meant.
See the white man dancing…
As a Cumbrian and sort of Dark Mountaineer, and as one who turned up to help out my folks the day after last November’s floods, I would be very cautious about attributing the terrible flooding solely to climate change. The actions of a water company [note I'm being very careful not to name names here...]in the weeks before the flooding are being examined, though as usual this is ignored in mainstream and liberal press [Private Eye is the best way of following this story - another instance of the allegedly cynical in practice showing hope and goodwill in the midst of increasingly venal absurdity]. That said, if there is anything in this story, it is all of a piece with the ongoing unravelling of our machine ‘civilisation’. I do hope you’ve managed to repair the damage to your place.
Dougal and Jon – thanks, and let me be clear: I’m not ‘attributing’ the Cumbrian floods to climate change. That wasn’t my point. My point was that extreme weather and environmental events, and the increasing inability of our systems to deal with them, are going to become a lot more common, and that this kind of thing (whatever its ’cause’) is a useful reminder of that which we ought to learn from. Though of course, I doubt we will. After all, it seems that the economy is now growing again, so all our troubles are over …