I cancelled our usual orchestra rehearsal to allow all our members the chance to attend because I thought that young people would want to know exactly what they need to be doing to secure the future of the planet. The meeting was reasonably well attended but not packed. I hadn't been able to persuade the Long Suffering Husband to come with me (although, I didn't try too hard and he was kept up to date by my friend's husband texting him all the way through). As usual with meetings, the average age of the audience was probably over fifty. There were some young people there, probably drawn in by the clever title (last straw) and the wonderful work of David Attenborough, hoping for ideas how to get their parents to stop using cling film. They might have been disappointed if they were because there was very little talk about plastic in the sea. It seems as though the 5p carrier bag tax and Sir David have been the best catalyst.
The meeting was organised by Hattie Phillips and Jill Bruce from the WI and they had managed to get the MP (John Whittingdale) to chair, Gareth Redmond -King (Head of Climate Change WWF-UK), Darren Tansley (Essex Wildlife Trust), Sam Frankhauser (Climate Change academic from the LSE) to speak. The headteacher introduced the meeting, being very rightly proud of his student.
I'm not good at meetings. I get bored and fidgety and my bum is too bony to sit in one place for over an hour. I get cross at people who like the sound of their own voice, so this was always going to be a challenge for me. I had my special notebook for meetings and I think I only sighed out loud once or twice. But I am glad I went.
The man from Essex Wildlife Trust, who from hereon in I will refer to as the Beaver Wrangler, explained that these defenses have, in fact caused problems to our soil, which has less structure and is washing into our rivers and out to sea. Apart from Hattie, the Beaver Wrangler was my favourite speaker. He talked about trees and Beavers and using nature to heal the earth. Water is a huge problem in this part of Essex. We are in danger of flood from being on an estuary with sea level rising and have one of the lowest amounts of rainfall (that I think of as the Maldon Umbrella), so are also in danger of drought. John Whittingdale confessed that he had only this week had a visit from the environment agency to warn him of the dangerously low water levels in his constituency (he didn't say what his response was). There was hope from the Beaver Wrangler.
The man from WWF was less hopeful. In fact, his information made me feel quite depressed. He explained that the main problem has always been carbon dioxide. Releasing CO2 into the environment causes the planet to warm and this is a problem. It was a problem in the Seventies, when we were shown pictures of the Wash and it's a critical problem now. It could be irreversible too. Because we have developed technical solutions to the effects we have ignored what we need to do to stop it happening and have allowed people with less imagination to deny that it is happening.
He told us that the planet has warmed by one degree in the last Century and that the rise in temperature is happening faster and faster. We only have ten years before it's up 1.5 degrees and we are on track for warming of 3 degrees by the end of the Century. When you are faced with facts like that it is difficult not to think that the whole thing is hopeless. All the panelists were talking about keeping the rise capped at 1.5 degrees and none were talking about reversing it. Someone asked about the possibility and were told that if we can stop the rise then there is a possibility that nature can reverse it but it is only a possibility.
The man from the LSE with the beautiful Swedish sounding accent and the geeky facts was more positive. Our country has reduced its CO2 emissions by 40% since 1990 and that we are using 3 times less CO2 per unit of GDP than we were. He pointed out that our electricity production was much better than it had ever been and was leading the way in reducing CO2 emissions. Farming, household, aviation, shipping and industry were lagging behind but there were things everyone could do. He told us that eating less meat was essential to saving the planet and was good for us, as he patted his stomach and told us that he certainly felt better for it. Would it be wrong to kidnap him and keep him in a cage to quote geeky facts at me with that lovely accent? I always have spare courgettes I could feed him. Sorry, I got distracted for a moment there. This is a serious subject.
John Whittingdale was very pleased with himself, having started his political career as Margaret Thatcher's political secretary (or toy boy, as the Sun called him at the time), knowing that her drive to end coal mining and support nuclear fuel had been a large factor in causing the cleaning up of electricity production. It really wasn't the right audience for this kind of self congratulation, as most people there wouldn't have advocated the destruction of whole communities and stomping all over the poor or have described a fuel that can change the genes of all living things and cause cancer as 'clean'. The collective sucking in of breath was almost an environmental disaster of its own. He also confessed that the government has spent too much time talking about "the dredded B word, which divides opinion" but still seemed to think it would somehow help us sort out climate change.
The more I listened to the experts, the more complicated I realised the whole thing is. Just because we are releasing less CO2 doesn't mean we are less responsible, as we outsource our production to China and then ship our goods over. Shipping didn't even make it onto the chart in the race for cleaning up CO2 emissions. I kept worrying that it needed to be a whole world approach and wondered whether there was really any point, as we would never get everyone to agree.
Every expert on climate change seems to agree that we need to eat less meat. The three on the panel were all at least vegetarian. I'm shocked at how important this seems to be. There were lots of facts given that I didn't write down but have been swimming in my little brain since the meeting about how much environmental damage is done by farming of animals. I'm conflicted by this. I like seeing cows on farms, sheep in fields and I get terribly excited if I go to Suffolk and see the pigs. Sunday roast is my favourite dinner and I know that I find it easier to eat a less processed diet when I eat meat. The Beaver Wrangler, was also upset about not being able to eat meat any more. He misses it but has decided that it's what he needs to do to help the planet. John Whittingdale flatly refused to consider the idea, as it would be too difficult for him and his rich constituents are beef farmers. A vegan in the audience asked an important question, which I think was missed by many people, who were too busy being horrified at the idea of giving up steak and chips. She wanted to know if it was time the government changed it's advice on whether you need meat for a healthy balanced diet. This is such a good question because if the government have only advised this to keep their wealthy beef farmers happy then we need to know.
One of the speakers gave us a list of things we could do.
Walk, cycle or buy an electric car
Be energy efficient at home
Eat less meat
Travel more thoughtfully
Make your voice heard
Go on school strike.
I think most of us there were too old for school strike but we could make an attempt at the rest.
Although I was overwhelmed a lot of the time during this meeting there was one thing that made me leave full of hope. That was Hattie. When there are young people like this in the world there is still a chance. Her presentation was truly inspirational. She started by saying, " I'm thirteen years old can't have sex for three years but already I've had more education on sex than I've had on climate change."
(Forgive me if I've misquoted, I didn't write it down) Then she explained that things could change because a few years ago no one of thirteen would ever dream of talking about sex in front of their parents, grandparents and MP. She talked about small changes and getting outside, not ordering that dress from Asos that you didn't need, connecting with nature and wanting to save the planet. She also saw hope in the fact that her classmates were dropping litter and sending her videos of themselves doing it, to wind her up. She thought that at least they were thinking about the fact that they'd dropped litter. She talked about having three meat free days a week or walking to school and she showed that she could get politicians to listen. She told us that we'd have to stand in woodland for 500 thousand years before being abducted.
Thank you Hattie. I'm prepared to give it a go.
