Hello dear readers, we are at the start of another month, and another issue of the Voice for Arran!
The arrival of April brings cheery daffodils, rolling skies and bursts of new life to mind. And there is much in the coming weeks to look forward to – walks with Arran Geopark and COAST, a tour to Holy Isle to celebrate St Molaise Feast day, and in amongst the egg hunts, an exciting outdoor theatre performance at Brodick Castle. But it is a cold, cloudy, kind of understated day in Arran today, and reflects a sense that has been gathering over the last days while I have been bringing this issue together. A feeling that several, significant global proceedings have nearly, undercover, passed me by.
In the last two weeks, there have been reports from both the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK’s Climate Change Committee. The first concludes that the window of opportunity to prevent the worst of climate breakdown is rapidly diminishing. The second, which looks at the UK’s adaptation progress and climate resilience, finds we are ‘strikingly underprepared’. The CCC report came the day before the government was due to reboot its Net Zero Emissions strategy, in a ‘Green Day’ response to a High Court ruling. The Court had determined that its current strategy was unlawful in its failure to show how the UK’s legally binding carbon budgets will be met.
In light of this situation, the UN Secretary General urged leaders of richer nations to bring forward emission reduction targets, end fossil fuel exploration, and speed up the transition to renewable energies. In this way, ‘Green Day’ could have been a fantastic opportunity for the UK to finally gain traction with these plans and lay out details of how we will achieve net zero emissions, soon. Instead, according to commentators, it became ‘Energy security day’, and as George Monbiot explained in an article last week, the government continues to prioritise fossil fuels, nuclear energy and carbon capture technologies.
Immersed in this news, I feel a little of the paralysis a rabbit might when caught in headlights. Staring into the chasm between the climate crisis and the government’s lack of action, a feeling of powerlessness threatens, and I wonder again – does the government not hear what the world climate experts keep saying nor see the worsening climate events we are witnessing around the world? Why is a full-scale transformation to avoid climate breakdown not being coordinated?
Something the artist Annie Lord wrote recently on the idea of preservation has also kept coming back to me this week. She is working on a Regenerative Cathedral project with the St Mary’s community in Edinburgh. With the archival and restoration work she is involved in, she considers what preservation – the act of keeping something the same or of preventing it from being damaged – might mean at a time of ecological crisis. She says, “What is it that we want to hold onto? …Preservation implies stillness and stasis, but this is not quite the whole story. To preserve something requires continual acts of care. It requires thoughtfulness and intent – an active, rather than passive state.”
While the government may be taking care of the wrong things, small acts of preservation are something we can do, whether it is building a bird box, planting an onion, or communing with a robin. And when I focus on these things the paralysis shifts, and I can escape the headlights. For now! Wishing you a happy month and spring time, Elsa
