APOCALYPSE NOW
Why our love of the planet should pervade politics, business and life
Afew months ago on a hot afternoon in East Lothian I took my two sons swimming in a near perfect stretch of water on the Whiteadder river. It is a spot that we’ve visited for years, where the river bends gently and deeply between high rocky banks. We dived deep into the cool water before surfacing to float with the gentle current, gazing up at a matchless blue sky.
A dazzling early summer sun shone through the bright green new leaves of an oak woodland and the air was full of the scent of pollen and the song of birds. Afterwards we pulled ourselves up onto hot rocks and the boys lay on their tummies laughing as I placed hot smooth river stones on their backs.
After a while the chatter and laughter died away as each of us quietly took it all in. This beautiful planet had completely seduced us all. I propped myself up against a rock and watched over them both and thought of the profound gift of being alive and in such a place. My mind wandered onto a recent re-watching of the film version of Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road.
For those who haven’t read or seen it, it is a simple and devastating story set in an apocalyptic future where the planet has been destroyed by nuclear war. It follows the perilous and lonely journey of a father and son as they attempt to reach the coast on foot through a wasted and dead landscape. The premise is simple: the earth has lost its fruitfulness. All
fertility is gone. Where once there were woodlands now there are only skeletons of trees as fires rage ceaselessly across the desiccated landscape.
In the book there is a scene that I will not forget. The father and son pass through an area of ash grey and shattered woodland and come across a river. The water is filled with ash and runs black along its course. The boy, who was born after the collapse of the planet and has never known anything but this desperate world he now inhabits with his father, is enthralled by the river and swims and plays in the stream. The father looks on at his boy in the black water beside the burnt out grey banks of ash, remembering when once this ribbon of water would have been clean and clear as it sparkled and shone in sunlight beneath the green clad trees.
This has been coming back to me a lot recently as I’ve watched enlightened modes of thinking and governance falling to the planet-crushing rapacity and cash-stink logic of rulers such as Donald Trump. They chase money endlessly above all else, forgetting or failing to realise and understand that our greatest and only true asset is of course this beautiful planet. Our only home within the vacuum of space. A serene and perfectly balanced platform and progenitor of life; so finely balanced and so easy to destroy.
I am of course also a believer in business and prosperity, but I don’t see why the two things have to be opposed. It is perfectly possible to have policies which protect our natural resources but also generate income at the same time. I have sat recently in a number of meetings at Holyrood regarding fisheries policy, and each time have left feeling concerned that our elected representatives are making a grand mistake in separating talk of industry, jobs and commerce from issues surrounding the protection of our natural world. As if the health of our environment is a choice, not a necessity. Scotland’s greatest asset – along with its people – is its natural world. And yet it was such a struggle to get a few areas of our precious shallow inshore waters protected against damage from mobile fishing in the small network of MPAs that has so far been established.
That said, the fact that the Scottish Government has begun establishing a network of Marine Protected Areas, however small it may be, gives me some hope. I truly believe that these areas will generate increased prosperity as, in my own sector, sales of smaller amounts of higher value shellfish will yield greater income. In other sectors, opportunities for eco-tourism and leisure pursuits such as diving and sea angling will also increase. My hope is that as these areas demonstrate their value there will be a greater realisation of the advantages of environmental protection – whilst at the same time bringing greater prosperity and wellbeing for all.
There is much we can do to protect our environment both at sea and on land – however first we need to demand that our politicians stop making the same old mistake of making our environment stand in a corner whilst they talk about ‘real’ issues. The rivers might not run black or the forests burn in our lifetime, but we are not far from the slide towards dark places unless we starting seeing the light. If not for ourselves then for our children and the children that come after them.
‘This beautiful
planet had completely seduced us all’