New World

It’s raining, finally. After record breaking heat, and too much of it, our country is finally getting a watering. But in some places at least, it’s going from drought to flood over the course of one rainstorm, as water flows over the concrete-like baked and unprotected earth without any intention of soaking in. Crops won’t get the water they need, and farmers will carry on feeding stored winter feed to their cattle before summer has even ended. Some of us are going to struggle to afford to buy food, which is what the farmers are struggling to supply us with. Some of the farmers, whose businesses have been stretched to breaking point by other recent challenges, won’t see those businesses survive.

This is our World now. And our World forever more. I’m scared, not of starvation, but of the possibility of society falling apart at the seams. Desperate people do desperate things and I don’t like what I see when I try to look towards the future.

For years I have failed to see the bigger picture. I’ve always seen cycling as being a part of the solution for the future world but I never thought about pandemics, or religious fundamentalism, or megalomaniacs who like to keep a finger on the button. I was only looking at the little things, like cycling to save the NHS, or cycling to help the environment, or cycling to cut congestion and help combat climate change.

But then of course, climate change is the biggest thing of all. Climate breakdown has the capability of causing starvation, migration, food insecurity, power insecurity and war. Too many wars have been fought over territory and when a country loses its ability to produce food or to afford sufficient food imports to feed its population, then surely war must inevitably be the consequence.

My wish now is that if we cannot avert this (and we are not even trying), then hopefully it will happen beyond my natural lifetime.

Back to the little things. Here’s a picture I finished painting yesterday!