All Our Yesterdays

Here is a great guest post from Jennie Kermode, on what we knew, and how long ago….

The child who knew too much

When I was a kid I really, really wanted a silvery blue Porsche Turbo. not the most eco-friendly choice, I know, but I was far too young to have driven it – I just wanted to look at it, stroke it, sit inside it and watch other kids turn green with envy. Of course I never got it (though the local owner of a Ferrari did very nicely out of my brother by offering to sell that to him, piece by piece, at inflated rates), but it sat at the top of my birthday and Christmas lists for years. Next to that list, however, was another list, and what really used to upset me was how often that one was ignored. It was the list of things that I definitely did not want people to buy me.

There was some stuff on there about gendered toys. No Barbies, please, and nothing frilly. But most of it was devoted to products which I knew were doing harm to the world. Body sprays – a precursor to deodorants – were unpleasant enough in themselves, but I knew that they were destroying the ozone layer. I didn’t want things with lots of plastic packaging because I knew it was polluting the seas. I was uncomfortable about mass consumption in general because I knew about climate change.

This was the late ‘seventies and early ‘eighties – an era when mass consumption was all the rage. Michael Douglas delivered a satirical line about greed being good and billions of people took it seriously. There was an actor in the White House and the promises of Thatcherism made themselves felt even where I was living, in Yorkshire, where all the lights went out at planned intervals because of the miners’ strike. My friends, and many of my relatives, thought that my concerns were hilarious. When related topics came up at school, teachers would join them in laughing at me. My chemistry teacher told me that plastic bag pollution was trivial because, basically, the world was big. I pointed out that there were a lot of us on it, but nobody took me seriously.

Why did I know what others did not? It wasn’t that I was some kind of savant – just that my father was a physicist. I was a curious child and kept asking questions. I talked to his colleagues. I talked to his brothers, a haematologist and an engineer, who had insights of their own. My mother, a teacher, taught me to read when I was two and I consumed every book I could get. With this background, I noticed what was happening in the wider world around me in a way that most other people did not. Consequently, few of the symptoms of climate change that we saw then or that we have seen since have surprised me. Sometimes I feel as if I have been screaming for half a century and a very small proportion of people have noticed or cared.

In the face of that, it can be hard to hold onto hope. I was thirteen or so when, in a biology lesson, one of my teachers talked about bacterial cultures and the common pattern of their growth in a contained space: lag phase, log phase, death phase. Immediately, I associated it with the human population and recognised where we were on that journey.

I also read a lot of history. I knew fine well that people in almost every age have believed that they were living in the last days. Could we be just as wrong? I hope so. Humanity keeps surprising me; keeps pushing past its limits in unexpected ways. But I know better than to rely on it. So I put my talents to use where I can: in media, seeking to broaden conversations and bring in different kinds of expertise, seeking to encourage my readers to use their brains, and deliver bitter pills of understanding wrapped up in entertainment which helps them to go down more easily. Always I am aware of the ticking of the clock.

I am aware, too, of the absences. I used to do a lot of tape recording as a child. I know that, even in similar environments, the birds don’t sing as loudly as they did. I used to go berry picking. Now the berries come earlier every year. I used to sit outside in my grandmother’s garden and listen to the bees buzzing around the flowerbeds. They, too, have grown much quieter. But there are winners. More jellyfish in the sea. Vineyards spreading across the South of England. Scottish home-grown tea. Earth abides. When parts of it become too hot for human habitation year-round, what strange new forms will grow up there, free from our interference? Perhaps that is too optimistic; perhaps we will assault them with robotic vehicles, as we have the deep sea.

One thing I am sure of: the next fifty years will look very different from the last. Kids will no doubt continue to dream of shiny, unaffordable machines, but more and more of them will prioritise simply getting enough to eat.

Jennie Kermode is an author, journalist and human rights campaigner, inclusivity coordinator at the Bylines Network and content director at Eye For Film.