Company dinner

Tonight was David’s company dinner. I like the people he works with so this is light duty for me--a free meal at a good restaurant and chat with lively young people. Tonight I sat next to John, who is based in the Fairham office in England. He was very interested in my climate change work so he was asking me lots of questions about where we are in the climate crisis. I try not to sound alarmist, however I am alarmed.

I think it’s hard to work on climate issues 9-5 three days a week (ish) and not get depressed. It isn’t just the wildfires, the droughts, the ruined crops, the floods, the serial pestilence of Biblical proportions. It’s also Yemen. And Syria. And Trump. And the predatory Tories, who are wrecking the NHS and ripping up the social contract with the less fortunate.

It’s hard to believe in the goodness of people when so many millions of refugees live in misery and have no clear path to a decent life, never mind the people still living in war zones in Yemen and Syria. I guess I just thought we as humans would do better than this.

I’m also repelled by people’s obliviousness to all of this. Shopping & playing fiddles. TV ads showing new ways to waste money. On Facebook, women show off their newly painted nails with blingy bits glued in. I recently saw an article about grown women who have created elaborate mermaid costumes, in which they swim in local waters. Escapism seems to have reached new levels. I especially hate billboards encouraging me to visit Dubai. Why? Skyscraper cities built in deserts--completely unsustainable. I was creeped out by visiting Las Vegas--huge cavernous convention centres air conditioned in a desert. Makes no sense.

The UN rapporteur on human rights wrote recently of the “violence of looking away.” He is doing a report on poverty in the US and had visited the most forlorn people on Skid Row in L.A., in the coalfields of West Virginia, former plantations of Alabama, and the ruins of Puerto Rico. It’s like we have given up our humanity for some ersatz world of fashion, makeup, celebrity, social media--anything to allow us to escape from our own debasement as human beings.

I know there are millions of people working to create justice and humanity--I know some of them. It’s just that everything feels uphill and evil seems to be winning. Other than giving money to refugee organisations and helping asylum seekers in Belfast, I have no idea what to do and I’m disappointed the people in charge don’t seem to have ideas to offer while Rome burns.

I don’t feel like this every day. But that’s where I am today.
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