Thursday 24 September 2009

Send these roots rain


The apple trees are bent over with their burden like people carrying bags of shopping. Damsons fall noiselessly onto the sparse dry grass, carpeting it with blue. In the hedges, blackberries are small and hard but sweet. Nature's bounty is overwhelming: the feeding of the five billion.

It could be. Although we have had no real rain for two months the harvest is in and it is a good one. Surely this island could support itself if we had to, as in war time? If money were spent on developing ways of desalinating seawater to irrigate the world's deserts and using the abundant power of the sun, the wind and the waves, we could live in a world where hunger was like the memory of a bad dream and droughts and floods were rare events.

Instead we spend trillions on vain wars and rescue packages for banks.

Thursday 3 September 2009

The tears of Mother Nature


An eerie image. We see faces everywhere: in clouds, in the moon, in rocks and trees. But this one has a resonance and a deep aching sadness.
I have been to Svalbard, where this breaking glacier lies. It is one of the saddest and strangest places on earth. I shall never forget the cold August sun rising over jagged ice and rock at Magdalenafjord, and the stones marking the graves of a dozen or so lonely whalers on a beach. Their lives must have been indescribably harsh. Or Barentsburg, that haunted far-flung outpost of the old Soviet empire. The inhabitants were brave people.