Sarah Wilson is a climate activist, broadcaster, journalist and TV presenter.
We are familar with the many publications and news items telling us that if we all pull together and act urgently, we can still avert the worst consequences of climate change by limiting global warming to no more than 1.5˚ C above pre-industrial levels, as per the Paris Agreement.
The author argues that this is not going to happen – the scientific community is increasingly of the same mind – and further, that climate collapse is only one element of a wider collapse in our global civilisation: characterised by growing inequality, impending population collapse, loss of trust in each other and in institutions, declining food and water security, social disorder, rising autocracy: most of which feed off each other and are exacerbated by climate change – we know the score.
The climate emergency remains central to her concerns and she is at pains to say that we should not give up on our efforts to contain it. Every fraction of a degree by which warming is reduced limits the scale of the unfolding catastrophe. Nor, however, does she prescribe a ‘to do’ list (install solar panels, use public transport, etc) which will supposedly get us out of our predicament. Rather, her interest is in how we can live our lives together in the new reality, as she sees it, of a collapsing world. Thirty pages of bibliography support her thesis.
It is not a work of despair, but rather of possibilities about how we might live with each other in a very uncertain and difficult future. As such, it feels like an important step forward from the usual wrangles about whether carbon capture will bail us out, how many EVs we should be buying, etc etc ad infinitum ad nauseam.
I’m sometimes inclined to wonder on the relevance of our little organisation in our little town on the edge of our smallish continent. Perhaps these words from Sarah Wilson provide some kind of answer:
‘…we need to accept that there is no centralised coordinated organisation that can coalesce all of us so we can make the biggest impact with wondrous critical mass. My advice is to get cool with the idea that the opposite set up is going to be the better way now. Self-organised, organic local groups that work bottom up are way more aligned with the complex mess we are in, and with the emergence that will steer us going forward.’
‘I Eat The Stars’ is available to order from The Bookery, Crediton High Street.
John Craythorne
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