Recently we were supprised with a beautiful baby girl and I have spent the last few months trying to get my head around the whole thing. Babies change everything. I am now under a 6pm curfew and now spend my days fighting pensioners for the best spots in cafes. I spend my life juggling between the competing demands of baby and everything else, regularly dropping all the balls in the process. I crave adult conversation to find that ironically when I do find and adult the only thing I talk about it the bloody baby!
But despite the chronic sleep deprivation, isolation, and complete overhaul to my previously carefree existance I am utterly smitten with the tiny dictator that is currently snuggled to my chest. And in the twighlight hours where she contently suckles, little hands innocently clutch to my pjs, I sighlently vow to do everything in my power to protect her. As I watch her fall asleep I like to think about my hopes and dreams for her.
I hope she has a strong personality and is bright and whitty. I hope she grows up to have a career in something she is proud of, I hope she excels at university, I hope she finds a stable relationship and has a family of her own. I hope she can live a comfortable life in a nice house and afford holidays abroad without having to worry too much about finances. I hope she enjoys the outdoors, sports and loves animals. Basically I hope she has everything that I have got and more. I hope she is truly happy.
I like to think of these hopes as aspirational but achievable, but in reality these are day-dreams. I have not considered the world in which my daughter has arrived.
The Met office recently published a report that forcastes a rise in global temperatures above 1.5C and this could occure within the next 5 years. This is a critical threashold for climate change and the concequence of breaching this threashold are catastrophice. When the gloabal temperature goes above 1.5C my poor baby girl will be in a world of turmoil. Crops grown in currenly furtil lands with stable climate, for example cacao beans (chocolate) will be destroyed as nutriantes are washed away from the soil in turblant wheather conditions. The artic which currently cools us by reflecting solar radiation will melt, causing widespread flooding and accelerating global warming. The Pacific islands are likely to disappear, displacing millions of people and killing entire eco-systems. The world will see severe floods and draughts leading to world food shortages and conflict. We are already seeing large scale migration due to climate change.
I have delivered my daughter, who I have vowed to protect into a world I cannot save her from. She will suffer hardship from climate change. There won’t be chocolate polar bears at Christmas or holidays to the Percific. its unlikely that there will be holidays at all. Instead there is likely to be starvation, conflict and desperate struggle for survival. If she does have children will they even have the chance to grow up.
All this could be avoided if we act now, but this would require a global commitment and co-operation to dramatically cut carbon emmissions. This means a substantial change from every single one of us. I mass act of ulterisim – except it isn’t ulterisim, it is saving ourselves from oblivion. However humans suffer from such a strong collective state of denile I cannot see us taking action until it is too late.
Even I a write this I can’t fathom the furtre we have created. The horror of the predictions from the scientific community overwhelm me when I think about it in the wee hours. I can not comprehend it. And so when I wake in the morning and remove these nightmares from my thoughts. I forget about it whilst I drive us in our petrol car to the café so I can enjoy a decafe caramel latte and chocolate cake with NCT friends. I use the facilities to change my baby before I head to our comfortable home, disgarding the soiled nappy into the bin not thinking about how the nappy will still be in existance long after I am gone, and my baby is gone and the world has entered oblivion.
