When I was in my short-trouser pre-teens, the black & white newspapers were full of people carrying banners. All adhered to the same mode of dress: Duffel coats, college scarves, beards, and pipes. The women could manage the pipe, but as a substitute for the beard they took to wearing outsized knee length woolly sweaters, always in black, and known in the UK as “Fisherman’s Jumpers”.
They were protesters, marching back and forth between a military base in Aldermaston and London in an effort to “Ban the Bomb”. Several amongst them would strum cheap guitars and banjos, accompanied by the occasional clarinet or trumpet, in a god-awful never-ending rendition of “O When the Saints”, which in turn probably gave rise to a form of music as horrific as the bomb itself: British Trad Jazz, performed by potbellied waistcoated men with a penchant for “real ale”, and probably equally guilty of Morris Dancing on their weekends off. But I digress.
Even as a child I was informed that, if the Russians launched a nuclear attack, (it was always “the Russians” in those days), we would have just 4 minutes before it struck us. The “4-minute warning” became a part of everyday conversation. More specifically, “If you had 4 minutes left to live, what would you do?” Teenagers older than me invariably answered “Have sex!” (Some chance of that in late 1950s Britain). I probably thought raiding the local shop of crème eggs and scoffing the lot a better option. Today we face an even bigger threat, but hopefully more than 4 minutes left before the grand finale, also known as the end of times.
I draw no distinction between Covid 19 and the 14 million tons of plastic on the ocean floor (not counting the surface); or the 98% of English and Welsh meadowlands, plus 50% of the remaining ancient woods, destroyed in my life time; or the currently raging forest fires in South America, California and Australia; or the million metric tons of ice melting every minute from the ice caps. I draw no distinction because “We” are the cause. Whether Covid was deliberate or an “innocent” result of unnecessary cross species contamination, the argument still holds. Instead of a gung-ho “Can we? Yes, we can!” we never ask “Should we?”
People talk about saving the planet. The planet is going be fine. It can change and evolve without us. It’s done it before. What they mean is “save us”, and that might not be possible. From Mother Earth’s perspective, “we” are the virus.
All text and artwork copyright Ian G Craig.
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