Stumps

 

I feel guilty chopping up this tree stump in our garden.  Not only was it clinging onto its last bit of Carbon it was providing habitat for all sorts of plants and animals.  The reason for digging it up was to provide a flat place where I would be able to play badminton with my grandchildren.  As none of them are yet conceived the stump removal seems premature. 

COP has just started and the environment has taken center stage for  a brief moment.  The world is falling apart but we are still expecting year on year economic growth, a central contradiction that nobody feels comfortable with yet few can think of doing anything about. 

 I first started working in schools on projects with friends of the earth raising awareness of the impending environmental disasters in the early 1990's. Later I was involved in Tipping Point program listening to angry scientists fighting about whether oil or wind killed the most seabirds.  Then multiple art science projects that aimed to encourage responsibility through the educating of an individual guilt.  I know that the efforts of many people to make a difference go back much further than this and I still keep in touch with and respect passionate and motivated campaigners for change. 

Something has changed in me though and I think I have lost any real belief in the potential for us, the human race as a collective to do anything differently. At least within a timescale that will make a real difference.  I don't build this on science or on information in journals or on the gathering storm clouds,  I have no idea of the real risks or the real potentials.  My loss of faith is about human beings.

Everything has got faster and as individuals we seem more located within the span of our own years.  I do not like to make assumptions about others but `I do try to be honest about my own thoughts and if I am honest I am keen the planet sees me and my kids out. Perhaps the grand kids who will enjoy playing badminton on the flat stump free lawn - after this I become less concerned. 

The leonardo society provocatively suggest that the first person who will live to be a thousand has already been born.  I disagree and think that 200 years will put us past a potential for any known relatives potential lifespan.  200 years gives us a span of time we can relate too, it is not geological , it does not require a label, it is still very much our time. 

I calculated that the tree stump I'm digging up must be around 200 years old, Its annular rings are long gone but by its diameter I think it must of grown for over 170 years. It must of been cut down for 30, for the ease of writing this blog I will say it is 200 years old .  This makes me feel even worse for removing the last bits of it from the lawn. Perhaps by thinking in the lifespan of a tree we will be able to bring time in to a slightly more than human scale and feel it differently.  Time gives us a chance to do more damage but also the potential to heal.