There’s Green. And there’s Green

Two very different ways to see climate action

I have known the bare facts about climate change for a very long time but for years it was unreal, something that I knew was happening but did not think of in the way I would of (say) impending war. Even when I started researching my PhD on climate and agriculture in 2003, I felt oddly dispassionate – although we knew by then that we might be in serious trouble.

I can remember when it did first chill me to the bone. It took me by surprise. It was 2007 and I was in Bangkok; the British Council had flown five of us 6,000 miles to discuss climate change. We had just finished a day with colleagues at Chulalongkorn University and colleague Matt and I were on our way to buy Thai presents for our respective partners.

“I’m getting frightened,” I said, quite suddenly. “The climate, I mean. What’s going to happen? To all this?” – I waved vaguely at the street – “to us?”

Matt was briefly taken aback, but he recovered. “There’s no point in thinking like that,” he said firmly. “Do something about it.”

Mike Robbins

He was right of course. And I’ve just read two books by people who really want to do something. Both are Green Party members; one is a former party leader, while the other has twice stood for Parliament as a Green candidate. They are both good books, but they present – unintentionally, I think – two very different ways of being green. The contrast has made me wonder what kind of environmentalist I am, and has crystallised my own feelings somewhat.

First, Natalie Bennett’s book is titled Change Everything. She is not joking.

*

Bennett was born in Sydney in 1966. She graduated in agricultural science then became a journalist on the Northern Daily Leader in Tamworth, New South Wales. She later served as a volunteer for some time in Thailand before joining the Bangkok Daily Post. In 1999 she moved to Britain, where she had a successful career in Fleet Street, ending up as editor of the Guardian Weekly. In 2012 she decided she’d had enough of journalism and stood for and won the leadership of the Green Party, which she had joined some years earlier. She served two two-year terms, and although not in Parliament, she led the party into the 2015 general election.

I was overseas but remember hearing her interviewed during the campaign and thinking her more sincere, and clear about her beliefs, than the other party leaders; she did not evade a question, and was clearly not in thrall to spin-doctors. But not everyone was as impressed (there was a  notorious interview on LBC that did not go well), and she decided not to seek a third term. Even so, the Green Party had done well under her leadership. She now sits in the Lords, where she is active.  

Change Everything is Bennett’s statement of belief for Britain. She begins by stating simply that our whole moral and economic system is wrong. Green philosophy, she says, “believes in the power of human caring and creativity when freed from the deadening hand of our present oligarchy.” Our system has, she says, ossified; we have been run by a bunch of Oxbridge PPE students who have all read the same political philosophies. …the key ideas that neoliberal and social democratic visions …share in their narrow, so similar, understandings of the world.”

In fact, since the July 2024 election many of these Oxbridge PPE graduates are gone from government. But Labour seems bound by at least some of the same ideas, so Bennett still has a point. She challenges several fallacies, as she sees them: that we must have growth; that everyone must have a ‘job’ in the conventional sense, regardless of its value to society; and that individuals, and nations, must compete with each other.

Her thoughts on work are especially well put. In our system, there are plenty of things that need doing but aren’t done because they don’t pay. But many conventional “jobs” don’t pay anyway, so that people need some sort of income support. Bennett’s answer is Universal Basic Income, or UBI; that is, everyone receives an income that enables a decent life. They can seek work that gives them additional earnings if they wish – or they can rely on UBI and develop their own talents and interests, and/or do work that needs doing in the community.

I am sympathetic to UBI and want to believe it might work, and it might even become an imperative as technology, including AI, displaces existing jobs. But I can’t forget a magazine article I read in about 1970 (yes, I was very young). It assumed that technical progress would give us the time and resources to be everything we wanted. Several random people were invited to try the activities they would pursue; one had a flying lesson, another went hospital visiting. But this future never happened. The magazine assumed the wealth created by new technology would reach everyone but that is not how the world works; the internet and e-commerce have created massive wealth, but it resides with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. UBI is not possible without a redistribution of wealth. Moreover it will mean some people working, others not; the venom already directed at folks on benefits should warn us how this might be taken. I would like to see UBI. But I think Bennett is asking for more than she realises.

There is much more in this book. On education, for instance; Bennett hates the way we bully children with exams, SATS etc. In her view it achieves little and just makes them miserable. I am strongly with her here. (She has recently advanced these views in the Lords while speaking on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.) I also agree with her on government’s insistence on ‘economically useful’ subjects; in recent years we’ve seemed to know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

She rails against wastefulness – in the fashion industry, for example, which generates piles of unwanted clothing, and the commercial horrors of Christmas, which have always grossed me out as well. And in general, she wants some big changes to the way we live and think. She refers to “the key ideas that neoliberal and social democratic visions of society share in their narrow, so similar, understandings of the world.” It is unfair to bracket the social-democratic tradition with neoliberalism in that way. But it’s true that Labour, and its equivalents elsewhere, now share the same ideas of growth and linear progress. Bennett does have a point here. And in general, there is a lot to like about her thinking.

Into the phalanstery?
But I have some misgivings. Bennett has strong views about some things. These include gene editing, which she opposes (again, she has recently spoken on this in the Lords). She is not wrong to have reservations about this; I also do. But the examples she uses in the book, Roundup-ready crops, are not a good example of what crop breeders actually do with molecular markers. And she can be sweeping; the US is, she says, a “white-settler empire” – a brusque dismissal of a complex country of 331 million where I lived for years and have much-loved friends.

More seriously, Bennett’s vision is a little all-encompassing for me. Utopianism has a long and troubling history, from Charles Fourier’s 19th-century phalanstère, or phalanstery – a quite detailed design for a commune – to the collective farms of the Soviet era. In the last century, attempts to impose left- and right-wing utopian visions on populations have had terrible consequences. There is an inherent link between utopianism and authoritarianism, because the utopian seeks to define so many aspects of human activity. There is a sign of this when Bennett talks about advertising of consumer goods that she feels (often rightly) we do not need. “The Green alternative is to clamp down on this unhelpful, stressful bombardment,” she says. “There is no ‘right to advertise’. We can choose what to allow.” Can we? She asks, for instance: “Do we really need ‘smart toasters’?” No, of course not. But if my neighbour wants one, have I the right to stop that – or forbid someone from advertising them?

Mike Robbins

It would be insulting to suggest that Bennett herself is authoritarian. Politically, she wants more freedom, not less; she questions (rightly in my view) whether the UK is really a democracy and sees the urgent need to reform the system. On a deeper level, her ideas on UBI and education are clearly aimed at letting the individual develop in their own way. Moreover smart toasters are a bad example; there are some constraints we might have to accept in future (including on what we eat; more on this in a minute). Even so, it is best not to have too broad a vision of the world you want.

But maybe we do need that green view of the world? If you acknowledge the threat of climate change but want to keep your way of life, you’re in effect saying we can fix climate change with technology. Bennett wants more than this. There is no technology in this book, she says: ”All those things are important and necessary, and there are lots of books about them, but their authors generally have a vision of a business-as-usual society with modern technology. …I mean something far more fundamental and transformative.”

However, one can want a better world, as she does – but still accept that it’s only science and technology that will save us right now, and that for the moment they are the priority. Which brings me onto the second of these books, Chris Goodall’s Possible.

The road to Net Zero
Chris Goodall is a researcher and writer on green technologies and their economics. He runs an interesting, if intermittent, green newsletter, Carbon Commentary. He also lectures, has the odd green business venture and has twice stood as a Green Party candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon (most recently in 2024 against the high-profile LibDem Layla Moran; he did quite well).

I first heard of him in 2016 when he published The Switch, in which he set out the potential for solar power – which he foresaw being our main source of energy by mid-century. I think he might have overestimated solar in relation to wind. Even so, progress since 2016 tends to bear out many of his predictions; for example he saw potential in perovskites, and it looks as if he may have been right. A later book, What We Need to do Now (2020), set out the potential for green hydrogen – Goodall is a hydrogen fan; but, almost as an aside, he doubted that it would be economic for road transport. I thought this odd at the time. But again, he’s turning out to be right.

Now, in Possible: Ways to Net Zero (Profile Books, 2024), he has sketched out just what we need to do to get to net zero by 2050. Goodall is not here to spread impending doom but to show us how it might be avoided. To this end he sets out how the main challenges really can be met, including in hard-to-emit industries like shipping, steel and ceramics. It is an ambitious book but practical and focused, and I found it very encouraging.

Goodall’s basic thesis is simple: To get to net zero we’ll have to electrify pretty much everything, including heavy machinery, so that we can run on renewable energy. But there are three major obstacles. First, we will need one hell of a lot more electricity. Second, intermittency; we’re going to need to store a lot of power to guard against drops in solar and wind energy. And third, we must mitigate emissions from industries that can’t be electrified – because they use processes that require too much heat (steel, ceramics), or because batteries are too heavy (aviation).

On the first point, Goodall says we produce about 27,000 terawatt hours globally a year and that this could rise to as much as 90,000 by 2050 if we are to realise net zero. Given that four-fifths of the world’s energy supply does still come from fossil fuels, is this really possible? He thinks yes, that the current rate of expansion in green energy as documented by the International Energy Agency (IEA) has us on target to get there. Still, in the UK’s case we will need about twice as much electricity as we have now. But Goodall quotes a study that thinks we can do it using solar and wind with hydrogen as storage, and without the need for gas-fired backup. He admits not everyone accepts that (and is not against nuclear if we need it, but doubts if it is economic).

For intermittency, he thinks we will need three basic types of storage: Batteries for very short-term smoothing-out; pumped hydro for slightly longer duration; and stored hydrogen for longer periods. The first of these is working increasingly well in California, so why not in the UK. But pumped hydro involves large construction projects, which will be subject to delays and cost overruns (Australia’s Snowy 2.0 is a warning here). Moreover England’s topography is not great for such schemes, although Scotland’s is better.

As for hydrogen, Goodall thinks the UK needs to store two months’ worth. But this is an awful lot of hydrogen. To put it in perspective, the boss of Centrica, Chris O’Shea, has just (May 2025) said that the UK has about 12 days’ supply of gas – which is easier to handle than hydrogen –  and half of this is in a single place, the Rough storage facility, the future of which is under discussion. Goodall sees the hydrogen being stored underground/undersea, perhaps in what used to be gas storage facilities. He is not being fanciful; large-scale geologic storage of hydrogen is widely seen by scientists as feasible if the geology is right. (In fact Centrica wants to use Rough partly for hydrogen.) Even so, the amount of new storage needed would be huge. And this assumes we can make enough green hydrogen, which will require a lot of green energy.

But Goodall sees nothing insuperable and maybe he is right. What is great about this book is that he is clear about the difficulties faced – then explains how they can be overcome. For example, the third obstacle is hard-to-mitigate industries; Goodall has talked to people who work in these (they include cement, steelmaking, glass and ceramics and shipping) and found that they are pursuing solutions and making them work. One of the most encouraging initiatives he looks at is Sweden’s H2 Green Steel, now renamed Stegra, which is building a steel plant with an integrated electrolyser to make hydrogen in situ, using hydropower. It is not the only initiative of this type.

Equally interesting is his look at shipping, which is one of the most polluting sectors and seen as very hard to mitigate. But ships could be fuelled with e-methanol, which can be made from captured CO2 and green hydrogen; and Maersk have already built a dual-fuel containership that uses methanol. This could also have other uses; not long after reading the book I heard about the Farizon G2M, a Chinese truck that runs on methanol made from captured industrial CO2 emissions.

The caveats
I had the odd doubt when reading this book. Goodall believes that carbon capture and storage (CCS) will be necessary on a large scale, involving the capture of CO2 at its point of emission from industrial sites and its storage underground, possibly in depleted oil wells or aquifers. One objection to this (which Goodall acknowledges) is that it can be a disincentive to industry to cut its emissions. In fact there is much controversy over CCS on these grounds, especially in the UK following the 2024 announcement of a £22bn investment in it by the Labour government. And there may be other pitfalls; what about leakage from insecure sites, resulting in unaccounted-for carbon emissions? I have even wondered if this might be dangerous, especially if the CO2 is under pressure; it is, after all, an asphyxiant and about 2,000 people died after a release from Lake Nyos in Cameroon in 1986.

Goodall would obviously understand these objections but thinks we cannot afford not to include CCS, at least for now. He may be right, but I would rather see any captured emissions turned into useful products – something Goodall alluded to in The Switch but says little about here, although he does discuss e-methanol for shipping. The potential for greater use of CO2 was outlined back in 2019 in a report by the International Energy Agency, Putting CO2 to Use: Creating Value from Emissions. This report did see the difficulties, in particular the amount of hydrogen that might be required to produce fuel from CO2. But Goodall is well aware of this and since the book was published he has argued on Carbon Commentary (January 2025) that CCS might make more economic sense than synthetic fuels, at least for now.

I also questioned some of Goodall’s chapters on food and agriculture. This is an important source of emissions, but some of it can be mitigated. He looks at livestock farming, a source of emissions, and the sequestration of carbon dioxide through agriculture, which is a potential sink. The latter was the subject of my own PhD and I later wrote one of the first books about it (Crops and Carbon, Routledge 2011). Goodall may underestimate the difficulties in getting useful data on the carbon content of a farm; it is not solely about measurement. That presents challenges of its own, but there are also difficult questions around baselines, additionality and especially permanence.

Mike Robbins

But more worrying for me is his approach to livestock farming. Goodall points out, rightly, that our taste for red meat is a major driver for climate change. Cattle and sheep are ruminants, and their digestive processes emit large amounts of methane. Goodall says cattle farming is responsible for about 8% of global emissions. He does not say where he got this figure, but it’s in the ballpark (the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization thinks it’s 7%). We are going to have to confront this.

However, Goodall may not understand the importance of crop-livestock integration in the maintenance of soil fertility, especially in regions where farmers cannot afford N fertiliser (a serious source of emissions in itself). In fact he is quite dismissive, saying many researchers regard rotation with livestock as ‘nonsense’. In fact, it is an important part of many farming systems, and maintaining carbon sinks in agriculture may be difficult without it. He also advocates the use of no-till agriculture to increase soil carbon content; this is not wrong, but it usually involves the use of crop residues and again, in many farming systems these are needed for animal feed. Getting rid of animals is not the answer. They are often essential to the farming system and would not always be replaced by crops – in fact, in large parts of the world this might be disastrous, especially on steppe.

There is also a trap that some Greens seem too ready to walk into: a culture war about eating meat. The fact is, people do. And whether they should or not, they are not going to want to be lectured about it. Or about their choice of toaster.

It’s not easy being green…
But in general, Goodall’s is a pragmatic approach: How do we do this, and save our necks? Bennett by contrast has firm ideas about who we should be. Moreover, although she never says it, she seems somehow to feel that technology shouldn't save us; we should change who we are instead. It would be wrong to see this as a gulf between two individuals; Goodall, like Bennett, is a committed Green, and Bennett does do real-world politics – her record attests to that. In fact they probably know each other. I doubt they would see themselves as having any real ideological difference. Even so, these two books seem to exemplify two very different approaches to being green.

I am happiest with Goodall’s. There are three reasons: Practicality; the dangers of culture wars; and my distrust of utopianism. The last two, in particular, are real threats to the Green movement and they are interrelated.

First, practicality. We are already set to overshoot the 1.5 deg C target agreed at Paris, and this was not random; it was based on what was seen as sustainable. I don’t think we can wait for human beings to become perfectible in nature. We need science and technology to save our sorry ass right now.

Second, renewables have become the subject of a culture war launched by the right. This was predictable. In the UK it’s been spearheaded by Reform, a right-wing political party that gets its funding from sources close to fossil fuels. We are dealing with some quite unpleasant people and we should not hand them sticks to beat us with. I don’t think we’re going to have much luck ordering people to completely change their lifestyles. It’s not a question of whether they should or not; they won’t do it. And telling people whether or not they are allowed a smart toaster, or trying to make them stop eating meat, will be a gift to the other side whether it is justified or not. No-one likes to be approved and disapproved of.

But third, anything that smacks of utopianism should be avoided. Governments must, sometimes, tell people what to do. They must never tell them what to be. Bennett is an exception in some ways, perhaps, because so much of what she wants is profoundly decent, and her concern for individual freedom is clear. In general, though, utopianism has an awful history. Those of us appalled by climate change must work for and with all decent humans, including those with smart toasters. If we don’t, we may one day look just like the fools that have brought us to this.

 

Mike Robbins

Natalie Bennett's website includes updates on her work in the Lords.
Chris Goodall’s Carbon Commentary can be found here and also here.

The pictures in this post were taken by the author at a climate-change demonstration in New York on September 21 2014. More of them here.

Thanks to Neil Monk for taking a look at a draft of this piece.

Mike Robbins's book On the Rim of the Sea is available as a paperback or ebook. More details here. Follow Mike on Bluesky or X or browse his books here.

 

 

 

Flash fiction: Parallel Worlds

Heat pumps and lentils. And a nice glass of Marsala

“It’s as if we inhabited completely parallel worlds,” said Jane.

“I didn’t really hear what happened,” said her brother John, who was reading the paper at the kitchen table.

“He wanted to bring some garden waste through the passage.”

“So?” John looked up. “You said the neighbours have access to the side-passage through your garden. I believe that’s quite common in these terraces.”

“Well, yes but these guys are busy working in our garden.”

John nodded; he was aware of that. They had been hammering and drilling all day and the back garden was a mass of pipes, unions and screws. In fact he had heard most of the encounter. The neighbour, Trevor, had opened the wooden door from his own garden and appeared dragging a large plastic bag of garden waste. He had looked put out to see his way blocked. “What’s going on here?” he asked. ”I’m having a heat pump installed,” said Jane. “Couldn’t you come through tomorrow instead?”

“A heat pump? Silly green nonsense,” said Trevor.

“You mean you don’t care about climate change?”

“It’s all a myth. You’re just wasting money.”

“You’re selfish and ignorant, Trevor.”

John had overheard this; he had groaned inwardly and poured more coffee. He had earlier spilled a quantity of ground arabica after trying to open the packet, which was impossible to open; it was a special brand from a Ugandan cooperative that Jane bought online at great expense. He now looked through the back window; Trevor and Jane were standing on the deck so he could only see their bottom halves, Trevor in long shorts and trainers, Jane in skinny jeans and large Doc Martens.

“And where’s my son’s ball?” Trevor was asking.

“It’s quite safe. He shouldn’t let it fly into my garden like that. He can have it when he comes and asks me politely,” said Jane.

John sank a little further down in his seat. He put some more sugar in his coffee, which was rather bitter.

Later, in the evening, Jane went out to her community self-help group, where they discussed promoting tolerance. “I’ll be back about nine and we can heat up those lentils for supper,” she called out.

“How lovely,” said John.

He sat on the deck, enjoying the warm evening air and sipping a glass of Marsala while reading the Book of Revelation, which always afforded him a certain amusement. Some time after Jane had left, the door to the next-door garden scraped open and Trevor appeared, dragging two large bin liners of bindweed. He did not notice John at first but struggled through the narrow gap between the deck and Jane’s back wall, then suddenly stopped. “Hallo, Father. I’m sorry to disturb you; I thought there was no-one here,” he said. He sounded a little abashed.

“My sister has gone out,” said John. “Don’t mind me. I’m staying with her while I’m on leave.” He stood up. “May I take one of those? They look rather awkward.”

Together they took the bags through the passageway and loaded them into the boot of an elderly Mercedes saloon with tinted windows, metallic black paintwork and stylised wheels.

“I’ll take them down the tip in the morning,” said Trevor. “Bless you for helping, Father.”

John chuckled. “John will do,” he said. “Come and have a glass of wine.” He sat Trevor at the small wrought-iron table on the decking, and poured him a glass of Marsala. “It’s a little sweet but very drinkable. Supplies from Father Godfrey at St John’s down the road. He buys his communion wine in bulk.” Trevor looked a little startled, so he went on: “Don’t worry, it’s not consecrated. If it was we’d go straight to hell, of course.”

“We’d meet some interesting people there, though,” said Trevor. He picked up the book John had been reading. “Any good?”

“Oh yes,” said John. “That’s our company instruction manual. It’s a free download if you’re interested.”

Trevor flipped the book open at the passage John had had open. “And I looked, and behold a pale horse,” he read, “and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” He put the book down. “What does that even mean?”

“It means we’re all stuffed,” said John. He chuckled and poured a little more Marsala into Trevor’s glass.

“It sounds like the sort of thing your sister says about climate change,” said Trevor.

“Ah well, she might not be wrong there,” said John. “Please take my sister as you find her, Trevor. She has a good heart.”

“I am sure. What on earth does she make of you being a priest?”

Wikimedia Commons/Tarquin

“She doesn’t know what to make of it, to be honest with you,” said John. “I think she feels I live in a strange parallel world.”

Trevor looked back at him with a thoughtful expression. “And do you?”

“No, I live in Haringey,” said John. “My sister is all right, Trevor. She is three years older than me. When we were children she dressed me and took me to school. She had to. Our father had gone and Mum was a drunk.”

“Oh,” said Trevor.

“Dinner’s ready, Trev,” called his wife from next door.

He stood up. “I’d better go. Have you eaten?”

“Don’t worry about me,” said John. “But thanks.”

When Trevor had gone he sat back in his chair, squinting to read in the gathering dusk.

“And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them,” he read. He sighed, and went into the kitchen for more Marsala. As he entered he saw Trevor’s son’s football in the corner. He hesitated for a moment; then he took it outside and rolled it through the gate to the garden next door.

More flash fiction from Mike

A Time of Darkness It doesn't repeat. But it rhymes

Another Time A tear in the fabric

Evolution The world is turning

When Time Stands Still A hurricane lashes Pershing Square

A Man For All Seasons Net zero.The Stranger's Bar. And a three-line whip

A History Lesson Why do we study it?

The Creatives Meeting a tech bro

Homecoming A sort of love story

Solitude A Cold War memory

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps A question of social geography

Hiraeth A yearning…

Strange Places A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey Things might have been different

Displaced Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging Do you? Where?
Leaving Home A house has memories

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.

 

Flash fiction: A Man For All Seasons

Net Zero. The Stranger’s Bar. And a three-line whip

Ned wobbled a little as he crossed the Lobby. But he managed a bow to the Speaker’s chair as he entered the chamber and made his way safely to his usual seat. From this he looked down on the orderly scalp of the Shadow Environment Minister, whose hair had been coiffed with precision for tonight’s debate; it had, like her staff, learned to do as it was told.

“Old Ned Fiddler looking a bit unsteady,” a young MP had muttered back in the lobby. “Does he hit the sauce often?”

Sir Thomas More

(Hans Holbein the Younger)

“Never did much,” said the lobby correspondent with him. “Too busy shagging research assistants. But I think the new party leadership is getting to him.”

It was. One of the Whips had called into his office in Portcullis House that morning to discuss the Environment debate for later.

“We’re a little anxious about you, Ned,” he said. “We need to land some punches on the government tonight. Need to show all those Reform voters that we don’t like Net Zero either. Are you going to speak?”

“If I’m called,” said Ned.

“You see, when it comes to Net Zero, you’ve been a little…” The whip looked up at the ceiling and down again. “A little unsound, if I may say so. We were a little concerned after the select committee… at your comments on wind energy for example. A little too approving. Our voters do not want these ugly things in their back yards.”

“You would prefer me to tilt at windmills?” asked Ned.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Never mind. Fear not, I am sure I shan’t disappoint you.” He picked up a sheaf of notes and waved it at the whip, who had, he noted, cut himself shaving. “I have written a paean to fossil fuels that will warm the cockles of your heart.”

“Splendid.” The whip got up to go. In the doorway, he turned. “We realise of course that your seat is a little vulnerable to Reform. You may wish to be a little surer of your place in the Lords. Should anything untoward happen at the neck selection. After all, it’s a three-line whip.”

“Fear not,” said Ned, and added quietly:

“And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It was written in 1520, of Sir Thomas More.”

“Oh.” The whip looked confused. ”Well, I’m sure we can rely on you.”

He went. Ned regarded his retreating back with distaste. Over thirty years in the House, he thought, and I’m expected to endure threats from these smarmy little creeps. He looked again at his notes, in which he had collated all the threats to birdlife from wind turbines and bemoaned the loss of farmland to solar panels. He thought for a moment. Then he picked up the wad of papers and dropped it in the bin. Next he opened his desk draw and took out a very old brown envelope from which he drew several sheets of foolscap paper, yellow with age. He placed them in a clear plastic folder. 

Then he went to the Stranger’s Bar and had two gin and tonics and a Glenlivet.

 

*** *** ***

“Mister FIDDLER!”

He swayed slightly as he rose to his feet.

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.” He looked round the chamber. “I need not long detain you …Bustards!”

Trevor Littlewood/Wikimedia Commons

A ripple ran through the chamber. The Environment Minister raised his eyebrows. Madam Deputy Speaker seemed about to intercede on a point of parliamentary language so he continued hastily: “Great bustards, to be precise. As the House will know, these birds have been reintroduced to these islands and it has been put to this House that wind turbines are a risk to them. Are we to let the planet fry because of the infinitesimal risk that some silly bustard might fly into the blades? I am reminded that, a few days after the destruction of the Möhne dam, The Times received a letter that purported to be from some learned academics concerned at the fate of some rare crested ring-tailed lesser-spotted Nubian warbler or the like thought to have been breeding on the reservoir. Still, this is not about bustards. Is it?”

He paused for a moment, then grasped the yellowed sheet of foolscap. “I should like, Madam Deputy Speaker, to read briefly from the diary of my great-uncle Christopher. He writes, on a day in June:

I have been thinking of the seasons and their immutability, which is a comfort in these times; one knows, doesn’t one, that in England, some morning in late February or the start of March, one will step out and feel the wind cold, harsh even, but not so raw as it was; and the sky will be a sort of washed blue with bright white clouds scudding across it, bisected by branches that are still bare but somehow not as barren as before. One knows then that it is early Spring. Then some weeks later that the buds arrive, the hawthorn breaks out and the trees are suddenly a very vivid green that you won’t see later in the summer, when they are duller, jaded.

We’re in that vivid time now; the sky’s a deep blue, not the livid grey-white of August, and the fields are coming alive – I can see them quite well beyond the perimeter fence, stretching across the Lincolnshire Wolds with their gentle folds and hedgerows. The blossoms are everywhere. I woke quite late today – we landed at four last night, and then there was debriefing and breakfast – when I got up I opened the window of my quarters and the world outside looked exactly like early June. Then just now the chaps were bombing up and some clot miss-set a circuit and let a 4,000-pound cookie drop from a bomb bay onto the tarmac. It didn’t go off, or we wouldn’t be here. I could hear the maniacal laughter of the crew and I thought, the world is in flames from Singapore to the Channel coast, and we have just been near-blown to eternity; yet the seasons feel exactly as they should, and there is something we cannot destroy, and that comforts me.

Ned lowered the page. “I read today that the Woodland Trust have detected changes in the seasons. Nothing has brought the reality of climate change home to me quite as that has done.” Two or three members began to rise, but he shook his head. “No, I shall not give way. Madam Deputy Speaker, I realise that my great-uncle could not now be comforted by the immutability of the seasons, as he wrote that he was in that dark time – a week or so before his death on active service. That is a reality almost beyond my grasp. Am I to deny that reality today because if I do not, a few thousand votes may go to fools?

“Madam Deputy Speaker, I have been a member of my Party for fifty years and a member of this House for thirty. But tonight I must defy the whip. I cannot vote against the Government motion and, for all its flaws, I commend it to the House.”

A wave of noise broke over him; cries of “Oh! Oh!” and “For shame!” and “Bravo!”. He did not hear them; he left the chamber and crossed the lobby, only dimly aware of the two or three lobby correspondents striding to keep up with him. They fell back, but one of them called out: “Is your career over?” And another called: “What season is it now, Ned!”

He stopped and thought for a moment. “I think,” he said, “that it’s early spring.”

More flash fiction from Mike

A Time of Darkness It doesn't repeat. But it rhymes

Another Time A tear in the fabric

Evolution The world is turning

When Time Stands Still A hurricane lashes Pershing Square

A Man for All Seasons Net zero. The Stranger's Bar. And a three-line whip

A History Lesson Why do we study it?

The Creatives Meeting a tech bro

Homecoming A sort of love story

Solitude A Cold War memory

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps A question of social geography

Hiraeth A yearning…

Strange Places A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey Things might have been different

Displaced Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging Do you? Where?
Leaving Home A house has memories

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.

Two fine new novels inspired by climate change

Climate change and the zeitgeist. Two stories of our time

Who is John Truthing? A charismatic figure who holds rallies at which he urges young Americans to join his movement, Eternity Began Tomorrow, to challenge a morally bankrupt establishment and defeat climate change. They flock to his rallies in identical white tracksuits, swallow a pill called Chillax that makes them feel good, and suck up his teaching. Truthing, meanwhile, lives rather well. But journalist Blazes Bolan is on his case.

That’s the premise of Kevin Brennan’s latest novel, Eternity Began Tomorrow. It sounds a little predictable; feisty young lady journalist unmasks fake guru’s crooked money-making schemes. Except that Kevin Brennan is a very good writer, and this book is not predictable. What happens in the end, not just to Truthing himself but to Bolan too, is a surprise. And as with all the best fiction, the reader doesn’t foresee it but it seems entirely logical once it happens.

Brennan is an editor as well as a writer. He lives in northern California and is the author of a number of books. I had read one of his before – it was Fascination, an unusual but compelling story of a woman whose husband has apparently committed suicide, but has probably just done a runner. She goes in search of him, and the result is a great road-movie-in-writing as she travels across the western USA with a private detective who is secretly in love with her. Fascination is bursting with picaresque characters and odd incidents, but there’s a serious theme. The book is really about searching – on the surface for some superficial thing, but actually for who you are.

Eternity Began Tomorrow is a good read too, as Blazes chases down the truth about Chillax,Truthing and his movement – a pursuit that takes her to a mad chemist in Puglia, a front company in Lichtenstein and Truthing’s palatial HQ in Taos. It’s well-paced and hard to put down, but it’s more than just a good thriller; here too there’s an undercurrent. The theme of seeking something intangible is there again, but perhaps more important, this book is  fiercely contemporary. It’s set against the background of the 2020 Democratic primaries, and is so up-to-the-minute that you realise Brennan must have finished the book just days before it went on sale. Moreover Blazes herself is very much of our time. She writes for a website, not a newspaper – something that will resonate with those of us who get our news from the Daily Beast or Huffington Post or, if we do read newspapers, read their online edition. That’s me to a T; I read the New York Times, the Daily Mirror and the Guardian, but online. I haven’t bought the papers for years.

But what really makes this book so “now” is that Brennan is confronting very immediate questions of the nature of charisma and leadership – topics that are now more important than they have been for 75 years. In a recent interview with writer and editor Susan Toy for her excellent website, Authors-Readers International, Brennan explains that Eternity Began Tomorrow is about climate change, our failure to deal with it, and the way that failure may open us up to some messianic leader such as Truthing – something of which we’d best beware.

I think Brennan is on the money. We’ve got used to seeing charismatic leaders who endanger democracy as a threat coming from the right, and so far they have. But the wave of disillusionment amongst the young could have unforeseen consequences. Eternity Began Tomorrow wins its spurs as a good story and a great read. But there is a hell of a lot going on under the surface.

*

CLIMATE change is also a theme of my second book, Alison Layland’s excellent Riverflow.

Layland lives on the borders of Wales and England and is a translator as well as a writer, working with German and French – and, unusually for someone originally from England, in Welsh; in 2002 she won first prize at the National Eistedfodd for a short story in the language. She’s the author of two novels. The first, Someone Else’s Conflict (2014), was a thriller centred on the Balkan conflict and its legacy. Her second, Riverflow, came out last year. Like Brennan’s latest, it is bang up-to-date and captures the zeitgeist, and the angst over climate change, very well.

It’s set in the western part of England, sometimes known as the Marches, that is next to Wales. Layland lives in this region and knows it well. It is beautiful. In the summer of 1972 a friend and I rode across it on racing bikes and pushed on into Wales. Snowdonia was steep and exciting and yet it is not the mountains I remember, but a very long day’s right across the Marches, that great long stretch of Shropshire and other counties that most English people barely know. Half a century ago it was perhaps less crowded than it is now. We crossed a series of steep hills and deep valleys, following a tangled skein of narrow lanes, through half-forgotten villages, past farmhouses where black-and-white collies lay in wait between the gateposts, seemingly asleep but springing up as we passed and barking and chasing off the wheeled invaders. It was a soft overcast day of deep greens and greys. Even now, 48 years later, that day is somehow England in my mind. But the region is dominated by the River Severn, which rises in Wales. It floods.

It is in Shropshire that Layland has set Riverflow. The book starts with a mysterious death. Joe Sherwell’s been drowned, swept away by the river in flood. It was an accident. Or was it? So far as his nephew Bede and his partner Elin know, it was. But there’s a sense of unease. Then a year or two later strange things start happening that suggest that they too could be in danger. Could the answer lie in a long-ago family quarrel?

Riverflow works on two levels. The first is that it’s a well-planned thriller. If you like a good old-fashioned whodunnit, you’ll like this. Layland has the knack that the classic detective writers had of scattering just enough clues for the reader to stay just ahead of the narrative – but not too far, so that at some point you’ll realize who the villain really is and will kick yourself for not spotting it earlier. The second level, though, is what makes this book a bit out of the ordinary. Like Brennan, Layland has tapped into the zeitgeist – a world in which everyone is profoundly worried about climate change, but seems powerless to challenge it.

Riverflow takes place in an acutely-observed modern rural England. It’s set in a village by the Severn in which the current culture wars are very visible. Bede and Elin are environmentalists who are appalled by the rich landowner nearby who’s trying to get fracking started on his land. There are other recognizable characters too – the sustainable energy guy, the landowner’s kind but circumspect old mother, the teenage daughter of divorcees who can’t stand her mother’s new lover. This book might be put together like a classic detective story, but the characters are bang up-to-date. Meanwhile climate change and the threat of another flood are a constant background.

If I had a reservation about this book, it was Bede. His heart is in the right place but he is not as sympathetic as he could be, having super-strong views about the environment and not caring, or maybe not realising, that he can make others uncomfortable in his presence. In particular, his wife and the teenage daughter of a neighbour both show him real kindness and get a bad-tempered response. But maybe Layland knew what she was doing here. Books in which the “good ’uns” are too nice can be a bit flat. I wonder, too, if Layland is trying to tell us something here; again, she has tapped into the zeitgeist, and realises that we do not always communicate with those with whom we do not agree and who might, given time, give us a hearing.

Riverflow could hardly be more relevant. When it was published last year, the Severn hadn’t actually flooded since 2007. But in February 2020 it did. As I write this, towns and villages in Shropshire and Herefordshire are flooded and there is more to come, with flooding also in Scotland, and parts of north-west England getting more than a month’s rain in just two days. Flooding is, of course, not just about climate change; it’s also about the speed of runoff, the result of land-use patterns that we can (hopefully) change. But what is happening is more sinister than that.

Brennan and Layland have seen the threats that confront us, and understand how they are messing with our minds. Sometimes fiction has a function. These authors know that. The fact that these two books are also great reads is a bonus.

Mike Robbins is the author of a number of fiction and non-fiction books. They can be ordered from bookshops, or as paperbacks or e-books from Amazon and other on-line retailers.
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