Friends, we collectively wish the best for our families, friends and the wider communities to which we belong. But how do we avoid having conversations like this with our grandchildren?
“Granny, what was it like to live at the peak of the carbon age?”
“Our teacher said that back in the 2020’s you could still fly around the world for the cost of a few weeks wages and that planes then emitted hundreds of TONNES of carbon dioxide on every flight?“
“And she said that those old aeroplanes left clouds that changed the look of the sky!”
“Is that true Granny? Did the planes really do that?”
“Yes, darling, that’s what it was like back then.”
“But why Granny? In History we learned that everyone knew for decades that carbon dioxide emissions would melt the Arctic ice. And now that the Greenland Ice Sheet has begun its strong melt, we have rising sea levels and strange weather and its harder to grow food. “
“Didn’t you know what you were doing?”
“Darling, yes, we knew, but, we sort of didn’t really want to think about it.”
“For example, Michael, your grandad, wanted your parents to see what the Mediterranean was like, so we flew to Greece one year. It was so good to swim in the warm clear water and we all had a great time. We just didn’t discuss the extreme heat or the carbon.”
“And Michael wanted to show your parents California where his friend from school lived. We had a couple of great holidays there. It was so, so beautiful. We even saw the Sequoias before the Great Fire.”
“And more recently, I ached to see you and your parents again. After your parents left the UK in their twenties, the thought of not seeing them again felt like a death sentence.”
“And the tele-screens weren’t like the tele-presence systems we have now, so we both needed to travel for work.”
“Everyone knew we were storing up problems for the future, but it wasn’t as socially unacceptable as it is now. Now everyone boasts about how far under-quota they live. But back then some people took exotic holidays several times a year. Even Climate Scientists flew on aeroplanes – every one did it.
“A few people went on and on and on and on about it, but while flying was easy and cheap we just tried not to talk about it.”
“And there didn’t seem to be an alternative.”
“But there were alternatives Granny! If you had just begun to really do something twenty years earlier, things would be so different for us now.”
“Granny, what was it like to live at the peak of the carbon age?”
Protons for Breakfast 