Taking the Long View (in a Short Time)

Today's BBC Radio 4 "Thought for the Day" was COP15-focused, as these fascinating negotiations draw to a close. Abdal Hakim Murad's topic was, states the BBC's website, the claim that "Humility is needed to heal the environment." The scope of his short piece was of course considerably wider than that summary suggests, despite its compression into a strict 3 minute slot. Acknowledging climate change as "the defining topic of our times," Murad notes that politicians at the summit have been forced to extend their historical range, despite the fact that they are "not always famous for taking the long-term view." Meanwhile, Gordon Brown has pointed out that COP15's historical significance must be borne in mind, since this cohort of negotiators will be "blessed or blamed for generations to come." On the way to a point about humility, Murad has struck upon one of the defining features of cultural commentary on climate change - a fascination with various, often competing, temporal models. When he claims that the world is now divided not so much into "haves" and "have nots" but into "those that take the long view" and those that put off change, he suggests that it is attitudes to time that really make the difference in these negotiations, and in shifting (or failing to shift) attitudes to human responsibility in the face of our changing climate. If only Murad himself had had longer to expand on this interesting point.

Carteret Evacuation Latest

Tonight at 9pm on BBC Radio 4, "Costing the Earth" focuses on the evacuation of the Carteret Islands (details here). Dan Box (mentioned on springcoppice here; his blog here) has contributed many of the sound recordings for this documentary, following his recent return from the Islands. Dan's Royal Geographical Society-funded project will result in his own documentary for the BBC, due for broadcast later this year. 

Away With the Fairies

While we're on the subject of Robert Macfarlane, it's worth noting that Robert appeared in the first edition of the latest series of Travellers' Tree on BBC Radio 4, entitled "Wilderness" (available to listen to here, with Robert appearing at around 4.10). The programme considers the recent upsurge in interest in holidays to areas formerly considered too remote, or too inhospitable, to be a vacation option. Such an upsurge is of course partially inspired by, and reinforced by, a spate of books and programmes about adventurous travel, expeditions and the more contemplative aspects of interactions with the natural world. Travellers' Tree touches (albeit somewhat lightly) on some of the ethical issues involved in wilderness travel, the difficulties of large numbers of the population attempting to get away from everyone else, and the thorny issue of defining just what wilderness might mean. Something to which Robert has of course given considerable thought in his book The Wild Places. Photo: Robert's wilderness recommendation - Fairy Pools, Isle of Skye.

Dead, Mad or a Poet

The storyteller Eric Maddern has just completed the second leg of a story tour entitled "What the Bees Know" (of which he has much experience, as a bee keeper at his Cae Mabon retreat). Throughout the tour he has used bees as a "metaphor for what we're doing to the planet," he tells the BBC here. (This may be a case of synecdochic thinking, but as Maddern is an Honorary Chief Bard of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, we will presume a more holistic approach). In the course of his interview with the BBC he reminds us of the legend of Cadair Idris, one of the mountains of his neighbouring Snowdonia range. The story goes that anyone spending the night in the "Devil's chair," the hollow or seat of the mountain, wakes up dead, mad or a poet. This was a tale we were told growing up in Shropshire - what a great testament, I now think, to the power of landscape. The Victorian poet Felicia Hemans, according to her poem "The Rock of Cader Idris," teetered on the brink of outcomes one and two, before happily settling on number three:

[...]
I lay there in silence-a spirit came o'er me;
Man's tongue hath no language to speak what I saw:
Things glorious, unearthly, pass'd floating before me,
And my heart almost fainted with rapture and awe.
I view'd the dread beings around us that hover,
Though veil'd by the mists of mortality's breath;
And I call'd upon darkness the vision to cover,
For a strife was within me of madness and death.
[...]
I saw what man looks on and dies-but my spirit
Was strong, and triumphantly lived through that hour;
And, as from the grave, I awoke to inherit
A flame all immortal, a voice, and a power!
Day burst on that rock with the purple cloud crested,
And high Cader Idris rejoiced in the sun;-
But O! what new glory all nature invested,
When the sense that gives soul to her beauty was won!

The Coldest Tourist Hotspot

Parties to the Antarctic Treaty have now provisionally agreed restrictions on cruise ship size and tourist numbers in Antarctica (BBC report here; thanks Ewan Laurie). These limits will not become binding until ratified by all 28 nations of the Treaty. Over 45,000 tourists visited Antarctica last season. The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition called for such restrictions as early as 2005 (Observer article here), when the latest set of data (from 2004) gave the number of visitors as 28,000. iexplore offer an "Explore Antarctica 2009" cruise promising "Immense wilderness in a fabulous and virtually pristine paradise" (details here). How long before Trading Standards have a few things to say about that description?