If, as expected, Copenhagen fails…

We will have to do as James Lovelock has suggested: prepare for the worst case scenario. Massive temperature rises in some parts of the globe, sufficient temperature rises elsewhere to enforce major lifestyle and social changes, sea levels increasing to the extent that nearly all coastal settlements on the planet and some entire island nations will disappear under the waves, billions of refugees—men, women, children, entire animal species—on the move across continents, battering at the defences of every nation trying to keep them out. An end to world trade, the dissolution of law and order, warlords controlling food and fuel and vast areas of land, mass starvation and dehydration, disease, wars everywhere, fighting on the streets, tens of billions of people dying, plant and animal extinctions, disruption to the food web upon which all life depends.

And, at the end of the sixth great extinction this planet has endured, a world no longer blue and green and beautiful—but hot and turbulent, with more in common with its sister Venus than ever before. This is the reality we face. And it will come to pass before 2100CE. We have ninety years left, tops. Most of us will be dead by then. But does that matter? What about those yet to be born, and those who are young today? Don’t they deserve to have lives?

For a time we in the UK will be shielded from the worst of the initial physical effects, although we will have to cope with food and water shortages, and the end of the convenience culture that brought us cheap air travel and foodstuffs from afar. We must prepare to increase the scale of our food production, banning green lawns and turning every available plot of land over to raising animals and growing crops. There must be a huge escalation of the already growing phenomenon of the ‘home farmer’. It will be a case of, if you don’t grow any food, you may not get any food. And you’ll have nothing to barter with if you don’t grow food when money and property become useless to our survival. Unless your body has some use to someone. Desperate times, desperate measures you see.

We must build nuclear power stations, even if we despise the idea—and I certainly do, I really do—while building our sea defences, new railway lines, and banning the motor car. We will have to ration carbon, gas and electricity. Businesses will have access to fuel by day; domestic homes by night. This is all inevitable if we do not act fast.

The nation will have to turn people away or we will shoot them. Every day. Every night. Until the very end.

What madness is this, that politicians in Copenhagen can even contemplate failure—that the human race cannot come to agreement, even though we know full well our extinction is otherwise inevitable, along with over 95 per cent of all other life on Earth? More of us must join the campaigning, the fighting, the personal change revolution that has been taking place for some time now. Everything you do matters, small or large. It is all significant, either contributing to the problem or the solution. And if we reach the end of line, what would you rather say—that you fought in good conscience, or you pretended nothing was wrong?

I am telling you one thing. I am not alarmist in writing the truth here. The truth itself is the alarming thing. Don’t ever blame the delivery boys for the headlines on your newspapers. That’s just silly.

I will be writing more soon, on the role I believe Pagans of all kinds specifically have to play; and, moreover, why it is important for all people of spirituality to not only pray with their hands but use them to work the land and actively engage with the Earth and its people as well. Stay tuned as it were, and let us all hope and pray for a global agreement in Copenhagen. Before time runs out.