The Carbon Cycle

 The Carbon Cycle - Kate Rawles

This is an excellent if somewhat disturbing book.

I am still amazed that someone was able to ride a bike 4553 miles from Texas to Alaska. The various descriptions of the journey, with the scenery experienced, is a delight to imagine through Kate’s eyes. That anyone could persevere through extreme heat, steep inclines, punctures, wild camping at times, the isolation of riding on your own and then with her partner, just astounds me. If for no other reason this is a book worth reading.

However Kate made the journey to draw attention to what is happening to our planet and in that regard it is an uncomfortable read. Many of the things she refers too, many of us are already aware of, but it raises afresh the question, What are we doing about it?

I was struck afresh by the way we are destroying the eco-systems we are reliant upon for our own existence. So many of us are cut off or disconnected  from the way the planet sustains us, it means people are able to live in a kind of vacuum. 

We pollute the air we breathe through our cars and industry.

We pollute our water with plastics, human waste and chemicals.

We pollute the land with industrial practices and chemicals. 

All of this damages the quality of the air we breathe, the soil, plants and water. This damage is killing off sea life, insects, birds, trees, in fact everything, and so the food chains upon which we rely are being broken. 

The idealistic hope that we can find a technological fix to our carbon fuelled way of life, was highlighted in the book through the people she met. There are of course seeds of hope for  a cleaner future. Yet while we may be able to generate cleaner energy, it cannot be used as an excuse, for not reducing our consumption of energy. If we are to save the planet and our own human species from extinction we have to do things differently. No point making clean energy if we still consume it at an ever increasing rate because the reality is the earth cannot sustain this. 

This in turn begs a question of can we change? Western societies which others seek to emulate for a ‘better life’, and who can blame them? is built upon an economic system that is all about ever increasing consumption. To make the world go around we have to keep making things and encourage people to buy more things. But the earth has limited resources and does not ultimately fit the market economic system. So we need to change our economic model but who is willing to give up what they have or aspire to? We have known for decades now that we could feed the world with corn and wheat so easily, but instead we use it to feed cattle which is so damaging to our environment and health.

What scares me as a person of faith is how the author encountered some people, and Christians in particular, who hold a view of the world that God will fix it. Worse still that God will fix it because God is going to wind up the whole human experiment anyway, and the chosen will be saved. So there is no reason to change what’s happening as its all part of God’s plan. It fits an evangelical American world view, but it is not solely a view only to be found in America. This flies in the face of a God who in scripture entrusted humanity with the care of creation. This care is to nurture and sustain not to abuse and destroy.

The author comes across an ignorance of people to what is going on with the climate. Sometimes this ignorance was people choosing to ignore what they did know because they like their lifestyle. However mush of this ignorance exists because of who controls the media. This control has a profound affect on what people are informed about and how they are informed. Fox news in America which supports the power brokers of oil companies and those who are climate change deniers, constantly feeds people with a view of the world that enables people to ignore what’s going on. The question of so called balance in reporting, means you don’t get balance, because if ninety-nine scientists say climate change is clearly happening and one scientist denies it, but the one gets as much air time for the sake of balance, then you have a false balance, which allows people to not change their ways. So this book is more than just about climate change it is about who holds and manipulates power.

This is not a book that you can just read and walk away from. It evokes both a sense of hope and despair. Kate in cycling gave people a reason to ask her what she was doing, which opened up conversations that otherwise would not have happened. 

In many of the conversations Kate had, both informally and formal, people shared their fears and hopes. The need to link up smaller projects that seek to make big changes. She met people who were actively seeking to do something positive.

All of us need to play our part consuming less, recycling more, and demanding of the power brokers to change how the world works.

For those of us in the UK the destruction of our water industry is becoming so very clear. Water is a basic human need and should not belong to private equity companies to make even more money out of. The cost of privatisation is seeing our water, lakes, rivers and seas becoming unfit to drink from, swim in, fish from and it will take years to undo the damage that has been caused by greed. 

For me Kate’s book highlights the fact we are communal and interlinked. That is insects, bees, plants, trees, grizzly bears, salmon and whales, oh and the human species. We all depend upon each other but looking at how humankind acts you would not always know that. Humanity has allowed itself to become disconnected from the planet that sustains our existence. In doing so we are heading for a fall - buts its not yet too late to do something.