The Swede, Greta Thunberg, who has inspired so many people around the world, is undoubtedly well known to many and here in the UK we have some amazing young naturalists and campaigners including the following:
Several of these young people have been mentored and supported by Chris Packham and I have seen some of them speak at Birdfair and additionally seen some of them on BBC2 Springwatch, BBC2 Autumnwatch and BBC2 Winterwatch and on the Self-Isolating Bird Club.
Bella Lack is also amongst them and she has recently written an extremely thoughtful and articulate article that is worth reading .... We all learned to love nature in lockdown. Now let's turn that into practical action.
Bella turned 18 years of age during the Covid-19 pandemic, a truly awful and devastating period which saw many people turn to the natural world, learn to love it and see the need to protect and conserve nature and wildlife.
Bella writes .... "It’s ironic that the pandemic,
which sent many of us scuttling into fields and parks with our eyes wide open
and our ears straining to hear the birdsong, stemmed from our destruction of
nature. It was poetic justice of sorts.
The coronavirus is a secondary, symptomatic crisis. We are
creating a vulnerable and fragile planet, and as we do so we become ever more
vulnerable and fragile too. Our war against nature is a war against ourselves.
If this pandemic teaches us anything, it must be that we cannot continue with
business as usual. Viruses and disease are environmental issues. About 75% of
emerging diseases are zoonotic. It is a stark and frightening reminder of our
vulnerability. Although we have been to the moon, created the internet,
concocted miraculous cures and conceived complex cultures, we are still bound
to the laws of the natural world, and will never be exempt from the havoc we
wreak upon it.”
Bella's main challenge is that we should use the opportunity for recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic to come out of our bubbles and directly challenge the way that the Government is approaching the environmental crisis.
She goes on .... “We must use what we have experienced, what we have learned and what we have felt, and channel that into a determined effort to challenge political apathy and drive political will by questioning the very fundamentals of how our government is approaching the environmental crisis. It’s no longer about modest adjustments as we tinker at the edges of the system; it’s about changing the very story we tell ourselves. It’s about changing our national narrative from one of endless growth and consumption to one where values of respect, compassion and wellbeing are at the heart of what we do. Remorseless and unstoppable growth in the human body is called cancer. So why, when it is on Earth, do we call it progress?”
Well done Bella. You, and many other young people, are showing the moral and ethical leadership that so many older people, not least the politicians, seem so totally incapable of providing.
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