In May 2017 I travelled to the Panamanian jungle on the border with Colombia. My goal was to photograph and write a story about the opportunities for the area following the disarmament of FARC.
The Royal Geographical Society published the feature in their December 2017 issue.
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new Heart of Darien : Geographical magazine
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photo by UNFCCC
On Tuesday I went to a road block disco in central London. I was writing a story for the Royal Geographical Society magazine about the new environmental activism group Stop Killing Londoners. I could have told the story from the sidelines. But when they initially walked out and sat down in front of three lanes of rush hour traffic; I knew I would have to join them to tell the story properly.
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Dear Mr Trump
Imagine, if you will, a futuristic school history lesson that captures our historical moment tonight. Children are reading from interactive textbooks where a rising line graph of carbon dioxide parts per million is plotted against increasing temperature. As our own descendants’ eyes track along the graph, dynamic illustrations pop up from the industrial revolution, through to you wrestling control of the world’s thermostat this very evening and reneging on your country’s agreement to curb global warming to 1.5°C.
“What will happen,” the world weary teacher will then ask the class “if you alter the temperature in which plants, humans and ecosystems have evolved over millenia?”
“Change will happen?” some child will venture.
“Yes, please swipe to the next page to see how” and our children will gasp at your decision tonight, in the same way we did when we were children, and turned pages on Apartheid, the slave trade and the Roman Colosseum.
Now Mr Trump, forgive me if it seems I am catastrophizing. I wouldn’t want to alarm, or test your patience for too long. Allow me graciously if you will, to back up. To the history you and I already know.
In 1899, the commissioner of the US patent office, Charles H. Duell, famously declared, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” A childishly blunderous statement in hindsight, we can both agree. The unforeseen advances of private air travel and instant Tweets were not yet even the tropes of the most fantastical fiction.
And yet, and this is the real stinger Mr Trump, Duell really thought he knew what he was talking about. In the fifty years the commissioner had lived, he had already seen the invention of American football, the internal combustion engine and the solar cell. He had also seen the abolition of slavery: your country split into two as the people of the Confederate States fought for their right to keep three million Africans and their descendants in captivity. Wrongs had seemingly been righted. A steady way of life had seemingly been established. To paraphrase Duell, “everything that could be thought, had already been thought.”
Are you still there Mr Trump? I put it to you Mr President that in order we avoid the same fate as Duell, we surely must be open to the idea that societies exist in a state of constantly shifting status quo, where our present values may one day seem reprehensible. Where once the Romans sipped fermented grapes, watched gladiatorial flesh being torn in a ring and congratulated themselves on such wholesome good living; the new standard by which today’s society and world leaders will soon be judged is in their response to global climate change.
There’s an elephant in our atmosphere Mr Trump. Its silence is fed by ignorance, apathy and the sound bites of pay-rolled climate change deniers who compete to scream the loudest in your ear that nothing, in fact, is going on at all.
When however the ebbs and flows of ice ages fail to provide an answer Mr Trump; when the carbon that had always previously been stored underground has been released; when the damage is irrevocable and your reneging on the Paris Climate Agreement tonight has warmed our planet catastrophically by more than 2°C – the rent-a-quote pseudo scientists will have long since changed the signs on their door. And then Mr Trump you will be alone. Then the new history books will start to be written.
The entry you created tonight Mr Trump will come just after the abolition of bear baiting, emancipation and the triumph of gay marriage.
In class one day, in the not too distant future and I hope long before you are dead – this question will come Mr Trump.
“Miss – How did this man not realise he had got it so wrong?”
Your sincerely,
A teacher, an environmentalist, an aggrieved human being
Matt Maynard
Ph. Visual Omelette
At 6am on March 30th I will pedal away fromMorden Underground station at the southern terminus of the Northern Line. Over the next six hours I will visit each of the 33 consecutive stations on the Northern Line by bicycle, finishing in High Barnet, N.London.
On the top tube of my bicycle will be a black carbon (diesel emission) monitor; by my throat will be a sampling tube and mounted on the pannier rack at the back will be a sign, “Did you know that cycling exposes you to less air pollution than buses, cars or trains?”
The WHO reported in November 2016 that air pollution currently causes 6.5 million early deaths a year. That is double the number of people lost to HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria combined. In London nearly 9,500 people die early each year due to long-term exposure to air pollution – that’s twice as many as died during the Great Smog of 1952.
Air pollution data has been recorded by KCL for the entire London Underground lines. The black carbon monitor provided by KCL is expected to provide data during the ride, presenting the case that swapping your Underground journey for a bicycle will reduce your exposure to air pollution.
I am a journalist; not a researcher or policy maker. But I hope and continue to believe that seemingly small and insignificant acts by individuals can be a powerful tool to draw awareness to this elephant in our atmosphere. From starting points like these we can also draw collected consciousness to tackling climate change as well.
I would be delighted if any other keen cyclists would like to participate. Join me at 6am this Thursday at Morden Underground. Mike’s Bike Surgery (just a stone’s throw from Morden Underground) will be serving coffee from just before 6am. You will need a bicycle and an air pollution mask if you have one.
Find the Northern Line Overground route here: https://www.strava.com/routes/8042325
Or send me an email at [email protected] if you would like the GPX file.
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