The future's bright - as long as it's green!

This blog entry is written by Dr Kate Treharne BSc (Hons), PhD, MSc, OT, who I see as a friend, mentor and advocate for myself and Fintry Community Garden as well as community health overall.

So apparently climate change was top of Boris Johnson’s list of things he was looking forward to working with Joe Biden on. Of course, he needs to realise that climate change was happening in the 80s. It would’ve been relatively easy to sort things out if we’d started then. We’ve gone from Change to Crisis to Emergency to Catastrophe to Cataclysm in the meantime. And it’s getting worse, with no more intense nouns left: polar ice and other ice caps and glaciers are melting faster than anyone predicted, methane is pouring from thawing ‘perma’frost (the clue’s in the name), vast tracts of forest are ablaze, ecosystems are beginning to collapse and sea-level rise is speeding up with Dundee airport predicted to be underwater by 2050.

This is all big and terrifying and clearly the biggest disaster ever to face humanity and life on planet Earth. But watch the news and people are still talking about trade deals (kind of irrelevant when arable food production is in imminent danger of collapse), migrants crossing the channel (this is just the beginning), covid-19 (directly caused by human exploitation of the natural world) and …. eventually … scroll down, right at the bottom of the newsfeed: “World is running out of time on climate, experts warn.” This is the biggest deal ever and needs to be addressed immediately, yet governments pour money into carbon-heavy industries to keep them emitting greenhouse gases (Mossmorran flaring during lockdown was today reported to be the equivalent of 3000 return flights from Glasgow to New York) when they could be pouring that cash into zero-carbon jobs and businesses to boost wellbeing as well as climate ambitions. Covid outcomes are made worse by poor underlying health caused by bad diets, stress and sedentary lifestyles, and its impact is exacerbated by air pollution from all those convenient car journeys.

There is a knee-jerk reaction to proposals to reduce carbon emissions – ‘you want us to go back to the stone age, to give up driving, give up holidays, give up going to the shops every weekend to buy unnecessary stuff...’ But many people don’t, won’t or can’t do those things anyway. That kind of life is dull and shallow as well as discriminatory: what we should be looking forward to is a life that is easier, slower, more contented, healthier, more fulfilled and generally more satisfying. A life with more walking and cycling to local places where we can do something interesting, refreshing and rewarding. Where children can play in safety from traffic and toxic fumes, where delicious fresh food is freely available, where friends and neighbours meet to talk, plan, swap, help and enjoy each other’s company. Where there is time to do good things together and nobody is excluded. Fertile spaces are fertile ground for reinventing systems and orchestrating people power.

These blogs are meant to be about community growing not cancelling capitalism (I hear you cry: where’s the veg?); well, this is what everything else can hinge upon. To deal with pandemics, health crises, food shortages, unemployment etc. we need inherently strong communities where groups don’t need to organise systems to look after the vulnerable, it just happens because it’s normal. When the talk is not a one-upmanship of where you’re going on holiday, but a genuine interest in how the beetroot is looking and whether we will get any sweetcorn this year; what on earth to do with all those courgettes and runner beans. Meaningful, nice chat leaves space for people to confide how they are feeling, offer help without stigma and for mutual learning to take place. Dundee’s Food Growing Strategy calculated that a third of our veg could be grown within the city limits. This is surprisingly similar to findings published this year in Nature Food: “The hidden potential of urban horticulture”. So we could take control of our own food supply, improve our diet and reduce carbon emissions while keeping the kids entertained and healthy for free.

It seems to me that healthy food, climate resilience, social justice and the essence of community are all encapsulated in community growing. Maybe I’m overstating it, but I am in good company.

Greta Thunberg is recently quoted as saying: “We are fighting for climate justice, social justice. They are so interlinked, you can’t have one without the other. The climate crisis is just one symptom of a larger crisis, the loss of biodiversity, the loss of fertile soil but also including inequality and threats to democracy… we have reached the end of the road.”

As long as we pave the end of the road with lettuces, we might ALL just be OK.