The Drowning World

JG Ballard's novel was, of course, 'The Drowned World', although his dystopian future was the result of a global warming that was not man-made. Maybe it hadn't occurred to anyone in 1962 that we were heating up the planet, I don't know.

I do know that people were talking about global warming as a result of mankind's activities by the time I was in my teens, but for forty years governments around the globe have mostly - almost completely - ignored the voices of the Greens, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace et cetera.

Not all gloomy forecasts come to pass, it should be said. Improved oil extraction processes meant that fossil fuels didn't run out when people worried they would. Mind you, it would have focussed minds on green energy a bit sooner if they had, so that's one problem I wish we hadn't avoided.

Global warming, on the other hand, has come to pass, even if we refer to it mostly by the blander label of 'climate change', these days. It seems absurd that even a few years ago, the BBC would 'balance' climate scientists against uneducated* deniers such as Nigel Lawson.

But it is happening and now our governments act like it's some kind of surprise, but at least something will have to be done now.

I mention all of this because we came across some art tucked away in the trees, today: images of a drowning - but hopefully not yet drowned - world.

But as you can see from my Extra, it wasn't all doom and gloom. We had another nice day mooching around the site, visiting the bar and the food stalls, and remembering how much harder things like this were when you had small children to entertain. There were plenty of families arriving to remind us :-)

*Uneducated about climate change, anyway.