Copyright Karin Mora 2016
Ah, the beautiful view of the woods outside, thin enough to thread a truck through and full of that tree, and the one with the conkers.
I used to play conkers as a child but was told not to eat them. We ate them in autumn around braziers stood at the bounds of markets, at the parish bounds of a church built in the “old days”.
I know the date the Vor Frue Kirke, the cathedral in Copenhagen, was built. And burnt down, looted, expanded, embellished, bombarded, and rebuilt in the neo-classical.
I forgot the name of the colourful bird in that tree of that view of the woods and so couldn’t tell a proper story of having seen it. Somewhen Nabokov’s calling me an arse. I haven’t seen it since. Is it dead? Was it lost? What does live here?
We Danes have shrunk our feet over the years, from over 8 to 5.5 global hectares per capita [1]. No longer the largest ecological footprint in Europe, but still too far above the world average of 1.7 gha, and that itself more marrow than the world can make.
We’ve always been a folk of fair winds and foul and used them on occasion to plunder. Those winds still drive our masts today and the worst storms have provided power for every resident. Old gods and new technology.
We thought the English a seafaring folk as well, but it seems their Members are happier driving rods into the shale than raising turbine sails on the plains and coasts [2]. Perhaps we Danes still see our land as a longship not to be scuttled.
The bird was a bullfinch, the tree a birch. This is earned knowledge, but it’s also a duty, an accounting.
Knowing the names of the people that jeopardise your children’s children’s lives is making accountable. Total finally abandoned north Jutland [3] in June 2016, but it was likely the shale’s refusal to yield, not the people’s, that persuaded them. This came at a cost to all parties involved, originating in a licence that should never have been granted by the government.
Accountability requires memory, and Generation Blight will likely still have their data farms humming in the increased heat. As we asked why we twice wandered into war in the Twentieth century, they might ask why, foreknowing at the start of theirs, we balanced Molatovs on the nursery mobile and called them beacons. Why we set them up to fail with faith in vapourware remedies.
Being held to account. That’s part of the franchise of democracy: your name is on a register. You don’t need specialist historical, legal, or sociological knowledge to understand group responsibility, conformity, and complicity: the teacher in the classroom says nobody leaves until I find out who did this; the car manufacturer says we tampered with the data; the police say there was no incident of unlawful killing; the politicians, representing countries, ratify the Paris Agreement on climate change. You can see the wood, despite the trees.
Sometimes governments do act responsibly, as in the German Bundestag’s decision to ban fracking nationwide [4]. A question mark should hang over the several scientific sites still granted permission to drill, and an exclamation mark over the active coal, gas, and oil sites, but it’s a step in the right direction.
In this information age, every step, and every step considered, is recorded. We’re being surveilled by our future selves, and should learn to feel those eyes upon us.
[1] http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/trends/denmark/
[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fracking-lancashire-cuadrilla-sajid-javid-planning-permission-overturned-a7347576.html
[3] http://cphpost.dk/news/total-gives-up-fracking-plans-in-denmark.html
[4] https://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/DE/Artikel/2015/04/2015-04-01-fracking-gesetz-kabinett.html
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