2019 Graduation – Background

My niece’s graduation ceremony took place in July 2019. It happened to be on the hottest day ever recorded in the UK. The event was in London, the London traffic was at a standstill. The CO2 output from the idling cars plus the air-conditioning must have been immense. That was just one capital city in the globe.

The UK parliament had recently declared a Climate and Environmental Emergency, naively I thought that this would raise awareness in the general public. However most people didn’t even know that an emergency had been declared. My family would not have been aware had I not told them. I felt a real spoilt-sport, it was a day of celebration. All I could do was worry about how bleak the future looked for us all. My anxieties were overwhelming.

Seeing a terrifying future that no-one else can see, is a very dark place. Only such anguish could create these poems. The lockdown has brought our family closer together. We now have a Zoom get together every week, and they have all been very supportive of my endeavours to raise awareness about climate and ecological collapse.

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