The Arrived Ecological Debacle and how we will respond (maladaptively, for the most part)

I was walking along the canal tow path trying to feed moorhens (they were largely absent because there’s ice everywhere). A canal boat came towards me, at first crashing through the ice and then finding that more and more difficult, I didn’t get a decent photo but trust me when I say that it was quite spectacular.

I continued my walk, actually fed some moorhens who were skating on ice. Also some swans.

Anyway, on the way back, the canal boat was still at it, the diesel (?) motor laboring. They’d made, maybe, I don’t know, 30 yards of progress.

It’s funny how such a a thin thing – because the ice is, I don’t know, an inch thick – should make such a difference

.But we’re learning that, aren’t we? We’re learning that small changes in one place can lead to very big, significant changes in another.

I’m not saying anything about climate change with this post. This is not a metaphor for carbon dioxide. It is simply pointing out that we have this power. And normally we skate along – the water parts in front of our bow, and we get from A to B to C to D. But should that water freeze long enough, thick enough? It’s a different picture. Freezing, burning, the normal world that submits to our whims is… going.