This Heatwave: what is it telling us?

Up here in Northumberland, we can't really speak about a heatwave, not in the way Londoners can. Cooled by the North Sea, we don't get highs much above 25 degrees. Often enough, while the rest of the nation swelters under blue skies, ours are obscured by the sea fret or haar driven inland by cool easterly winds.

But the continuing dryness is another matter. (Let's not call it a drought as it isn't officially that just yet.) On Friday we had some rain, welcome relief to gardeners and farmers alike. The lawn turned miraculously green again. But this morning the river gauge in the South Tyne has dropped back to 22 centimetres, only just above where it has stood for much of this month. As you can see from the photo, the river is now easily fordable in the village. Locals are saying that they can't recall when it was so low for so long. Normally a vigorous upland river, the Tyne is a shadow of its normal self.

In an article in today's Observer, Robin McKie cites examples from around the Northern Hemisphere of how the ferocious heat being experienced across the world is having alarming consequences. Wildfires, crop damage and human mortality are already having devastating effects. A couple of weeks ago I stood on a nearby Northumberland vantage point and watched smoke rising in the distance. Stray ordnance from the MOD ranges had set fire to the moor and while contained by fire-fighters, it was to burn for many more days yet.

Why is this happening? The immediate cause appears to be a weak jet-stream which results in the stagnation of calm high pressure areas that generate hot sunny conditions. That phenomenon in turn needs explaining of course. One abnormally dry summer does not by itself "prove" global warming. McKie is careful not to draw easy conclusions about climate change. The earth's weather systems are extraordinarily complex and are not perfectly understood. But he quotes a climate change scientist as agreeing that "it is hard not to believe that climate change has to be playing a part in what is going on round the globe at present".

This is all wearyingly familiar stuff. The consensus among climate scientists is overwhelming that our planet faces damaging and irreversible change if we don't hold the global temperature rise this century to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. International agreements to limit carbon emissions have been hard-won, but are still not enough to reverse the trend. It's questionable whether the 2 degree threshold can hold without a step-change in the collective will to achieve it. It's evidently not at the top of all political leaders' agenda. Much easier to address short-term challenges than to think beyond the lifetimes of their own generation. They will most likely all be dead before the worst effects of global warming begin to kick in. Après moi le déluge.

Or rather, après moi la canicule, to invoke that colourful French word for the kind of scorching "dog-day" heatwave we had in 2003 when thousands of people died across Europe. The question is, how do we turn these apocalyptic but distant worries into concerns of the immediate present where there is some chance that they could spur us on to devise better futures that would save the planet?

George Monbiot has been telling us for ages that one key to it (not the only one, of course) would be drastically to reduce our dependence on meat and dairy products. "While some kinds of meat and dairy production are more damaging than others, all are more harmful to the living world than growing plant protein. It shows that animal farming takes up 83% of the world’s agricultural land, but delivers only 18% of our calories. A plant-based diet cuts the use of land by 76% and halves the greenhouse gases and other pollution that are caused by food production." I find his arguments persuasive. It's not a question (I think - though some might disagree) of becoming vegetarian or vegan by conviction. I don't happen to be vegetarian, though I do eat a lot of vegetarian food because I find it enjoyable and healthy. No, I believe it's simply a matter of rebalancing our diet in the interests of the planet, its peoples and the living creatures for whom it is home. If we all took his advice, even in small ways, what a difference it would make.

It puzzles me that when I stay in hotels, I see notices in bathrooms about re-using towels for the sake of the environment. But I've yet to see signs about turning off the lights when we go out, or using public transport instead of our cars, still less about not choosing meat from the restaurant menu! It seems to be a symptom of our selective attitudes to environmental sustainability. I'm no better than the next person - let anyone without sin cast the first stone.

But I am saying that we need leadership here. Climate change ought to be at the top of every party agenda, not just that of the Greens. Strong, committed political leadership, not simply through word but (especially) by example is seriously needed and would do a lot to prise us out of our lack of urgency. And if Monbiot is right, shouldn't our churches also be debating not only how to reduce our carbon footprints but the ethics of excessive meat and dairy consumption in pursuit of more sustainable ways of living? Shouldn't the changes Brexit will make to agricultural subsidies be an opportunity for a public conversation about what we look for from the farming community on whom we depend for so much? The campaigns against CFCs, plastics and fossil fuels have shown how, when we act together, a multitude of small choices can add up to a critical mass of decisive action that leads to change. The key is greater awareness. Churches and other voluntary communities, alongside statutory agencies and the private sector, can make a big difference if they choose to. 

For us in the UK, this long hot summer is something to enjoy. But ask the farmers and they will tell you a different story. Take a look at your rivers and reservoirs. Read the international pages of your newspaper to see how serious the situation is becoming in other parts of the world. Listen to the climate scientists. Pay attention to your own conscience. We must not fail our grandchildren and their children by failing to read the signs of the times. 

Brexit and The Archers

Here's a bit of fun stuff for the post-#Brexit blues. Or not. It may depend. You may think I'm trivialising the solemn or solemnising the trivial. 

The Archers was (were?) born the same year as me, in that annus mirabilis 1950. I've been an avid listener since I was a teenager. In the days of our analogue innocence, woe betide anyone who interrupted those hallowed 15 minutes. Nowadays, the BBC iPlayer has loosened the tight grip the 7pm pips used to have on my daily routine (though I'm old enough to remember when it was 6.45pm - perhaps some readers of my generation can recall when the change was made).

Let's not go in for exaggerated claims. I won't say that all I've ever learned in life has been picked up from The Archers. But as a north London suburbanite brought up behind privet hedges and net curtains, I did learn quite a lot about the countryside. To us townies, it was a foreign country. They did things differently there. That was part of my justification for listening to it, or so I told my mother. She was a dyed-in-the-wool Mrs Dale fan. She was disconsolate when it folded. But I don't know how much medical knowledge she or anyone ever distilled from Dr Dale's surgery or his worrisome wife. By contrast, I used to say to her, The Archers was educational. It was far more than entertainment (we didn't call them soaps in those days). You were informed about the realities of farming and how people interacted with the land. You learned. So it was essential listening. And also, a lot of the time, huge fun.

This marriage of informing and entertaining was always the mission of The Archers. It was originally conceived as a way of getting information across to farmers and smallholders about how to increase productivity after the austerities and food-shortages of the war and post-war rationing. There was regular advice from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food who had a role in devising the scripts. You didn't just learn about the daily round and common task of the life in the countryside: good husbandry, farm-management, the vicissitudes of seed-time and harvest and the hazards of unseasonal frosts. Nor was it just about Doris Archer's kitchen, jam-making and beef stews. You picked up a lot about rural poverty, employee relationships, estate management, pesticides and livestock movement not to mention the (sometimes overwrought) dynamics of village life. This daily window on an "everyday story of country folk" had its ups and downs. But you felt you were in the company of people who knew what they were talking about when it came to the landscapes of middle England.

But the programme has never been merely quotidian in its concerns. Some of its big stories have focused on events that have been very much in the headlines: organic farming, foot-and-mouth disease, farm tenancies, road building, badger-culling, flooding and GM crops. The Archers were never afraid of being topical, even controversial. Locals expressed their views forcibly on the village green, in the shop, in the Bull, even in church. The cut-and-thrust was part of the point. The programme didn't need to take sides to acquaint a listening public with the joys and sorrows of a green and pleasant land from which many were increasingly distanced in towns and cities.

Which brings me to my point. Why have The Archers studiously avoided getting drawn into the greatest political decision of our generation, the European Union Referendum? Our friends at Felpersham Cathedral (@Felpercathedral) installed an #EUReferendometer to monitor all mentions of the referendum on the programme. (Discursus: I wonder where did they put it - in a transept? the crypt? the triforium? underneath the high altar? Or did the Dean or a minor canon have to wear it under their cassock and surplice like a heart monitor?)

The Cathedral issued a weekly report on referendum talk in the village. There was little to report: just one significant kick, a conversation between Adam and David about the implications of EU membership for farming. (David was for Remain. Adam, surprisingly, said he would be voting Leave - as a gay man, had he forgotten the progress so energetically promoted by the EU in relation to LGBT equality?) Apart from that, not a single conversation about any substantive referendum themes. Not one!  The referendometer flatlined for the best part of four whole months. There was just a bland exchange or two about how important it was to vote and how the village hall was given its customary role as polling station, but without getting into any issues ("I know better than to ask you which way you're going to vote", or weasel words to that effect).

When it came to the EU debate, Ambridge was the most silent, undisturbed place in Europe. The Bull was untroubled by any argument. There were no sermons in church, no meetings in the village hall. Peggy didn't fall out over it with the vicar. Debbie runs a farm in Hungary, yet she had nothing to say from the perspective of eastern Europe. Brian and Justin are used to thinking big about farming, but they had more pressing things on their mind than the Common Agricultural Policy. Young farmers Pip and Josh bucked the trend of their generation by not being engaged with it at all let alone coming in as fervent Remainers. Even Susan kept her counsel, a phenomenon unheard-of in all the years she has presided over the village shop. A cloud of EU-unknowing hung over the village. The referendum was strictly off-limits. It was the topic - love it or loathe it - that dare not speak its name except (we are guessing) in dark corners out of reach of the microphone. Out of reach of us.

I find this profound silence perplexing. The Archers has a good track record in helping listeners understand how the big news stories affect the countryside and the rural economy. It knows from long experience how to weave them seamlessly and unselfconsciously into fictional drama. I wasn't expecting it to take a position on the EU, but I was 100% sure it would deliver on its past form of squaring up to hot topics like the referendum. I was wrong. More wrong than I could ever have guessed. Its avoidance of the EU debate has been near complete. And, I think, cowardly and disappointing.

I used to belong to the wonderful group called the "Archers Anarchists". Their core belief is that the programme isn't make-believe and its participants aren't actors. The place and the people are real. I'm afraid that after the referendum, Ambridge has become less real than it used to be. The cynics and mockers are right. It's a little bit of an imagined but lost England, a feel-good audio theme park that is untroubled by the messy complexities of national and global politics even when they bear directly on it. If the Archers don't care about rural life enough to engage with a national debate with such momentous consequences for all the Ambridges across the UK, why should we bother to take them seriously any more? 

Ambridge: you have let us down. I doubt you would have changed anyone's mind. I'm not suggesting you should have tried. But had you been a bit more spirited, we would have gone into the polling booth better informed, whether we live in an urban or a rural environment. I'd have thought it would be an unrivalled opportunity for The Archers to come into its own once again, assert its own relevance, get itself noticed. You showed with Helen and Rob that you knew how to handle a difficult story really well and get the nation talking about it. So why duck out of the referendum? Were you under orders from On High? We need to know. 

Ok, let's not get too solemn about it. There's more to life than Ambridge and the referendum. (There really is!) I'm sure the BBC will take this in good part. It comes from a well-wisher. We want Ambridge to flourish as we learn how to inhabit a post-Brexit world. No doubt we'll hear about that from time to time even if it's too late to help us make this biggest political decision of our lifetimes. But we shall keep calm and carry on listening. We're too hooked to do anything else.