It is a mild spring day, unseasonably rainy, and time is standing still. The ceiling fans are timidly waking up from winter. And we ourselves are housebound, craning our ears for the sound of the other shoe if and when it drops. I have been imagining this scenario for ages, this time-outside-of-time, with all of us hunkered down at home “for our own good”, the great turnaround moment when our species, racing faster and faster towards a stop light, suddenly jams on the brakes. The day we call a halt to the madness, and give the planet a break.
The signs of endgame were there, for those who knew how to read them, with teenage activists cropping up all over the world to show us, if we were too blinkered or unconcerned to believe the climate scientists. We had ample warning that we had to slow down and switch to a new way of living that did not destroy the planet while it made a few unspeakably rich. But we were on a roll, in a deadly game of ‘chicken’, aiming our headlights straight at the oncoming car and flooring the accelerator. The other guy would...
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