This place I call home has again and again stood against what was being promoted by southern Britain, or the industrial north. And we need to push back again, because we live in an age of ecological collapse, the climate crisis and the accumulation of wealth and power that would make anyone before this age gasp – a love of nature, or a questioning about how we live in it, are not peripheral issues; they are among the biggest questions we must now grapple with. Our effect on the planet is now so great, everywhere, and so all-affecting that we have created a new epoch: the anthropocene.
James Rebanks is getting all pompous again.
Somehow I’m able to predict that part of the solution is going to be continued subsidy to upland sheep farming. Difficult to know how I’m able to divine that but I am, really, pretty sure.
Lord what an insufferable prig.
Wordsworth and his ilk were part of an European wide movement. Wild places in general became sacred. I suppose he’s heard of Romanticism.
And anyway We, in wealthy countries, now consume several times more resources per person than the planet can sustain.
No we bloody don’t you Malthusian pillock. We have a glut of food and raw materials and clever methods of recycling as well as transportation systems that can move stuff clear across the world in a couple of days. Guys like this think that sheep are the yardsticksof Human endeavour.
There has never, in the history of humanity, been more time, effort and money spent on protecting ‘the environment’. Most people two hundred years ago* weren’t concerned with the environment, they were too busy trying to stay alive, a point twats like this bloke fail to comprehend.
*And most people in developing countries nowadays, those countries whose people are trying to gain all that wealth and power so they don’t have to spend all their lives simply trying to stay alive……..
“Most people two hundred years ago* weren’t concerned with the environment, they were too busy trying to stay alive, a point twats like this bloke fail to comprehend.”
There’s a theme in a few posts from Timmy that I agree with, that we are nowadays affording a whole lot of luxurious nonsense that we didn’t in the past.
Two hundred years? Go back 30 years. Were we giving much of shit about the environment when we built the Newbury bypass? Did they spend a fortune thinking about bats and archaeology, or just knock down woods and get on with it?
The A417 Missing Link is costing £500m for 3 miles of road. And you know that isn’t what dual carriageway costs per mile. But it’s all this shit, like bridges and tunnels for wildlife, as if we’re running out of hedgehogs.
as if we’re running out of hedgehogs.
We aren’t we ?
That’s largely because the badgers eat them.
I haven’t seen a hedgehog for years, apart from a hollowed-out skin. I see badgers most days on our security cameras.
I was talking to a guy who is working on HS2 the other day. He said that when they have finished boring the tunnels there’s a good chance that bats will start roosting in them, and if they do then the constructions companies won’t be allowed to do any more work (or use them as railway tunnels) because the bats are so protected. So its entirely possible that we could be building £100bn worth of bat roosts.
That is so farcical, it shouldn’t be real. But it sounds about right.
Elon’s going to be on Mars before this is done.
Monbiot is radically opposed to upland farming and think the land should all be rewilded. This wordy twat ought to take it up with his fellow climate crisis enthusiast.
Put this one in a frame and hang it on a wall, but Monbiot is right. There’s plenty of crap pastoral land in the UK that you can put sheep on that’s more efficient than hillsides and it fucks up the land.
It’s the sort of romantic tosh that once you kill it and keep it dead for a generation, no-one will ever remember, or care to have it back.
upland sheep farming
Best keep a close eye on them as 20th March 2026 approaches.
Is that akin to uphill gardening ?
Nature is that thing that’s trying to kill you every time you step outside. That we control a tiny part of it is a very good thing.
Actually it can have a go at you inside as well.
In sodding Australia it will.
🙂
Most hazards in my house are man made.