Welcome.... pull up a shopping trolley...

In the late Cormac McCarthy's classic book 'The Road', he describes the aftermath of an unspecified apocalypse which has befallen the world, and the struggles of a father to keep himself and his son safe from a range of horrors, carrying some of their goods in a shopping trolley. 

The image was turned into a meme following Brexit, with the father reminding his son that "at least they had blue passports".

Image: Part of the cover of my edition of 'The Road'

The book is almost unparalleled in the sparseness and power of its descriptions of the blighted landscape through which the pair travel and the terrors they face to stay alive and avoid being seen by other survivors. Who can they trust?

This summer, we have seen a sudden acceleration in a number of dramatic weather extremes in both the atmosphere and the oceans. This has been supplemented by new research reports on the state of the Earth's systems: its oceans, permafrost, 'ancient' ice masses and forests. Almost every day has seen a new extreme weather event affecting places around the world. 

We must also remember that an event is more likely to reach news reports and social media if it happens in a richer part of the world - hence the increased coverage of the Lahaina disaster and recent floods in Frankfurt affecting the airport, and the evacuation of Yellowknife.

All of this was predicted in various research and I have been mentioning the feedback loops that will inevitably occur for decades in my teaching. Even back in the early 1990s when teaching about periglacial processes and the nature of permafrost I discussed the inevitable release of methane when permafrost thaws, which in turn increases the rate of thaw. We also discussed the simple idea of albedo, and how that takes on added significance when applied to the Arctic Ocean.

The Climate Emergency is described as an existential threat.

I have been teaching geography for over thirty years and over the decades have continued to teach about some of the likely changes that will happen within indeterminate time scales, or "by the end of century" or similar.

A few years ago, I picked up on a scheme which was run in association with the United Nations to accredit teachers as Climate Change Teachers and completed the lengthy process of online training, reading and assessment which was required to gain accreditation. The courses and the varied nature of the impacts they explored, as well as considering the pitiful efforts to reach natural agreements on the reduction of the damaging actions that would cause climate change to accelerate made for grim reading at times. I gained the accreditation as a UN Climate Change Lead Teacher in June 2019.

Within a year, we went into the COVID19 pandemic and there was a slight 'anthropause' as flights were grounded, cars were taken off the roads and we generally stayed at home. 

But now tourism is back to pre-pandemic levels and with it the thousands of flights which are simultaneously cross-crossing the globe at any given moment, and we have a Prime Minister who takes helicopters or private jets to meetings and approves of new fossil fuel projects.

Recently, we saw the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres using the term 'global boiling'. 

I also saw Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer' a few weeks ago. It's an excellent film, which reminds us of another threat: the existence of nuclear weapons which are in the hands of people who are becoming increasingly likely to turn to using them, which would result in what we called MAD (mutually assured destruction) - and this in the imagination of someone who saw the film 'Threads' and lived near Sheffield.

This later interview with Oppenheimer shows his appreciation of the technology that he had helped create:

In the last few months we have seen an acceleration of pieces in various newspapers that I subscribe to, and the people I follow on Twitter have also been amplifying the stories. The marine heatwave which was reported towards the end of the summer term, plus the news of a confirmed new El Niño event were further signs of a worrying trend. I've been guilty of a little 'doomscrolling' as a result.

As a teacher I am aware of the need to present a balanced picture of events, and am also appreciative of the work of David Alcock and others in promoting Hopeful Geographies.

This blog will be a place to put some of the more pessimistic stories relating to extreme events, which are beginning to appear with worrying regularity. 

As always there will be some thought added as to their educational value. If our geography curricula are to include an element of 'Geography in the News' or quotidian/everyday geographies, these stories of climate extremes are going to become more prominent.