Has there been a time in the last 250 years where social, economic & environmental baselines for what is considered ‘normal’ separated from the industrial ‘progress’ timeline so suddenly and so completely as now?
Whilst in lockdown Nigel George wonders if, like the water in Portsmouth Harbour, the way forward hasn’t been clearer for ages?
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Since Lock-down began I’ve become somewhat obsessed with the changes taking place in both the physical landscape and in the human mindscape. It feels to me like we’re currently experiencing a series seismic reality-quakes, every one of which undermines the foundations of the physical and metaphysical constructs we had previously come to accept as normal.
From the makeshift office in the corner of my lounge in my house in Sandown Bay, which itself nestles at the bottom right-hand corner of the Isle of Wight UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, I’ve been marveling at the impressive array photos emerging across social networks showing the remarkable changes to the visibility of the sub-tidal marine world in the Solent region. Whilst the long spell of high pressure and settled weather we’ve experienced since lockdown has undoubtedly helped to keep the seas calm, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to believe that this is the only reason for the stunning change in seawater clarity. Particularly fascinating are the tidal waters in Portsmouth Harbour, photos taken there a few days ago could pass for a fishing port somewhere in the Mediterranean. Having lived fifty of my fifty four years on the Solent’s margins and I can tell you, I’ve never ever seen anything like it before!
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Portsmouth Harbour and the Solent are one of the busiest locations for commercial and leisure craft in the world. It always amazes me that even though the Solent is effectively one giant bowl of habitat designated alphabet soup; SAC, SSSI, SPA, Ramsar, LNR to name a few, (oh and of course all held in place by a National Park on one side and a Biosphere Reserve on the other) it still has hundreds and thousands of seagoing vessels of every conceivable shape, size and purpose coming and going day and night 365 days a year. Whilst it’s true that shipping activity hasn’t stopped completely at the moment, it is pretty obvious that the maritime traffic has definitely abated. As I write there are a stack of ships of all shapes and sizes, including four cruise liners, several cargo ships and tankers anchored in Sandown Bay, each one waiting for something to change, each stacked with a cargo no one wants or simply no birth to go to . The point is they’re here on the south side of the Island when normally they’d be whizzing up and down the Solent!
Photo: Solent Sky Services
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The body of water that forms the Solent strait hasn’t been this quiet for a very long time I imagine…who knows how long ago it was last like this? If I where to glance across the Solent today, to paraphrase a famous quote, I’d see no ships……well, a lot fewer than normal anyway!
So this is what has caught my attention and why I’m a bit obsessed by ‘lockdown baseline effect’ as I’m calling it! I really do think that what’s happening is a cause and effect that shouldn’t be ignored. It’s on my mind a lot, I keep asking myself - what if the world outside is starting to look like a version of an environmental baseline for what was once considered normal at a time long since past? It seems to me baselines for what we consider ‘normal’ are at this moment sort of running backwards against the human ‘progress’ timeline. When baselines for human activity last looked like this I’m not sure, before the Industrial Revolution got started perhaps? And it’s easy to sense these changes happening too, as norms wonder off course all you have to do is step outside your home and look around. Is it just me or does the air smells fresher and birdsong sound louder? The world appears somehow visually sharper to me too, whilst at the same time the pace of everyday living feels very different. The way my days roll from one to another now feel reminiscent of a childhood perception of time that I had long since lost touch with but remembered as being different to my adult perception of time somehow. Hours and minutes have less meaning at the moment, just like they did when I was a kid. These new sensory awareness’s are all signs that my mindscape is altering to fit the reality of the changes to society and the landscape in which society operates…..in short I sense my own baseline for what’s ‘normal’ is on the move.
It’s not surprising that everything feels different, after all what’s happening has never happened to me or you before, and with that thought I’m wondering again if there has ever been a comparable sustained let-up in industrial activity since the Industrial Revolution began 250 years ago? What about world wars you might ask? I don’t think they compare to what’s happening now because they where heavy on industrial outputs, war is an industrial activity is it not? So what’s happening right now is new I’d say, and as such it may offer us a very rare chance to observe and collect data on what it’s like when aspects of anthropocentric activity slow. We now have an opportunity to really get to grips with so many things relating to how humans impact the planet precisely because it’s not ‘business as usual’ for us all at the moment. I wonder if learning how we affect the natural world and the environment in general may never have been easier than it is now.
Exactly what sort of effect we have on the natural world has been tricky to properly gauge because baselines for ‘normal’ have been sliding along with time. With so many human driven activities normally happening at any one time how do we tell which cause is responsible for which effect? Is everything we do bad for nature….do we really know which industrial activities affect which things? Also we know biodiversity loss is happening but we don’t know much about what conditions could allow it to be reversed. Does nature recover when humans slow down and if it does recover how quickly or slowly does it start to happen…a week, three weeks, two months, years? There have been some isolated examples of spontaneous rewilding happening when humans disappear from a place, like at Chernobyl for instance, but what happens when the entire modern industrial world slows down?….we’ve not seen that happen before so of course we just don’t know. It’s the scale of the slowdown that’s blowing my tiny mind!
So here I am with a bunch of ideas gnawing away at my grey matter as I try use ‘systems thinking’ to look for nuanced answers to complicated questions..…but my mind wanders off again and I find myself wondering - Is anyone out there monitoring the changes taking place to better understand what’s going on? Are any ecologists/universities/scientists recording the data or are they all lockdown like the rest of us? I really hope someone or other is properly working on this stuff so we don’t miss the boat with the opportunity to understand shifting baselines, particularly at the moment when all you’ve got to do is look over the bow and see straight down to the seabed to see what’s happening there! Surely any environmental data collected right now will be absolutely crucial going forward as we try to understand the best way to piece together the new normal for the post Covid-19 world.
Maybe it’s a retrospective citizen science project in the making. Just in case it is, let’s keep looking out for changes, maybe make a few notes, take some photos, shoot some video…..talk about and write down what you see and how you feel so that when the new normal is upon us we can navigate the changed landscape and mindcscape with a realistic vision for a much better future.
Blimey, is that the time? I’d completely lost track……I’d better go!!
