Knobheads

SIXTEEN August 16th 2021

Never have we been more in need of hero/ines to give some moral and practical leadership in a time of crisis. The vernacular of activism, of course, abounds with statements about how we all need to be heroes, that we are the ones we have been waiting for, and all that. Indeed, the very notion of ‘activism’ stresses the crucial importance of addressing problems and issues rather than waiting for someone else to do it. Nevertheless, at a time like this it’s hard not to hope, even if only privately, that those individuals who have amassed a particularly large stash of personal resources and/or. due to this or some other achievement/s, have a certain public profile, will use their platform to do some good; perhaps to identify and champion a special cause close to their heart, to lead by example, to demonstrate benevolence.

Marcus Rashford comes immediately to mind, only partly because his story is topical; the thing which is perhaps really striking about his example is that, unlike say Bill Gates who went through what might be regarded as a classic process of building a business empire, getting extraordinarily rich and then realising, presumably after some personal ‘crisis of meaning’ that the path to self-realisation goes, ultimately, via philanthropy, Rashford is only 23. He hasn’t yet had the time or experience to feel self-satisfied and get bored with it, or to feel like he has everything he wants but then realise that material and personal success is not enough and that ‘something deeper is missing’. For whatever reasons to do with his own history or innate qualities, Rashford seems to have just decided that there is a very big problem which he could do something about, and that therefore he should, and then he did it, Good for him. There are bound to be some provisos to this, of course; perhaps he could have done more, perhaps he has in some way used his new profile as a campaigner in order to achieve further self-advancement. I really don’t know. We could all always try harder and do better. But in general terms, good for him.

I’ve frequently wondered why more people who have public platforms – artists, writers, actors, TV ‘personalities’, musicians, sportsmen, ‘celebrities’ of all kinds, don’t interest themselves a bit more in the climate emergency. There have been a few, and I guess as a phenomenon it’s increasing, but I’m pretty sure the increase really only parallels the increased public awareness and interest. Again, the different thing about Rashford was that he was choosing to highlight an issue in which people weren’t already interested. I’m not saying that famous people shouldn’t ‘jump on the bandwagon’ of alarm about climate breakdown – I only wish they would – just that i cannot understand why more of them are not genuinely and personally already deeply disturbed about it and feeling compelled to do whatever they can about it, in the same way that Rashford, due in part to his personal story, felt compelled to act about the hunger of schoolchildren.

I’ve often been gratified to find that people I have admired because of their artistic or other achievements supported and spoke out for causes that I was invested in. Paul Weller and Billy Bragg banging the socialist drum. Springsteen and Neil Young overtly rejecting Trump. Hilary Mantel denouncing Thatcher and John Le Carre, Brexit. Gareth Southgate, however implicitly and obliquely, making a stand for decency, courage and honesty. Even Gary Neville (who honestly I hadn’t admired until now) comparing the leadership qualities of our current alleged Prime Minister very unfavourably with the latter, and probably risking his lucrative ITV contract in the process.

So why not speak up about the climate crisis? It’s manifestly not party Political, so that’s no excuse. We might think  that celebrities suppose that they shouldn’t intrude in discussions on topics about which they have no special understanding or which are somehow supposed to be the province of scientists. But we know from painful experience that this doesn’t prevent them from sounding off about all sorts of other stuff they know nothing about, and nor does it typically prevent people, and politicians, from listening to them.  ( I refer the reader to the story of Joanna Lumley and the Garden Bridge. Enough said).

The fact is, these people have platforms which they could use to heighten awareness about the climate crisis and to urge governments to take much more urgent and more meaningful action. And this would likely have a beneficial effect. And yet, mostly, they don’t. I am mystified by this. We are facing the biggest emergency, the greatest humanitarian calamity, that has ever presented itself and yet hardly any, comparatively, of the group of people with a platform, a group which has spoken out and been listened to, and has sometimes taken direct action in the past on numerous important (but actually less important) issues like sexism, abuse, racism, poverty, famine, say anything much about it. I suppose that in the end they are ‘just like us’  and prevented by their own version of the  cocktail of fear, short-term self-interest, paralysis, despair, inertia, lack of empathy and plain indifference that is evidently affecting most ‘ordinary people’, from acting appropriately. Perhaps too, in the end, it isn’t what will make the difference. But still ,at a time like this, when just about any day of the week you will read or hear a news story about  how climate breakdown is causing great suffering and destruction right now or about how scientists are telling us it is soon going to get much much worse, it would be nice to have one our two people with a platform making the right nosies. We really are crying out for some climate heroes

Enter Jeff Bezos. Closely followed by Richard Branson. And apparently, in due course, by Elon Musk. What utter tossers. What a miserable, shameful, ignorant way to use advantage, power and privilege. How immensely selfish and grandiose. And how cynical (as well as really pathetically and childishly stupid) to advance an argument that their crass and delinquent behaviour offers some sort of example or way forward for the human species as it endeavours to come to terms with the fact that its own habitat is fast becoming inhabitable.

This was a few weeks ago, I know, but I (clearly) haven’t got over it. It seemed a big enough outrage at the time, seeing Bezos’ stupid cruddy self-satisfied grin when he retuned from his vainglorious escapade. But now it seems more like an  actual crime, for which I would like him to be pursued and prosecuted. Setting aside the immense and exponentially proliferating carbon cost of his cretinous business plan to fly other superfluously rich and idiotic people into space for a thrill while increasing numbers of the less well off around the world drown, starve and burn, it is such a monumental waste of resources which could be put to better ends; resources including the platform and influence which these kind of people have. As the time for another rebellion approaches – one more big push by a very diverse bunch of mostly ordinary and mostly kind and responsible people to try and get the powers that be to stop killing us and start restoring a habitable environment, the best that Bezos and Branson and their ilk can do  is engage in a public willy-waving contest which they nevertheless seek to portray as somehow beneficial to others.

It’s hard not to compare. Our organisation’s principles rightly guide against blaming and shaming or seeng one person as ‘right; and another ‘wrong’, pointing instead towards the dysfunction of the system that we’re all caught in. But really, when I find myself talking, as I did very recently with a few very ordinary and unprivileged people who are planning on using their hard-earned holidays to travel by train down to London next week from the northern  tip of Scotland, sleep on someone’s floor and spend a week mostly getting exhausted and  anxious before getting  arrested in service of trying to protect the future of the planet for the sake of their children and then retuning home again; and then I think of these wankers with their spaceships, then I honestly feel like I want to kill them, notwithstanding the peaceful principles to which I am signed up.

That may not be a helpful feeling. I think it is, however, a helpful reminder that if we want to get out of this awful, terrifying mess it is us who are gong to have to do something about it. No-one is coming to save us.