On the bright side ...

Climate activists will no doubt be contemplating a new series of disruptive protests at the news. The sunshine and good weather, it seems,  is down to dramatically lower levels of atmospheric pollution across the world. It surely cannot be long before the increased levels of UV trigger a new fear campaign. “Unless we stop this lack of pollution that protects us from harmful UV rays, the whole country will start tanning and producing more vitamin D!”

Seriously, what has surprised many is the speed with which the earth has bounced back from a pause in human activity. The force of life in nature is tremendously strong and an entire city will return to jungle if we abandon it, if we stop the daily fight to keep nature at bay, halt the weeding, the mowing, the cultivating, the taming of all that incessant growth.

It’s mating time for both house spiders and salamanders here. The first are no problem – but little webs I’ve not previously noticed are suddenly holding a pair of spiders. Leave them be until they’ve done their spider stuff. The salamanders though as daft as bricks. They’ve been crawling slowly up the old stream bed each year for a thousand years or more to mate, and the fact that a cart track has become a little road with two or three vehicles an hour at peak times doesn’t phase them. But it does me. So as I spot them, I become a salamander lollipop man, sometime picking them up and carrying them across if they’re moving too slowly. They seem to give me a look of withering contempt – “We’ll still be doing this long after you’ve gone, human”.

It’s the trees I feel sorry for. We’ve just reduced their lush diet of CO2. It won’t be long before the Gretas start blaming us for that too – the year of Covid will be recorded for posterity by a thin, emaciated growth ring. All our fault. And the bloody things are probably getting sunburnt, to boot.