Hostage by Clare Mackintosh
TWENTY-SIX
PASSENGER 1G
There are people—not you, I’m quite sure—who cross the road when they see a homeless man instead of stopping to make sure he’s okay. Who don’t drop a coin in his pot or buy him a sandwich. I don’t understand those people, but I imagine they’re the same ones who switch channels when an unpalatable advert airs—starving children, beaten dogs, hand-dug wells full of dirty water—because they can’t bear it.
If we can’t bear to see it, imagine what it must be like to live it.
If we can’t bear it, we should do something about it, don’t you think? Donate money, sign petitions, join marches.
When those people read the newspaper, do they see the news articles about overcrowded prisons, about the devastation caused by a high-speed rail network? Do they flick past them because they don’t notice or because they don’t care? It’s hard to know which is worse: apathy or ignorance.
Matthew 9:36 says,When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
It is our job to be the shepherds. It is our job to herd these sheep—be they apathetic or ignorant—into making the right choices. Into saving the world. We have to educate people, because without education, we are all lost.
Back in 2009, I had an epiphany. I switched on the news to see a fire, raging through a Californian forest.
“The West Coast has experienced its warmest temperatures on record,” said the newsreader. “We spoke earlier to Professor Rachel Cohen at the University of California, whose recent paper examines the link between forest fires and climate change.”
I listened to Cohen while the forest fire raged in a small box above her head, before we returned to the newsreader for an update on the Copenhagen Summit. I watched the United Nations’ environment minister declaring climate change to be one of the greatest challenges of the present day, and I felt a surge of adrenaline.
I’d marched in numerous demonstrations in support of marginalized people, but it was in animal rights and environmental campaigns that I had invested most of my time and support. An animal has no voice; a forest is silent. They can’t fight for themselves, and so we must fight for them. I had fought for years, but my strategy had been flawed. By dividing my time between so many small protests, I was diluting my energy.
What is the point in fighting to save one greenfield site when acres of rain forest are being destroyed every day? What use saving a children’s center from closure when those very children won’t have a planet to live on? I’d been bailing out water when all the time there’d been a hole in the bottom of the boat.
Climate change has caused deadly heat waves and raging wildfires. Hurricanes, drought, and flooding. Polluted oceans, melting ice caps. The extinction of a third of all known species of animals.
Climate change is the biggest emergency the world faces and the only one that matters.
Once you know that, you can’t cross the road, can you?