And in my case, climate despondency. Because I can’t see how things are going to get any better climate-wise in my lifetime.
Image: Nightingale Rec off Queen Edith’s Way, Cambridge. 09 August 2026
I took this photo of Nightingale Rec on 09 August 2026. I’ve not noticed any rain since then, and the amount needed to get it back to its normal green will be significant and over an extended period of time. So baked hard is the ground that little water will be absorbed in any short, intense period of rainfall.
Above – Pippa Heyings MP to Hits Radio Cambridgeshire News , 17 Aug 2026 on one of the chalk streams in South Cambridgeshire that has long since dried up
Successions of influential people in politics, finance, commerce, media and more – the ones whose decisions make or break economies and societies, were warned over and over again
And one of the first people to warn us via pop music was the former lead singer of the Sex Pistols as lead singer of Public Image Ltd in 1990 with the track ‘Don’t Ask Me’.
Above: The first line: “Whatcha gonna do when the rivers run dry?…”
Oh F**k they have!
John Lennon’s son Julian warned us the following year in 1991 with Saltwater
I missed this at the time but in 1993 Jamiroquai released Emergency on Planet Earth.
The Levellers wrote Maid of the River for their 1995 album Zeitgeist which for me applies to both the dried up rivers and the wildfires.
That same long hot summer of 1995 (not nearly as long and hot as the current one) saw Amy Grant covering Big Yellow Taxi – accounting for inflation for the museum fee.
Forward to 1996 and there was the much-lampooned-at-the-time Earthsong that provoked a mini-protest by Jarvis Cocker at the Brit Awards 1996.
The rise in people reporting symptoms of climate grief – The Guardian, 12 January 2024
And that was before this summer’s multiple heatwaves.
“I have witnessed yet again this summer an alarming surge in feelings of anger and despair over the climate. The source of their distress is not a personal trauma or a fleeting setback; it is an existential threat that looms larger every passing day.”
Above – Carly Dober, The Guardian, 12 Jan 2024
What makes this summer all the more frightening are the multiple wildfires breaking out across the world as well as in our own communities. In years gone by the wildfires seemed to happen in far-away places (from the UK that is) such as Siberia or North America. Our generations are not equipped to deal with existential crises. (Which in turn makes me all the more furious that my section of my cohort at school were guided away from practical skills by school and social culture because we were deemed ‘academic’). But then I made the big mistake on multiple occasions in that era of trusting the judgements of people in authority!
Which is never a good thing if like me you’re a neurodiverse people pleaser by disposition!
One of the reasons I haven’t gone out much at all this August is not wanting to see the open green spaces being not green. Not that I needed much persuasion to stay in – turns out people with my various conditions tend to struggle even more in the heat than most, hence the sleepless nights. Getting out of the house to get the essentials from down the road counts as an achievement on that front.
“Does the Government have any guidance on climate grief?”
Not really.
“There is limited evidence on how best to communicate climate change in ways that support mental health, and therefore there is a need for more research in this area.”
Above – Guidance: Climate change awareness and mental health from 12 November 2025
“That was around nine months ago…”
There does not seem to be much coming out of the Centre for Climate Health Security. – it’s up to ministers to ensure they get enough resources to fund the research before next summer comes around and bakes us again.
“Can’t they like geo-engineer the sun or something?”
The Royal Society looked into it in 2012 here, And while some headlines spun Lord Martin Rees comments on geoengineering as being an option, is trailed quotations showed it would have been better back then to have taken much stronger collective action than we did.
“Geoengineering would be an utter political nightmare: not all nations would want to adjust the thermostat the same way,” Rees will say. “There could be unintended side-effects. Regional weather patterns may change. Moreover, the warming would return with a vengeance if the countermeasures were ever discontinued; and other consequences of rising CO2 – especially the deleterious effects of ocean acidification – would be unchecked.”
Above – Alok Jha quoting Lord Rees’ pre-announced quotations, The Guardian, 11 September 2013
Yet even at a smaller scale we can’t even get things right – whether at Eddington with the rainwater harvesting system blocked by successive governments not legislating for such systems (as The Guardian highlighted on 19 Aug 2026 here) through to the little-used desalination plant at Beckton in London.
The lack of preparation by successive governments and corporations both here and abroad – the ones that have an impact on the collective responses on the rest of us, reminds me of the criticisms in ‘The Norway Debate’ in the House of Commons on 07 and 08 May 1940 where the then PM Neville Chamberlain MP got shredded by his own backbench MPs (despite a massive majority) resulting in his resignation a few days later. (See the transcripts for 07 May 1940 here, and 08 May 1940 here)
With the drought now finally over, it remains to be seen what action the Government will take now that the symptoms of the climate emergency have very much arrived. But I’m not hopeful.
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