The Scorched Earth
We’re going to have to fight for our lives
How can anyone bear it?
I stare into the faces of strangers and I want to shout at them. HOW CAN YOU GO ON LIVING? EXISTING? WALKING AROUND? At a time like this?
I haven’t seen grass in weeks, months. I’ve forgotten its colour. We evolved to see more shades of green than any other colour and for what? The Earth is dust. It’s gone, all gone.
Then I go home, and I make pasta and watch reality TV, and my laptop is open on my lap, illuminating my face in the dark as though I belong to a Caravaggio painting. A soft imprint, a line, is left behind on my thigh from where it sits.
My senses are dulled by watching a video of a child getting arrested (he’s black), of someone being shot, of a woman being punched in the face, of emaciated children starving because of the war, of someone being hit by a car, of a woman going bungee jumping but the rope hasn’t been attached. I forget what I was even angry about and worked up about before, because something else has taken its place, poured itself into the gaps my brain needs to process.
I am shell-shocked, immovable, can’t even think about the fires. Ravaging and raging. The world beating its chest and telling us to listen, to take notice. A child ignored, vulnerable, pleading for help and being punished in return.
No one cares. Who can we get to care? Who can we ask next? Who can we trust anymore? Do we all turn back to God, just like a man, any man, who has recently been found guilty of heinous things?
I look at my reflection in the mirror because I must know if my arse looks good on my shorts. The world is burning alive, but I am a woman, and the male gaze can’t be eradicated with blazing flames.
My desk fan is set for yet another 24-hour stretch without being switched off. Can it take it? Can I exist without it? Do I deserve it? I feel guilty. Am I selfish? I imagine the fan exploding, and how much hotter it will be then the fan is melting, and then when I’m melting, and inevitably unable to stop the bad thing from happening.
The barren Earth is
Dirt
Dust
Scorched
Uninhabitable
How can we fight it?
Where do we even begin?
Where is the rain? When was the last time it fucking rained? No one will tell me. What are they hiding? It’s been more than three weeks since we had even a drop. Soon to be four. The whole of July. Longer, still? Water is nowhere on the horizon. I no longer have the energy to even make a joke about being British and the rain and missing it [insert joke, everyone laughs].
There’s a hosepipe ban, but for whom? For the data centres? For the technology that evolves and encroaches upon our survival like an antibiotic-resistant virus?
The Earth is scorched.
We are tired. Dulled to the core of our senses. Nothing left to give or to fight. Thirsty, watching our country host over 520 data centres (and counting, the largest market in Western Europe).
In England, data centres use nearly 2.4 billion litres of water a year - the same as 48,000 people, as the average person in England uses around 50,000 litres of water per year by comparison.
Though while we’re pointing fingers, the UK loses about 3 billion litres of water every single day through leaky pipes. This is around one-fifth of our total water supply. Over 1 trillion litres are thought to be lost every year. Since its privatisation in 1989 to 2023, Thames Water has paid out a total of £10.4 billion in dividends.
They’re killing the planet. They’re killing you. They’re the reason your petrol costs over £2 a litre and that your elderly mother died before her time. More than 2,700 excess deaths were estimated in England and Wales during May and June heatwaves.
It is not: immigrants!, immigrants stealing our jobs!, them, “other”, back to where you come from, HA! To think, those were your problems? Something eradicated with ease, a sprinkling of hatred and genocide. Oh no. It is someone else. It always has been. If only you could look up.
We’re going to have to fight hard for this, aren’t we? This life. If we want to stay alive. I really didn’t want to fight. To protest, to get out there. History only ever repeats itself and now is the time for revolt.
The Earth is scorched, but worse than that it’s on fire. Blazing through Europe, uncontrollable heat. A furnace. Extreme wildfire activity has more than doubled worldwide. Who can look at such atrocities and continue to kill it to twist the knife? Coming soon - data centres in a community near you.
And when it does eventually rain, she thinks she’ll go out and dance in it. Selfishly, she wants to soak up all the droplets for herself that have taken so long to fall.
What the fuck are we doing?
Who can bear it?
This is exactly how I'm feeling today. Thank you for putting words to it.