Demmie Chandler Robin Mahr

A poetic irony hangs over humani - ty’s entropic slog versus the weeds that sprout up through pavement cracks. It’s a battle of grey over green, of ‘man vs nature’. In liter- ature ‘man’ is the hero, struggling against the elements to complete some impossible task. But back in reality the heroism is inverted; for the irony of the situation shows us that it is we, the humans, who are the dangerous force, standing instead in the way of nature.

London is full of urban areas like Canning Town in which, unless you want to walk down the muddy culde-sac that is Bow Creek Ecology Park, the only green outside of gardens comes in the form of little sprouting soldiers fight - ing their heroic battle against the measured footprint of stone and steel, as the capital marches ever forwards bringing form and urban function, but at a time of climate crisis when we need plants, and their function, more than ever before.

What green spaces London has are places of serious import. Imagine instead a city where parks and pitches wither. The social life that surrounds them would shrivel away as well. A community cut down like the trees, fading away with the wildlife - including its smallest members and their intricate habitats.

If only the symbiosis necessary for nature to thrive embraced both the lofty concrete tower and the humble tree, but the ecological distance between them is stretched too far, and the link snaps like a dead branch. In the last two centuries eighty per- cent of our forests have already been destroyed, and yet elders scold a child for seeing what they cannot. Arrogance in years will bring nothing but tears. Should we not teach so that others may see?

Idle and baseless threats made to the ‘Thunbergs’ of the world sug- gest a battle of ideas, whereas only together can we face this threat.

The problem is that although nature gets to retaliate, it can - not win, because humanity’s reck- less abandon will still poison the planet. So even if the seas rise to drown our cities, the stain of plastic and pollution will last for millen - nia. With pledges to be carbon neu - tral in thirty years perhaps thirty years too late, does the pressure for you to “do your bit” sound as hollow as a myth?

But all is in fact not lost. The work of activists such as the group Save Our Green Spaces is already doing just that - as in saving what is left of the green space in urban areas. Online people make pledges: twenty-million trees are on the way. Little acorns maybe, but it’s a start?

So why not join in? Identify and care for a personal green space. Fight for the green space closest to you. The opportunities to fight for your green future can be small or large. And as one and one makes two so individuals, like little weeds, can gather force and push their way up through the pavement.