2030
Visions for Sheffield 2030 and Meersbrook 2030.
Rather than a mountain, we could view the fossil fuel age a fetid lagoon into which we have dived. We had been told that great fortunes lay buried at the bottom of the lagoon if only we were able to dive deeply enough to find them. As time has passed we have dived deeper and deeper, into thicker, blacker, stickier liquid, and now we find ourselves hitting against the bottom, pushing our endurance to the extreme, surrounded by revolting tar sands sticky oils, the scrapings of the fossil fuel barrel. We can just about see distant sunlight still glinting through the water above us, and our desperate urge to fill our lungs begins to propel us back upwards, striving for oxygen.
Rather than being dragged every step of the way, we propel ourselves with focused urgency towards sunlight and fresh air. Viewed like this, the race for a decarbonised, fossil fuel-free world becomes an instinctive rush to mass self-preservation, a collective abandonment of a way of living that no longer makes us happy, driven by the urge to fill our lungs with something as yet not completely defined yet which we instinctively know will make us happier than what we have now. Perhaps arriving in a powered-down world will have the same sense of nourishment and elation as finally breaking through the surface and filling our lungs with fresh morning air, marvelling once again at the beauty around us and the joy of being alive.
