“Only by deeply and empathically identifying with our fellow creatures’ struggle to flourish can we hope to secure our own future.” Jeremy Rifkin (The Age of Resilience – Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth).

Our early hunter-gatherer forbears had this sense of being at one with nature, being as much part of nature as the animals they hunted and the berries they ate, deeply ingrained. For them there was no ‘I, me or mine’ just ‘we’, they lived as cohesive groups just as charms of goldfinches or schools of dolphins do.

It was only in later times during the agrarian age with domesticated animals that needed to be contained that humans began to lose their closeness and empathy with nature. Since the Agricultural and the Industrial Revolutions we have considered nature as a resource for our own use – to be dispatched, dominated and claimed for our own selfish purposes. The ‘we’ as identifying ourselves with nature has been lost in the drive for power and riches and ‘I, me, mine’ is very much the status quo.

Some people are finding or regaining this deep empathy for other living creatures; some of us are quite late to arrive here but want to do as much as possible to mend the rift and bring about a general recognition that we are all one huge ecosystem that needs to be rescued from the catastrophic trajectory we are heading for.

I have heard people say that they can’t see how making changes to their lifestyles can really make a difference, so what’s the point, actions they take can’t possibly have an effect on what the big polluters are doing to our world?

My argument would be that anything you do which shows you are trying to do the ‘right thing’ and live in a better moral way and not harming others is a positive. More people will see and appreciate the difference you are trying to make and follow suit until we get to a point where we all care enough to do the right thing.

Take No Mow May for example. This began in a small way, just a handful of people who left their lawns to grow during May for pollinators to feed on the wild flowers that grew there. Forward-thinking councils began to leave some of their verges to grow (where safe to do so). Each year more people joined in this simple exercise and most people have enjoyed looking at the wildflowers coming up from years of dormancy and watching the various pollinators feeding. Perhaps they have participated in citizen science projects at the same time. The point is, once people realise the importance of all living species and our dependence on each other, it will become normal to respect all of nature.

For a long time I have felt that the River should have some kind of legal status. The Thames is first and foremost a habitat which should support a huge amount of biodiversity within it, along its banks and surrounding area. It should be teeming with life, not man-made pollutants. This is where our empathy for all living things should come to the fore. So I was really pleased to read Laura Reineke’s recent article ‘River Writes’ in the Henley Standard where she talks about the organisation Friends of The Thames she has founded to garner support from communities and interested parties along the length of the River. The ultimate aim to gain a legal status for the River. Many respected rivers and other places around the world have been given such status. (you might want to put a link to the article here?)

Greener Henley are hosting our first Big Green Conversation in collaboration with the Kenton Theatre on January 22nd 2025. The subject for this first conversation is The River in Decline. We are delighted to have a brilliant panel in place to lead the discussion about the Thames including Laura Reineke. The rest of the panel are Dr Michelle Jackson, a freshwater ecologist from Oxford University, Dr Imogen Grant, Olympic rowing champion and Richard Caines, WWF International Director and local river pollution campaigner. Tickets can be bought for £10 through the Kenton Theatre. Please come if you can, it would be great to fill the theatre with local people passionate about this important issue.

Would you like to get more involved with local environmental issues in 2025? Please get in touch
with us at greenerhenley@gmail.com . We look forward to meeting you.