Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes (28 page)

At the Ilminster theatre I've been teamed up with the writer Mayer Hillman, author of
How We Can Save the Planet,
to talk about the morality of climate change. Mayer's talk is gloomy in the extreme and his solution is based on his belief
that the government is shortly going to introduce individual carbon rationing and, in effect, take the moral dilemma about
whether or not to drive a more energy-efficient car, change your household heating system or buy yet another cheap flight
to Europe, out of our hands. I don't agree with him. Politicians play the green card as a crucial part of their PR and they
pretend that we can lower our carbon emissions without having to radically change our lifestyles. Gordon Brown, who says he
sees the environment as the biggest crisis we face, maintains that it will provide enormous economic opportunities. But one
of his first acts as Chancellor was to cut VAT payable on gas and electricity. In 2006 he taxed owners of fuel-guzzling 4
x 4's just £45 extra, less than the price of a tank of petrol. At the 2006 Tory Party conference, a leaflet had been issued
to delegates urging people to make a contribution to preserving the planet by not overfilling their kettles and by picking
up a piece of litter every day.

In mid-February 2006, the
Guardian
obtained a leaked copy of a draft treaty between the European Union and the United States which would prevent the British
government taking any action to reduce the environmental impact of airlines without the approval of the US government. It
is not the first such agreement, but it may turn out to be the most wide-ranging. The 1944 Chicago Convention, now supported
by no fewer than four thousand bilateral treaties, rules that individual governments may not levy tax on aviation fuel. The
airlines have, in effect, been spoon-fed all their lives. The only area of air travel where we can, as a country, make a decision
in isolation from the rest of the world is in airport development.

Our government could contain, or even reverse, the growth of flights by simply restricting airport capacity. But the opposite
is happening. Heathrow is soon to get a new runway, and Stansted, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Glasgow are expanding. Twelve
other airports have announced plans to increase capacity. According to the Commons Environment Committee, the growth in air
travel the government forecast will require 'the equivalent of another Heathrow every five years.'

One-fifth of all international passengers fly to or from an airport in the UK. That number has risen five times in the last
thirty years and is expected to double to 476 million passengers a year by 2030. Aviation represents the world's fastest growing
source of carbon dioxide emissions; unchecked, aircraft emissions will exceed the country's entire output of greenhouse gases
in 2050 by 134 percent. Unlike Mayer, I don't feel hopeful that governments are going to be introducing any sort of serious
rationing in the foreseeable future. I argue instead that the change will have to come from all of us and that, until we make
it a vote-winning condition, no politician will risk his re-election by announcing an intention to impose any sort of restriction,
let alone actual carbon­rationing. Centuries of believing that we live on a planet which has a limitless capacity to support
us and feed us, ad infinitum, regardless of what we do, have been proved wrong; our world has limits.

Maybe this crisis will give us the chance to be part of a generation with a mission. While I never envied my parents having
to live through the miseries of the war, I did envy the way they often spoke about it. For them and for their generation,
those years of terror bound them into a higher purpose, one towards which everyone in the country was striving. Circumstances
had forced them to put aside the bickering and petty squabbles and jealousies of everyday life; they were all in the same
stream, heading towards the same goal, united by a wish for peace, both for them and for their children. In my lifetime of
prosperity, I've known a few such moments when I think I have had the opportunity to rise above the scratchiness and competitiveness
of everyday life and I have treasured them. Working with a team to accomplish a goal brings a happiness which self-centred
pursuits never can. Solving the climate problem won't be accomplished unless we can change the way we think and start genuinely
working together towards a goal which is bigger than all of us.

The following week, in early May, there is a letter in the
Chard and Illy,
under the heading 'Climate and Store are Linked'. 'Supermarkets and climate change are connected,' wrote Peter Langton. 'Car
journeys to or from the south of Ilminster will soon be two miles longer and the new supermarket will bring us food which
has been flown and trucked halfway round the world. We desperately need to cut down our transportation and it would be in
all our interests to support local shops which sell local produce.'

That same week, Tesco announces a £100 million environmental initiative. It is unclear what they plan to do. To date, the
company's environment record has been less than brilliant. It failed to achieve its target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions
by 4.2 percent in 2004 - because, the company says, of unexpectedly high sales growth. It would take more than thirty corner
shops and greengrocers to match the C02 emissions from one average-sized superstore. Grocery packaging still makes up roughly
a quarter of household waste and the UK's biggest supermarkets distribute some 15 billion plastic bags a year, which end up
in landfill. Peter Langton's connection between the supermarkets and climate change illustrates only a tiny part of the argument.
A 2004 study entitled 'How Green Is Your Supermarket?' said that the UK food industry accounts for more than one-fifth of
total greenhouse gas emissions. In 1980, the UK imported 6.3 million tonnes of food, feed and drinks; by 2000 this had risen
to 17 million tonnes. If the environmental predictions are correct, that figure is wholly unsustainable and we will have to
return to growing our food much, much closer to where we live.

Our first cut flowers are ready for sale in the middle of May­just chrysanthemums to start with, but soon there will be sweet
peas, and sweet williams, day lilies, pinks and small carnations in mixed, bright colours. When we first proposed selling
them to Dillington House, along with the eggs and the vegetables, Wayne asked Lorraine, his highly competent manager, where
she bought the flowers for the dining-room tables. Lorraine said she went to Asda in Taunton, where she could buy a bunch
for as little as £1.99. By cutting off the stems and dividing the mix of carnations and greenery, one bunch could stretch
to fill six or seven small vases and they lasted for at least two weeks. We'll never equal let alone beat that price, but
Wayne is enthusiastic about having Dillington flowers on the Dillington tables so, early on in the planning of what to grow
in the nursery, we decided to grow cut flowers. Now that we have the honesty table, I wish we were growing more, as they'd
be a good addition to the eggs, plants and bags of vegetables.

To coincide with Mother's Day, I've made a short film for the BBC's Sunday morning programme
The Heaven and Earth Show
about the ethics of the flower trade, which I learned about in the first place from the town greengrocer John Rendell. John's
flowers arrive twice a week via a refrigerated truck which trundles down Silver Street dropping off its cargo. The driver
is Dutch. Every Monday he loads up three containers from the flower markets of Holland and crosses the Channel. In Bristol,
two of the containers are detached and coupled up to local trucks. Two go south into Devon and Cornwall and one follows a
regular route around Somerset, dropping off cut blooms at local florists. The flowers have been grown abroad: our own flower-growing
industry now accounts for just 20 percent of the flowers sold in the UK. Even the once prized daffodils of the Scilly Isles
are now little more than a cottage industry. Supermarkets sell 75 percent of all the cut flowers we buy: their huge buying
power is reflected in the fact that a bunch of five red Cassini tulips retail for the same amount today, about £1.50, as they
did twenty years ago.

John sometimes finds that he gets an attack of asthma shortly after the flowers have been unloaded into the back room of the
shop. He reckons it is caused by the chemicals on the flowers. I often find him in the early morning, seated at a small table,
creating someone's name, or a cat, out of flower heads for a funeral later in the day. Births, weddings and deaths form a
large part of his income. We're not yet ready to entrust our floral tributes for our dear departed to the hands of the supermarkets
and the hatches, matches and dispatches business is what is keeping many a small-town florist alive. When John was fifteen,
he used to bike to Taunton, then catch a lift with a trader who went daily to Exeter, where he studied flower arranging at
Constance Spry's West Country school. John was the only boy in the class. Now he's in his seventies and, with his younger
wife Mary, he works every day in the shop, selling vegetables, eggs, fruit, honey, local biscuits, bird food, cheese, butter,
bird food containers, cane baskets, artificial flowers, ribbons, plants and buckets of cut flowers.

The supermarkets such as Asda, where Lorraine has been buying flowers, achieve their rock-bottom price by flying the blooms
in directly from South America or Africa. Over nine million red roses are sold in the UK every year and 85 percent of the
flowers we buy are imported, not just from the flower markets of Europe but from Kenya, Colombia, Ecuador and Zimbabwe, where
the environmental standards are low and bosses don't spend much time considering the welfare of workers. The majority of Asda's
mixed bunches come from Ecuador or Colombia, where flowers are grown under glass, miles and miles of it. Pipelines carrying
water laced with pesticides and fertilisers criss-cross the farms. Trucks loaded with flowers shuttle between the farms and
the airport, ensuring that the newly picked blooms are airborne as fast as possible. In order for it to travel so far in a
box without any water, a complex cocktail of chemicals is added to the plant, on top of chemicals to speed growth, enhance
shelf-life and kill bugs. A survey of 8,000 Colombian flower workers revealed that individuals had been exposed to 127 different
pesticides, 20 percent of them banned in the USA because of their known toxic effects, many of which are carcinogenic. Working
in glasshouses enhances the effects of the chemicals, and workers - the majority of whom are women - suffer skin trouble,
breathing difficulties and miscarriages. In Kenya the story is repeated, with extra environmental consequences. In a region
already short of water, a large flower farm can use upwards of 80,000 litres of water a day, leaving local supplies struggling.
Lake Naivasha, famous for its extraordinary flocks of flamingos and a crucial water source for much of Kenya's wildlife, is
drying up due to the greed of the flower farms and its waters are being contaminated by the pesticides that leach back into
the lake.

When John was a teenager and first learned to arrange flowers under the watchful eye of Constance Spry, the flowers he had
to work with came from Cornwall, the Channel Islands and the glasshouses where his father used to grow carnations. Until the
1950's, Ilminster had its own railway station, and if he wanted something special he could phone Covent Garden at six in the
morning and the flowers would arnve, III returnable wooden boxes, by three o'clock in the afternoon. The station master, attired
in a black suit, waistcoat and fob watch, would deliver them directly to the shop. To make a complex funeral wreath, John
first had to make a frame out of wire, then stuff it with wet moss or straw, to support the flowers and keep them fresh. It
could take ages. The most elaborate funeral display he ever made was a three-foot-high steam engine, crafted out of wire,
moss, carnations and roses. The deceased was the young son of the owners of a travelling fair that toured the West Country
in the summer months, transporting the merry-go-rounds and coconut shies on the back of huge steam engines, which lumbered
slowly along the country lanes. Just outside Ilminster the boy had slipped off the coupling between two wagons and been crushed
to death by the relentless steel wheels.