About winter

Winter always seems to end for me rather suddenly with the contrast of returning from skiing in the snow-covered Alps to find incipient Spring budding in my garden at home. This year is no exception. I can’t remember when I last saw as much snow at Sölden as last week, while today in Brussels the temperature got up to an incredibly mild 13°. After all, Spring is officially only three weeks away now.
So I have stowed away in the cellar again the salt that it is my duty as a good citizen in Belgium to strew on the pavement in front of my house when it snows and freezes, lest I be held liable for some fellow citizen slipping and breaking a leg in front of my house. The salt was actually needed on quite a few occasions this winter, but I don’t expect to get it out again till the next one... although you never know, a further cold snap is always possible, but I have the inkling it would not be a long one.

Generally it is with a feeling of relief that I see that Winter is on the run. My spirits start to rise already with the lengthening of the days, no longer having to stumble around in the dark in the morning or having to cycle home from work in the dark. I don’t like the darkness of winter. However, during the hours of daylight, winter light can be exquisite with the low sun really bringing out unexpected colours and the sharp contrasts between light and shade. On a clear day in the winter the visibility in the mountains has a quality all of its own. Even in Belgium a walk or ride out on a sunny winter day bring their own bracing satisfaction. Sadly in Brussels though I have to admit there are also a lot of grey, damp and cold days during Winter when I really don’t feel the urge to go out and am anxious to see it pass.

This Winter has been the hardest in Belgium for quite some years: a proper Winter. On the whole I prefer my seasons to be distinct, so I welcome that. Having been through some hardship during winter, especially by going outside regularly, my body and soul feel more exhilarated at the arrival of Spring.

So how does this year’s return to a proper Winter chime with global warming?
There are, I suppose, ups and downs, cycles within cycles and underlying long term trends. I have to recognize that we haven’t had real winters for some time around here, so I won’t deny the long term gradual rise in temperature. Global warming exists; I have seen the glaciers melting. However, I do think that we should be a little bit more humble when it comes to predicting nature; there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the climate and just how it may be changing. While admitting that man-made pollution is a contributive factor, I can’t help thinking also that there is an over-weaning arrogance in assuming mere human beings have total influence and control over such a huge and complicated system as the global climate which we do know has been through long term extreme cycles generating both ice ages and sweltering conditions even far north. After all, if it turns out that we’re staving off the next ice age, however inadvertently, then that’s not at all bad. Or maybe, we’re doing something really terrible. Or maybe, whatever we do, the world will continue as it was going to do anyway and we will have to adapt or die.
I’m not sure I’m going to obsess about how I behave personally given the profligacy I see around me approved by the establishment.: entire buildings left illuminated when empty; security concerns at work that force me to take the lift instead of climbing the stairs for only one storey; people who will take the car everywhere when they could walk or bike there; meeting goers who jet around week in week out and then suggest I shouldn’t use the plane for my holidays etc. My carbon footprint ? - show me yours first.
And don’t get me started on emissions trading: it’s tantamount to allowing criminals to pay someone else to serve their jail sentence for them. It’s simply immoral but that’s ok evidently, as supposedly it’s sound economics.   Just how this wet dream of some now doubtless discredited futures trader could ever make a real difference in practice is a mystery to me.

I’m sceptical about to what extent global warming is solely caused by man and can therefore be reversed solely by man, and even more sceptical about the alibis for action that are touted these days when it is blatantly obvious that no one seems really serious about making any genuine changes to the ways we run our economies. The truth is that tangibe climate change will come slowly enough for man to adapt to its undesirable consequences as he muddles along.

Every age has its own doomsday scenario. In the 60’s and 70’s we were all about to go in a nuclear armageddon. Now we’ll all be drowned by rising seas or burned to a frazzle because of global warming. In previous centuries people were always equally certain that “the end of the world is nigh”. But we are all still here, having adapted.
It flatters the vanity of mankind to believe that we are potentially the last generation ever. If you work on the naive assumption that each generation is, thanks to progress, the most perfect ever, then it is gratifying to believe that you are the highest form of life ever to have existed, as nobody will come after you.
I actually believe though that man does not progress from generation to generation, even if material conditions change. Each and every man and woman in every age faces the same basic fundamental problems of life and has to resolve them to their own satisfaction by trial and error and their own personal experience. I don’t believe I’m any better than 19th, 17th, 15th or whatever century man.
The current obsession with disaster scenarios is fuelled by a misplaced human sense of self -importance. Our ancestors in the North survived the ice age. We will just have to relocate our cities and economic activities and grow different crops elsewhere. The ingenuity of man is boundless. We are not about to disappear, nor is the earth. Adaptation will always be painful: hell you may not be able to use your car as often, but so what!

I appear to have digressed somewhat from my consideration of the eternal recurrent phenomenon that is Winter for those men of the North that we Europeans are. And believe me there is also winter in the Mediterranean: even if it’s not as cold, it is also miserable at times.
It is the rotation of the seasons and the need to survive winter that has produced the highy organized civilizations of the North, the European, Chinese, Japanese and others. These are peoples who have to organize and plan in order to get through the year. Winter instils virtues.

I guess that’s how I see Winter, a necessary inconvenience that is part of life’s rich tapestry. Most of it is miserable, but at the right times it has its charms: especially when it is really cold and sunny. And of course, without the winter snow there would be no skiing.

Still, I’m glad Winter is almost over.