Monday 14th November

Mei’s series, a cross between Sex in the City and Emily in Paris with an Asian lead and African-American co-star was up for a number of awards. Mei looked round at the other guests and nominees. The sex-pest casting directors were gone, the racists were out – this was her kind of crowd. If she won, it would be a sign that finally she belonged.

She frowned across the table at Wilf, who was up for best co-star. He was telling the producer that he had a different car for each day of the week. She understood – she’d grown up poor too, but in these days of climate change, bragging about how many cars you have is more likely to get you cancelled or your tyres let down than meet with approval. He grinned back reassuringly, misunderstanding her expression.

Everyone quietened as the award for best screenwriter came up. Her name was read out, the third out of four. Her mouth went dry, remembering how Greta Gerwig’s masterpiece of female empowerment Little Women, was inexplicably snubbed. The envelope was opened, a dramatic pause then a big smile.

She heard the words as if in a dream. ‘The prize for best original screenwriter goes to Mei Lin, for her series, Sun Ying in Manhattan.’

Then she was walking up to the stage, self-conscious in her new dress, nodding at the smiling faces. She took her place in the spotlight in front of the microphone and looked out at the sea of clapping hands and waving friends and colleagues. It felt wonderful. She’d love to stand there forever just soaking it up, but she had things she needed to say.

‘This means everything to me and I want to tell you why,’ she began. ‘I was the second child during China’s one-child policy. And worse still, a girl.’ The smiling faces in the audience turned serious, a few nodding their support. ‘Some people called it environmental responsibility, others a violation of human rights, but I can only tell you what it meant to me. I…’ She swallowed, finding her pre-prepared speech harder to say than she’d anticipated. ‘I felt guilty. That just by existing I was making things worse for the people I care about.’

She hung her head, feeling the force of the words, spoken for the first time. Shame was built into the architecture of her existence, driving her on and on to prove herself. To atone. Her fists tightened by her side. She’d done nothing wrong, nothing to apologise for. She raised her chin defiantly.

‘But empowering women can do more to solve over-population than any amount of regulation or financial punishment. In developing countries, women who aren’t educated have twice as many children as those who are. The population of the US rose from 210 million to 332 million over the last fifty years. But the population of Pakistan rose from 65 million to 230 million in the same period. Nigeria from 59 million to 217 million. This should be the top climate priority – giving women in these countries consistent and convenient access to birth control. Give them not just power over their bodies but power full stop. Women leaders and diverse boards show better, more sustainable decision making. I am proud to be a Chinese woman writing empowered heroines, in charge of their destiny, proud of their gender and the colour of their skin.’

The audience exploded into applause. She tried to thank her cast and crew, but couldn’t make herself heard over the catcalls and whoops. She gave up and stood there and glowed, wiping her eyes, basking in the love and empathy coming from the crowd. The host returned to the stage and waited a moment in deference to clapping that showed no sign of abating. Then he headed towards her purposefully, ready to usher her off. Her moment in the spotlight was over.

But it wasn’t. She heard shouts, a rhythmic chanting growing louder. They were chanting her name, and something else she couldn’t catch. People were looking around to see the source, but in her position, stepping down from the stage, she was the first to see the banner being unrolled.

MEI LIN. CLIMATE VILLAIN.

Villain! She shook her head. Someone mis-wrote, they’ll realise it’s a mistake. But no, they were chanting clearly now, heading steadily down the aisle. 

‘Mei Lin. Climate villain.’ 

There were a dozen at least carrying the banner.

It didn’t even rhyme, not well anyway.

‘Mei Lin. Climate villain.’ The cameras swivelled to follow their progress down the aisle, the open-mouthed audience. Mei Lin’s horrified face.

* * *

Ping. Another talk show date cancelled. Ping. Meeting with producer cancelled. Ping. Interview cancelled.

Mei turned her phone off and slumped back on the sofa, reaching blindly for the remote control.

‘…can’t help feeling sorry for her though,’ the daytime TV host was saying. ‘Top of her game. Producers clamouring to sign her up for their next project. She was gold dust.’

‘See if you still feel sorry for her after this,’ said the co-host.

Mei Lin jumped when she saw her earnest face fill the screen, and scratched at the rash that had appeared overnight.

‘Everyone thinks that it’s governments or banks who have the power, but it’s culture and writers and stories that affect how we think, who we want to be, what we aspire to.’

She’d been too full of herself. That must be it. Committed the unforgiveable sin of taking herself too seriously. Oh no, there she was again, in another talk show. She cringed at how sanctimonious she sounded. ‘I suffer from eco-anxiety like most young people, but I want to help people feel empowered to make a difference, not just guilty for existing.’ 

Now they were showing an extract from Sun Ying in Manhattan – a close-up of Grady, her heroine’s handsome African American love interest, opening his gourmet burger stand. The camera paused on the image of a customer sinking his teeth into the beef, then cut abruptly to facts and figures and images of cows burping methane, warming up the atmosphere.

‘I’m a vegan! Are you going to mention that?’ she shouted at the television when the programme returned to show the co-hosts tutting at the film.

Mei picked at the ugly bumps on her skin, shaking her head helplessly as the narrator reeled off a series of facts about the contribution of beef and dairy to climate change. She’d sensed it was risky. She knew beef was a climate no-no, but it was an American staple. The producers had wanted a down-to-earth guy to balance the heroine’s kookiness. She’d thought she was playing safe when she went along with them.

The image cut to a busy shopping centre and a mic being thrust into a young woman’s face.

‘Do you watch Sun Ying in Manhattan?’

‘Doesn’t everybody?’

‘What do you like about it?’

‘She’s so cool. So in charge of her life. I love her clothes.’ A medley of shots of Sun Ying wearing a different outfit each time, with matching hat, bag and shoes ran over her words. ‘I just want to be her basically.’

Mei watched, along with the daytime TV hosts, a medley of shots of Sun Ying and her friends shopping, walking home, bags swishing against their thighs.

‘They may be fancy, but they’re still single-use plastic bags,’ the host nudged his co-host. She shrugged her shoulders, not yet convinced.

‘We worked out what all these clothes would look like in the averaged sized apartment.’ The image changed to a pile of clothes filling every space, bursting out of wardrobes, piled up on chairs, on the bed, under the bed. The shot focused in on one cotton t-shirt, then cut jarringly to a huge-eyed African child, tears forming crusts on her cheeks. ‘Two point seven billion people experience water scarcity.’ The narrator sounded harsh and accusing.

‘This is the inland sea twenty years ago that supported the growing of cotton.’ A large blue sea filled the screen, then faded into an image of a desert. ‘Today, only camels roam across the barren wilderness.’ God, her skin was on fire. Mei sat on her hands to stop herself from compulsively scratching.

‘This is the water cost of just this one cotton t-shirt,’ the narrator continued over an image of a giant water tank labelled 2700 litres. ‘Enough drinking water for one person for nearly three years.’

A Bangladeshi woman held up hands covered with sores and blisters to the camera. ‘Twenty percent of water pollution comes from the treatment and dyeing of textiles, poisoning the surrounding area, creating health issues for communities,’ the narrator’s voice was relentless. ‘Rates of death from cancer in these communities are nine times higher than the national average.’ Mei could hardly breathe. An unfortunate side effect of China’s rapid economic growth had been pollution. She’d grown up in one of China’s so-called cancer villages, and was haunted by the fear that the disease that had taken her parents would take her.

‘Fast fashion contributes ten percent of global carbon emissions – more than all international flights and shipping combined.’

She found herself scratching at the rash, reminding herself what her therapist had repeatedly told her. ‘It’s not your fault Mei.’

An academic looking woman appeared on the screen, the banner beneath her face announcing her as Drew Sneely, Professor of Psychology at Southampton University.

‘There are two ways in which we learn how to behave. One is conscious learning through the rational elaboration model, where we are presented with information, in school, from our parents, etc. But more powerful is the unconscious social learning we pick up subliminally by absorbing the behaviours and cultural values around us. Fictional role models are especially influential. Through a process that we call narrative transportation, viewers who identify with a character will absorb their values uncritically and subliminally, affecting their behaviour and aspirations without them even being aware of it.’

Then it was back to the shopping centre, and the mic thrust under another girl’s nose.

‘What do you see when you see Sun Ying’s walk-in wardrobe?’

Her face lit up. ‘I see goals,’ she said at once.

‘That’s why I’m so proud to be a writer, creating positive role models for young women.’ Mei watched her own face again on screen. Her mouth opened in shock as the image of her face was rapidly distorted, then appearing on a ‘wanted’ poster with Climate Villain stamped across it. The shot widened, showing her image on a wall wedged between a fossil fuel lobbyist and purveyor of misinformation about climate change and the toxic male entrepreneur who’d bragged once too often about his private jet. What had tipped them over the edge, Mei belatedly realised, was when he’d boasted that he was so rich he wore underwear once then threw it away. She remembered the outrage as the facts and figures about the impacts of such wastage on the environment were presented.

Mei took in the final shot of the girl walking out of the shopping centre, numerous branded bags filled with fast fashion swinging jauntily against her thigh.

She tried to say the words ‘it’s not my fault,’ but the prickling of her skin, the squirming sensation in the pit of her stomach gave them the lie. Shame. How had she not joined the dots?

She switched on her laptop and started writing.

* * *

Five years on, and no one was more surprised than Mei Lin when she got the call. But everybody likes a comeback story, and as many said, if Bob Dylan can get it, then why not a scriptwriter? Even so, she was more terrified than honoured. This event was much more formal, the men identical in black suits, white shirts and white silk bow ties, the women in stiff ball gowns. She sat in the front row, waiting, dry-mouthed, trying not to hyper-ventilate while the host spoke in Swedish, then in English. Being in the spotlight was reigniting the trauma she’d experienced five years ago, when they’d built her up just to knock her down. Her breathing calmed under the monotone of the presentation, and she was able to listen.

‘In season two of Sun Ying in Manhattan.  Sun Ying’s boyfriend, Grady was now running a trendy new bug burger stand. Sun had converted her walk-in wardrobe into a fashion library, and created a fashion swap app that was taking the world by storm.

‘Reality mirrored fiction with new fashion apps emerging every month. Women were switching to pre-loved clothes, swapping, sharing, repairing and upcycling all over the globe. The most popular Christmas present that year was a membership to the fashion libraries of Macy’s, Harrods, David Jones and even Galeries Lafayette in Paris.

‘Season three, and Sun Ying broadened her range to menswear. You could wear a different outfit every day with no need for vast amounts of wardrobe space. Ownership was increasingly portrayed as a burden, not a benefit. Stores caught on, converting their toys, games and sports departments into libraries. Sun Ying had a fictional baby and MotherCare reinvented itself as MotherShare.

‘In season four, the characters moved to the suburbs with their partners and children. Grady sold his bug burger stand to a franchise who were taking insect snacks into the rest of the world. Missing his New York community and struggling with DIY, he joined the local Shared Shed where men got together to pool their tools and knowledge. Friends and Frasier popularised the coffee bar as the place to meet in the nineties. Three decades later, Sun Ying (no longer) in Manhattan, made the Shared Shed a thing.

‘The series helped established the Sharing Economy for good. Borrowing has become the new buying. Clothes, tools, toys, appliances are increasingly designed for long life and easy maintenance. Twenty years ago, most households had their own toolset, with typical items being used an average of five minutes a year. Now tools are shared within communities, saving billions of tons of embedded carbon and unnecessary mining.

‘Your Royal Highnesses, ladies and gentlemen, great literature changes the reader, changes the world, and there can be no doubt that Mei Lin’s writing has changed our world.’

The audience clapped politely and it was Mei’s turn. Almost in a whisper, she gasped out thanks to the presenter and Swedish Royal Family. The host had been careful to avoid mention of the protest at her last award ceremony, but it had led to this moment. She took a deep breath and addressed the elephant in the room.

‘The last time I gave an acceptance speech, I was flying high, excited by the brave and long overdue movements – Me Too, Black Lives Matter. As an Asian woman, I thought I was leading the way, allowing my Asian and African characters to have all that I had been denied growing up. I was proud to use my writing and characters to empower women, to encourage them to aspire. Well, they say pride goes before a fall, and my goodness did I fall.

‘I did and do care about climate change and thought women in charge would have a more nurturing approach to our precious planet. Yet here were my heroines shopping as if there were no consequences to their behaviour, mindlessly complicit in planetary destruction. I can’t believe I didn’t see the contradiction. Once I did, I saw it everywhere. Around me everyone was changing. People weren’t flying; they were giving up meat; guys who thought driving a sports car had pulling power were learning their lesson. I suddenly realised that for people terrified by the climate crisis, watching my characters’ excessive consumption was as jarring as racism and sexism was in seventies sitcoms. Far from being a progressive, I was behind the times. I wanted to be a platform for something good. That meant ditching the past and facing the future.

‘Recent history has been about owning up and saying sorry for colonialism, racism, sexism, and now consumerism. I can’t take credit for the way the sharing economy has taken off. The fashion swap apps, car sharing, and Libraries of Things were already out there, but I’m pleased to have helped spread the word. And, please don’t cancel me because the Shared Shed is just men. I’m on it in season six.’ The audience laughed, giving Mei the confidence to continue. 

‘It’s not nice to feel cancelled, to feel judged, but we have to call it out – the stakes are too high not to. We need to be told when we’re getting it wrong. Shame is a horrible thing to feel, but maybe it’s a process we have to go through to get to the other side and start putting things right.

‘I’m still about empowering women. The link between education and birth control is strong and evidence shows women make more sustainable decisions. But as gender roles equalise and men play a greater part in child rearing, I see those differences dissolving. Men are growing and changing and learning to care. We’re all growing at a phenomenal rate, and it’s a wonderful thing to see.

‘If the last decade was about saying sorry, then we’re entering a decade of atonement and positive action. When I was pregnant with my first child, I was terrified what kind of world I was bringing her into, but with this one,’ Mei patted her stomach gently, ‘I’m excited. Maybe the Chinese curse, ‘may you be born in interesting times’ isn’t a curse at all but an opportunity. Thank you for giving me the chance to say sorry and the opportunity to atone.’

The applause triggered a memory rush of fear. Mei heard a faint chanting. It was in her head. It must be. The host waited politely for her to step down, but her legs had turned to jelly. He came to her side and took her arm. The chanting was getting louder. Why did no one else notice? The host tugged at her arm to no avail. She was paralyzed.

‘Next we turn to the Nobel Prize for Economic Science,’ he declared at last.

The economics professor, a man in his sixties, half stood, uncertain, waiting for Mei to leave the stage. She was oblivious, gazing over his head towards the back of the room, seeing the protestors enter, their numbers overwhelming the security guards at the back. The banner unfurling.

Then everyone’s heads turned towards the chanting that was now impossible to ignore. Relief that she wasn’t mad competed horribly with gut-churning realisation that history was repeating itself. In they came, marching towards the stage, the banners unfurling.

GDP RIP

Her mouth widened in a smile of glorious, shameful, schadenfreude. She recognised the professor now. He’d spoken out against switching from the GDP to a Happy Planet Index, entrenching economic growth and consumption as the ultimate measure of success.

‘Economic growth equals planetary death!’

‘GDP RIP!’

The cameras swivelled to take in the protestors, the banners, and the horrified face of the economics professor.

Read Less

These things creep up on you without you noticing. One minute, there you are minding your own oil-trading business, racking up the millions (and the rest!) in your numbered bank accounts, feted by fawning industry admirers and sycophantic media hangers-on. Then, before you know it, all of a sudden you are Mr Unpopular, a leper bell around your neck, featuring at number seven in The Guardian’s much-trumpeted list of the Top Ten Existential Threats to the Global Environment.

It would be fanciful to suggest that my origins were humble – a first-rate if rather troubled education at Lancing College, a knight-of-the-realm father rubbing shoulders with ministers and minor royals. (Papa was, rather unfortunately, disgraced in later life, but the point still stands.) When you exist only in these rarefied environs, the advantages that you have over others are neither apparent nor of any particular concern. Indeed, the first time I read an opinion piece accusing me of being posh and overprivileged, I almost spat out my 1969 Louis Roeder Cristal Millesime Brut. Later in life, though, even I had to appreciate that such a charge is difficult to counter when you happen to be in possession of your very own island.

As islands go, it was never much to write home about. Small, scrubby, over-grazed with stringy goats. It was really neither use nor ornament. The island’s one redeeming feature was the not-quite-golden beach on its south-facing shoreline, and in those early days, my darling wife, Jeane, and I spent many a sun-kissed afternoon seduced by the lapping waves, surrounded almost entirely by unspoilt nature, feeling as though the world was ours alone. Jeane could happily idle away countless hours watching tiny sand crabs scuttling from hole to hole like batters sprinting between bases, while I liked to cheer on the mudskippers as they used their minuscule but powerful forelimbs to hoist themselves through the thick gluey sludge beneath the jetty. If often gave me cause to ponder whether these extraordinary creatures were observing me just as I them, peering up through inquisitive eyes and wondering what on earth is this peculiar man staring at?

My fortune, as I mentioned, came from oil, amassed via a combination of good luck and fortuitous timing, a smattering of expertise and a dedication to the job that very nearly killed me. Aged just forty-four, my heart decided it had had more than enough of my work-work-work lifestyle and tried its best to condemn me to an early grave. Somehow, to even my doctors’ amazement, I pulled through. Jeane’s immense relief was tempered by the fact that my first act upon opening my eyes in the Intensive Care Unit was to ask if I’d missed any important messages from the office. She was also a little nonplussed by my referring, tongue-in-cheek, to my revival as ‘the Resurrection’. But I think, all in all, she was glad to have me back.

I am not a man of any great religious conviction. Agnosticism runs through my family like male pattern baldness. In his early seventies, my father collapsed and died on the pavement outside the village Post Office. Thereafter, my equally nonreligious mother, who had stood by Papa after both his financial and infidelity scandals, said a quiet little prayer every time she passed that gleaming red postbox. It struck me as unlikely that my father’s spirit should choose to haunt the very place where his life was cut short. Having said that, given his disdain for the shoddy customer service he always complained of receiving there and his willingness to hold a grudge, I wouldn’t put it past the old devil to be hanging around and putting the willies up the counter staff. In any case, it brought my mother some much-needed solace throughout her final years, and that was all that really mattered.

Love is an incredible thing. When Jeane started giving her speeches, the situation caused much consternation among my peers. ‘She must be such an embarrassment to you.’ ‘She’s going to give you another heart-attack at this rate.’ And it was true – at first it did cause a tremendous degree of difficulty. The environmental concerns she was espousing were entirely at odds with the practices necessary for my businesses to function. It would be untrue to say that I felt no guilt about the damage my companies were causing around the world, but I found myself able to blank it all out, to pretend it wasn’t happening. In those days, I wouldn’t have known a mangrove terrace from a palm oil plantation. It makes you wonder why she married me – it was certainly never about the money. I suppose it must have been love.

From the beginning, I admired Jeane’s freedom of spirit. On our very first date, I can vividly remember her outlining her ambitions to help save the northern white rhinoceros from extinction, speaking with rare passion, beguiling me with that delightful, soft Scottish accent that brought the blood to my cheeks and weakened my knees. It was clear from the first time she stood at a podium that she was a born orator. Watching her address the delegates at COP 20 in Lima, I could see that she held her audience rapt throughout. They were spellbound by her performance, dazzled by her words. Our daughter, Sarah Jane, was beyond proud. Alistair, a bit younger and still in those awkward teenage years, was horrified. Me? Well, I suppose it should have irked me that she was, essentially, trying to bring down my industry. But she wasn’t really, of course – her speeches simply stressed the need to adapt to a changing world. Either way, I couldn’t take my eyes off her in that long baggy grey dress and those heavy black Dr. Martens.

At first, as is the way of these things, Jeane received far worse press than I did. She was categorised as a tree-hugging do-gooder (as if these are bad things). But then came the Guardian article naming me Public Enemy Number 7, which was a watershed moment and no mistake. Naturally, the write-up mentioned Jeane – in fact, it was quite clear that her activism was the only reason I was featured at all. It gave the picture editor an opportunity to insert a photograph of her beautiful face into the newspaper – much better for business than my ugly mug. After that, the tabloids latched onto us. Overnight I went from being the distinguished oil magnate Oliver Frankland to Oily Olly, while she, of course, was dubbed Green Jeane. It caused some friction, I won’t lie, but not as much as you might think. Perhaps it was my near-death experience, or maybe it was Jeane’s remarkable powers of persuasion, but something had changed and I was starting, slowly but surely, to edge towards her way of thinking.

At the COP 20 meeting, Jeane had grown friendly with Majid, a curious man of astonishing intellect from Abu Dhabi who was better known, it transpired, as Mangrove Maj. He’s large and barrel-chested, intense but exuberant, and his entire bulky frame shakes whenever he laughs, which is often. Jeane was bowled over by his enthusiasm and knowledge and was keen for me to meet him. It soon became apparent why.

‘He’s looking for someone who owns an island. I mean, that’s ridiculous, isn’t it? That’s us!’

Some strange providence must have brought us all together, that’s all I could think. A man on the lookout for somebody who owns an island happens to find themselves chatting to just such a person. I can’t imagine that sort of thing happens every day.

‘It’s not like we even do anything with the island anymore.’

She was right, of course. There had been a time when we had entertained the great and the good (and the utterly appalling), but age and misanthropy had caught up with me and I no longer had much desire to play mine host.  Coastal erosion had set in anyway – a result of increasing storms, and I’d accepted it might one day be lost to sea rise.

‘Just say you’ll speak to him,’ she badgered me, over and over, until I eventually made room in my busy schedule for a call. And thank God I did. Speaking to Mangrove Maj changed my life. I can only hope it’s going to eventually change millions of other lives, too.

‘Have you ever heard of mangrove terraces?’ he asked me after a few strained pleasantries.

‘Yes, I think so – it’s a golf resort in Barbados,’ I replied, half-joking. Of course I hadn’t heard of mangrove terraces.

‘Well, strap yourself in,’ he said. I could sense the smile in his voice. ‘You’re about to hear absolutely everything about them.’

I don’t think he stopped talking again for around forty-five minutes. Their carbon-capturing potential, how they can protect against storm surges, increasing resilience of coastal areas to climate change.

We started work almost immediately. In the beginning, securing funding proved difficult. I pumped a million dollars in to start things off, as no one else would touch this outlandish idea, this absurd novelty. The tiny start-up team delivered, three months late, a large submersible pump, 500kW of solar panels, two kilometres of plastic pipe, the connectors, a supervisor (appointed directly by Mangrove Maj), fifty litres of sun cream, thirty sun hats and ten Indonesian labourers. Oh, and twenty thousand mangrove seedlings. They spent three months laying pipe, building berms, pumping water and, eventually, planting mangroves. The mangroves were laid out not in coastal waters, as is almost always the case, but in terraces, like rice.

Environmentally, intentionally salting dry land was a little dubious, but it was a private island so that was much less of a problem. An unforgiving tropical storm led to flash floods that washed away some of the mangroves, but they flowed down the gullies and were collected in the grid at the bottom. Large seedlings were replanted the following day, and, luckily, mangroves grow rather quickly. After a year, most were doing well, and the ‘salty forest’ was coming along nicely. The terraces were watered with sea water, which was pumped up from the beach using solar power and distributed through small trenches designed by an old rice farmer in Bali with whom Mangrove Maj had become acquainted while he was over there for COP 13. The old man’s trenches worked beautifully.

There had been concerns about the goats, but it seemed that they weren’t partial to ready salted leaves and they mostly left the seedlings alone. After the third year, a trial batch of prawns was added to some of the terrace pools near the sea. This was particularly good news for me – Jeane and I ate prawns on our first date and they subsequently became ‘our thing’, so I was devastated to learn that they were an environmental disaster area. Mangrove Maj explained to me that it’s the trawling that causes the damage, comparing it to picking strawberries with a bulldozer. But these prawns fared really rather well and were harvested by opening the sluice gate, flushing the pond with sea water and catching them in a simple net in the gully. Gravity did most of the work. Sold at the local fish market, the prawns were snapped up in ten minutes flat like hot tickets to the Philharmonic. All of the ponds now have prawns and/or fish, and the unbothered aquaponics system reduces the feed that they require. It seems to help the trees, as well. Seafood has been a major part of the revenue for the project, particularly in the early stages.

After the fourth year, a small crop of wood was taken from the largest trees. This wood was made into biochar using a homemade kiln on the beach. Not so efficient, but easy to use. The biochar was soaked in chicken manure, left to dry in the sun and then added to the fallow ponds and the new seedling areas. It works a treat, though the chicken manure job was not the most popular. It’s rather more popular now, though, as it pays double. After six years, and five rounds of expansion, the first serious coppicing was done by a local team hired from a nearby island. They cut strips through the forest, only harvesting a third of the trees, and hauled the wood down to the beach with a jury-rigged zip wire and a winch – a system that has grown ever more streamlined with each repetition. The brash was turned into biochar on the island as before, and the three hundred tonnes of logs were taken to a gathering yard in the nearest major port. To transport these small shipments, fabulous little wooden coasters called pinisis, halfway between a dhow and a pirate ship and a real blast from the past, were deployed.

The three hundred tonnes of logs joined a pile of twenty-five thousand tonnes from other projects and sources and was shipped to a site in Abu Dhabi operated by Mangrove Maj and his business partners. This trial transferred the logs inland to a barren, salty area where a massive pit had been dug. The wood was laid in the pit, which was then filled with strong brine from the nearby Reverse Osmosis plant. This super-strong brine gradually evaporates and pickles the wood, preserving it for thousands of years, and is a neat shortcut that enables the maximum amount of carbon to be stored with the minimum amount of combustion. Biochar is great, and is widely used throughout this and other processes, but it does still release some CO2 while making black, non-rotting carbon for soil improvement and sequestration. There is an ongoing debate about whether the wood pickling or the biochar is most efficient, and there are arguments for both sides. No doubt there will be for many years to come. Both systems are making a positive contribution in slightly different ways.

Now, after seven years, the island is 50% salty forest and 50% what it was before. The ready salted goats were sold a couple of years ago. The whole island has bounced back, with a surprising variety of plants, animals and birds. Islands are always a bit narrow in terms of the wildlife they can host, but in this case, it has been made up for by a bold abundance. There is a surfeit of fascinating little birds and a cracking selection of insects.

We worked hard, carefully choosing watersheds and checking aquifers, to ensure that the seawater does not damage anything that would be better left undisturbed. Most of the mangrove wood is made into biochar for both local use and export. We have, I think, thought of everything.

And yet, I can sense you thinking, there appears to have been a media blackout about all of this. Where is the Guardian article slapping you on the back for this monumental achievement and celebrating your Damascene transformation from ecological pantomime villain to spearhead of the upcoming mangrove terrace revolution?

Well the project is still, as we speak, top secret.

In fact, beyond knowing that I had agreed to talk to Mangrove Maj, even Jeane knew nothing about any of this. A brain tumour – swift, merciless, devastating – stole her away from me three days before that initial conversation. It is, perhaps, poetic that my greatest triumph is also my greatest tragedy. You will have read the various obituaries at the time, of course. Universally glowing, as befits. Even those rags that had vilified her in life deified her in death. ‘’Green Jeane’ didn’t quite live long enough to change the world,’ read the tribute in The Telegraph, ‘but she laid a path so that others might.’ Sarah Jane has, of course, followed in her mother’s footsteps. Our hugely talented daughter’s debut book takes pride of place on my bookcase and is always prominently displayed in the background whenever I have a Zoom meeting. Alistair runs half-marathons to raise money for environmental causes in his mother’s name.

The truth is, I can take no credit for any of this. She changed everything. Well, she and Mangrove Maj, of course. He told me that he intentionally sought Jeane out at COP 20 because he’d read that we owned an island. He also told me that it was the best thing he ever did.

Although I can no longer quite face eating them, Jeane has opened up a world where people can munch prawns, guilt-free, to their heart’s content. (Unless they’re vegans, of course.)

I still see her radiant smile in the faces of the grandchildren she never knew. And that’s what matters, isn’t it? Yes, I’ll always wish I’d acted sooner. And yes, I’ll never quite shake the feeling that I took her for granted. But we’ll all be gone one day. What we’re working for, what we’re fighting for, isn’t for us. It’s for those future generations yet to be born. That’s why we’re sequestering carbon, installing seawalls, helping wildlife to prosper. That’s what it’s all about.

Next week, we’re going public. It’s finally time. We wanted to prove beyond any doubt that this could really work over a sustained period. For the rest of the coastal mangrove terrace industry, our worked example will help to secure funding for other sites around the world. The potential is unimaginable.

Meanwhile, Mangrove Maj has made it clear that he wants no publicity. When the media circus hits town, he’ll be lying low, working on yet more pioneering ideas of how we can make the mangrove terraces even more effective. And me? I’ll be where I usually am these days: on the south-facing shoreline, watching those incredible nippy sand crabs as they race back-and-forth across the not-quite-golden sand, saying a quiet little prayer.

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Is it a disco light show, an aurora, or am I now fuzzy in the head? Is it just another moment of ever more frequent absent mindedness, the slip of the ageing mind where my brain skids on a banana skin, dumping me somewhere new, somewhere unexpected? Is that where I am, imagining this bioluminescence? Am I living a waking dream, transporting me to the giddy days of childhood, when the reef was ablaze? I give myself a mental pinch, to jolt myself to reality, but the lights are still here, not as bright as the extinguished lights of my youth, but they are here, nonetheless. I marvel at the oceanic fireflies, a seabed 5th of November. If it is a dream, then let me sleep forever.

Corals are very old animals, and when I say old, I don’t mean creaky boned. Press a shiny coin into your hands granny old; I mean, beyond the limits of our imagination, old. Think of The Colossus of Rhodes or the Pyramids. They are a great deal older than gran. 4,650 years old; now multiply that roughly 200,000 times and that’s what I mean by old. That is when coral first appeared in our oceans, creeping, colonising, along with their wobbly, transparent cousins jellyfish. They are neon light show pleasing, or rather the animals that inhabit the coral, radiating blues, purples, greens, reds and pinks, a gay rainbow of ocean fauna. Little animals with the appearance of nettles, hedgehog backs, bathroom sponges and dermatitis, these polyps terraform the ocean floor.

In my childhood coral was abundant, perhaps 500 types if I counted them all, plentiful loaves and fishes. Talking of fishes the coral sustained maybe a 1,000 reef fish, though I was barely conscious of their darting, skulking or marauding presence. I swam, I dived, I harvested, and they were there, ubiquitous. I didn’t bat an eyelid. This array of life and colour was the backdrop to my youth, its permanence unquestioned.

At first it was fishing. Spears, nets and baskets, scooping as much of the sea’s rich harvest as was possible. Sad, but no tragedy, people need to live, sustainability the key, as the fish stock and coral bounced back. Then in early adulthood I witnessed bigger nets scooping thousands of fish in one greedy swoop and anchors crashing through coral, a wrecking ball to an increasingly decrepit old house. Still, the oceans coped although fish stock wobbled, and the coral struggled to repair, sticking plasters to a growing wound.

I sensed we would survive, but as I moved through my middle-aged years, my naivete, that faith and trust in the good, or at least common sense of humankind, was sorely exposed. Vast nets dredged the ocean floor, ripping apart the reef. I went down in the fifth, a combination of punches battering my head and torso. Winded, I climbed to my feet, ready to recover. Then in the eighth came a series of concussive blows, as nutrients and pesticides from land runoff decreased the oxygen in the shallow coastal waters. I gasped for air and fought to survive through the onslaught as algae covered the surface, feeding off the rich nutrients. The fields of seagrass and plants that I remembered withered, and with them the fish and crustaceans. Even then, I still believed I could survive the fight, hanging on for dear life to stop the relentless body blows. Then came the assault from which I could never recover, climate change, that one two to the body and with it the uppercut of rising ocean temperatures. I hit the canvas, Ali felling Richard Dunn again and again. But this time I wasn’t going to make the count. I couldn’t hear the shouts from my corner. My legs had gone and with them my spirit, and my fight to survive. 

That was it. The multiple assaults had left the ocean scarred and lifeless. So I dived. I swam amongst the scarred wreckage of the reef, scattered and lifeless, the grim reaper’s harvest complete. Gone was the forest of seagrass, leaving an underwater desert of pale-yellow sand stretching towards the darkness. Deserts hold little life and this was no exception. The occasional lone fish that had lost its way, or perhaps working on instinct, remembering more abundant times. I dreamed at night of the olden times, where the reef put on a show of colourful glitz, the backdrop to an all singing, all dancing cabaret of colourful sea creatures. Each day a party, each day a riot. I was young and times were good. But now, as I enter my older years, my memory is jaded, my limbs stiffen, my eyesight fails, and it is a blessing that I have little appetite, as food is scarce. Each day is a living nightmare, as I patrol the desert searching for something, anything, that will give me hope.

Back when I was young, something peculiar occurred. It was a hurricane, not unusual for this part of the world, but this one was a beast and it invaded my sanctuary. So much so that land became an extension of the sea. It began with the sun heating the ocean to a bath time warmth, the type that caresses you all over. Condensation ascended, crashing into cold air above; the air swirled as they conjoined. The greater the condensation, the more violent the meeting, and the air moved faster, whipping up storm force winds that heltered and skeltered around the central calm eye.

Then it moved landwards. Beneath the ocean there was calm, while above was energy and turbulence, a duck treading water inversely. At landfall, the wind ripped at structures and vegetation, prizing its fingers into gaps, finding weakness and tearing what it could from its mooring, lifting it high and hurling like a champion’s discus. What remained after this violent assault would then be subjected to worse. You can hide from the wind, somewhere secure, hatches battened, doors bolted, but you can’t run from the water. If you conceal yourself, it will find you curled up in your hide and seek corner. All is submerged head to toe, brine pickled cucumbers drowned in dill. My first realisation was being swept up the coast, across the beachfront. Timber huts flattened like matchwood, the beachside bar turned to kindling. Then I was washed along streets, across lawns and a surge took me up to a suburban front door, where it knocked once, then crashed through the sturdy structure as if it was a net curtain. I sprawled on my back along the hallway, into the kitchen where I swirled in a vortex for seconds before being vomited out of the backdoor.

Hurricane, typhoon, cyclone, call it what you want. You can even name it Katrina or Franklin, but this isn’t what determines the destructive force of the beast. I witnessed the destruction of crops, the death of livestock, land changed forever. Buildings collapsed and people fled the storm surge, not returning to a land that could no longer support them.  

Now empty villages stand where there were once thriving fishing communities. With no reef for protection, the coast floods changed from fertility to salinity. This attitude of take take take and screw the future has done just that; a brief moment of abundance followed by wasteland.

My continuous patrolling of this once abundant shoreline now turned to waste, akin to the Marie Celeste, floating aimlessly. Nameless passengers with no destination, all life long since perished. Venturing to a part of the shoreline that I haven’t visited for a while in hope, I struggle, wheezing, muscles stiff, limbs that ache, everywhere another jag, a sharp stick to the ribcage, a dull thud to the spine. It seems the years have finally caught up with me and everything beneath the waves is misty. The fog of my eyes, the creak of my body makes searching that bit harder. Then a something catches my eye, an irregular structure on the barren floor of the ocean. Turning to investigate, I see a wooden frame and attached young polyps of coral. Through my blurred vision, I see the beginnings of life. A nursery of toddlers has been magically transported to the seabed. My excitement dulls the pain, soothes the limbs, and I continue. Another frame, this one nearly covered with coral. I see blue, pink, green. I had forgotten its beauty and around it, the beginnings of snails, fish, life. I swim further and first I am greeted by sporadic fish, then a clump of coral, and another, and another, an ocean garden replanted.

Perhaps there are more further on, but I am tired and turn away. The exhilaration, the extra distance, has exhausted me more than I think, so I barely notice the small boat draw alongside, the powerful hands that lift me out of the water. 

“Hey what we got? Come on, old boy let’s have a look at you.” Placed onto the deck, hands turn me feeling my limbs, stroking my forehead, checking a patient at the doctor’s surgery. “How old do you reckon this fella is?”

“Maybe 50 years. He’s been around the block, that’s for sure.”

“He was probably here before the reef was decimated.”

“Yeah, amazing that he’s still alive. Here, I’ll just tag him and we’ll put him back.”

“That’s so cool, perhaps we’ll see more turtles now that we’re replanting the reef” 

“Yeah, let’s put him back in.” I feel hands lower me over the side of the boat and gently into the water. “See ya fella.”

“Yeah, and good luck.” The boat doesn’t move as I swim slowly away. They are loath to let me go and I feel the affection in their distant gaze. I hear the engine as the boat heads away towards the fledgling reef. They are now the caretakers and I know that, in their hands, I might once again dive in rainbow seas teeming with life. 

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