Yews

The 'graveyard' tree. dark and massive it sits sturdy and strong guarding the dead, though Geoffrey Grigson says  according to a 1664  quote that rather than scare away devils it was planted because they "attracts and imbibes putrefaction and oleaginous vapours exhaled out of the Graves by the setting sun and sometimes drawn into those Meteors called Ignes Fatui".
Ignus Fatui; Is in fact a will-of-the wisp, those strange lights you occasionally finding dancing over a bog, etc, caused I believe by the gases that explode from the wet ground. 
Well putting some of that to one side, originally the Yew was the guardian of the Home. the deity or the dwelling place of this protective deity.  On a more practical front the Yew tree/trees would have protected the house from the strong winds (that we are now experiencing) and of course the wood has been used on the Iron Age bow found at Glastonbury, and even earlier in Palaeolithic times it was used for spears.
Trees have travelled through history with their own tales and myths, the yews heavy dense darkness makes it malignant, it grows old, so that one can record its history over hundreds of years. The interior of the trunk can become hollowed, making room inside for you to sit down such as this one in Much Marcle by the church.

The yews in our churchyard are untidy and badly cut, but the coral-red of their berries brightens up their darkness, they represent the colours of Xmas, dark green and red.  Like the holly tree above, the pigeons have left this feast of berries for later times whilst they demolish the berries on the holly in the copse.

The berries on the yews were knowns as 'snotty gogs' and various different renditions of the word 'snot!

https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2017/08/william-wordsworth-yew-trees.html

Evoking the Past really this time

Just a short post to record the death of Harry Leslie Smith, an ardent socialist who died at the age of 95 years old.  He talks of real poverty in the early 20th century, before the advent of social security and the National Health Service.
An article can be found here in the Guardian on his life.  He is like the Chelsea pensioners from the world wars, a slow anchor from the past who slips into the sea to be lost forever.  He records a young life of sheer hell for himself and his family.  Till the Labour party came to power in 1945.  I cannot say that I have much trust in the present Labour Party, like the Conservatives they tear themselves apart on trivia, we need action.
So the following quote from Smith's article in the NewStatesman, will suffice to bring light on part of our history.

“hard rain ate cold Yorkshire stone for its tea”.

Evoking the past

Evoking the past:  This is the start of addressing poverty, my first reaction is don't pull up the past it has already been lived. Today with all its problems needs answers. Being virtuous when we get old is a great fault, we were better then.  Yes, maybe, but we lived in the circumstances that was provided in the time,  1950 is very, very different from 2018.

One thing that can be said is that we have all become more opinionated.  What makes me cross, let us see, easy references to those people who sit in front of the tv eating completely wretched food which makes them fat and living off the state.   The trouble is of course it does not cover the immense number of people, who are trying to get it together in a world that is difficult and changes the rules all the time.

Our society has fragmented, not necessarily into class divisions but a polarisation between those that have enough, those that have too much and those that are on the poverty line.  Don't quote 'frugal' at me, I can be frugal as a single female, but I would be hard pressed to give my children frugality.

What has happened is that society has become greedy, capitalism lies at the base, the ever upward thrust of gaining more for the individual.  So some people make it under this system, others don't, this is where the poverty line has been drawn.  A case I read only last week, a women died because she suffered type 1 diabetes, she died hungry, no food in the fridge for her to appease the necessary food a diabetic needs.
I find no fault in the rapporteur's report only the figures seem high, he makes rational points, the problem of digitising Universal Credit so that people have to have access to a computer to fill in a form is worrying. With libraries closing down, one good source of using a computer (and you still have to pay a small charge) is lost.  As we know banks have been shutting down, we now have no bank in Kirkbymoorside, only the Post Office that has stepped into the breach, and one ATM down at the end of town.  The nearest Citizen Advice Bureau is in another town about 15 miles away, and looking at the frail old people you see on the street it would be impossible for them to even contemplate the journey.  

Overall rollout of broadband internet in the UK may be high, but those figures hide the fact that many poorer and more vulnerable household are effectively offline and without digital skills. According to 2017 Ofcom figures, only 47% of those on low income use broadband internet at home. Only 42% of those who are unemployed and 43% of those on low income do their banking online. According to the Lloyds Bank UK Consumer Digital Index 2018, 21% of the UK population do not have five basic digital skills and 16% of the population is not able to fill out an online application form.


Then of course if you are young, even any money in your purse for a ticket to get anywhere.  Of course there are tattooed swines sitting round on sofas, swigging beer and 'living off the state' but they don't constitute the vast majority of people, they are just there for cheap newspapers to drum up hate against them in their articles.  We have become a society so easily led by our own subjective feelings that hate and anger are allowed to roam the streets.  We have feral children in our cities, why?

I suspect it will be the volunteers and the ordinary people who will run the day to day basis of our lives, stepping in as Westminster becomes a castle in the sky spewing nonsense to the wealthy about the plight of the poor, it does not have the answers, only those words ' it's the economy stupid'. Repeat to yourself we are the 5th largest rich country in the world!

Paul Mason quote;

"It hurts to admit it but outside the big cities, large parts of Britain resemble a poverty-stricken wasteland,  Amid the charity shops, vape shops, nail bars, payday lenders and crumbling old shopping malls and high streets we have forgotten what prosperity is supposed to look like"

Surprisingly I am optimistic, the Conservative Party will eventually fall on its own sword, maybe there will be chaos, Brexit promises that, a new order will emerge, or maybe we will all sink into a middle-class stupor (could be we are there already) but whatever the Statement on Visit to the United Kingdom, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, does hit a few home truths.

postscript, if I have seemed too cross read  Aril's blog of yesterday  Unravelling and Rethreading, funnily enough I was at the library yesterday sewing with a like-minded bunch of females and we also have a 'repair and recycle' place in the town, and the library is run by volunteers.

Weekend

Well the weekend brought my daughter and granddaughter to stay, that is after they had negotiated strikes on the trains.  Karen, my daughter, after some tests at the hospital seems to be clear from what she had experienced which was a great relief.  Lillie arrived cold and shivering, heading for a cold, she went to bed to warm up and eventually ate a meal.

The great excitement arrived Sunday morning, when the tree surgeons turned up, John and Rachel  (the owners of the land behind us) had reassured us that the whole operation near to our garage and garden would go smoothly, and it did.  With Lillie thinking about becoming a tree surgeon when she grows up.  She sat fascinated on the floor by the french doors, the tree man would occasionally wave to us as he performed great feats of surgical precision.

That was what was so fascinating. My approach to trees is to see them as something mystical, an alive force in the universe, cutting them down kills them.  As we know they are part of a great ecosystem that takes the light and air through their leaves transferring them through the process of photosynthesis into living breathing trees.  Their root systems spread underground communicating with the trees around  them and the necessary fungus that clings to their roots keeps the soil alive.

But I had accepted the beech tree's fate, so sat with the others as the chain saw cut through with such precision, the skill comes from the lowering of the great branches by rope, so that they do not fall willy-nilly on to fences and the garage.  They started at 9.30 but had to stop for the church service, Jo rang the bell at 10.50 and the men went off for breakfast in Kirkby, and came back and the job was finished by 1 o clock.  Three men plus equipment cost £800, which was not expensive.

In fact when I talked to Rachel, they are having new fencing all round this field, with a stile into the copse being put in in January which will cost a great deal more.  One of the fascinating things about cutting bushes and tree branches that overlap your boundaries is that the cut material still belongs to the owner of the land, so therefore you have to return it over the fence, very medieval.

poverty

Apologies for those that tried the former link, had to go away without really checking. this is the link of the report of the rapporteur on poverty.....

https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Poverty/EOM_GB_16Nov2018.pdf

Today we have been watching a tree surgeons fell an old beech, photos tomorrow, because Lucy is having a wash and brush-up and needs to be picked up.

trees

Today thumbimg through my emails, I came across a request to join a tree group on Flickr.  Sometimes I forget I have an account there, though they take my money religiously every year.  But then I started to thumb through the photos (there are a lot) and I could see the group leader had been looking at my photos of my most favourite place in Yorkshire, the old gnarled hawthorns which goes under the rather unfortunate name of Murk Mire Moor. Here, I have stated that my ashes are to be scattered, even Lucy loves this place.  She is always scampering off to go into the beck, much to Paul's horror as he thinks she might drown, I don't.

We are  not the only person who comes here, we have met others who have felt the spirit of place that seems to be part of the old hawthorns.  See how the roots of the tree seem to grow from the rock.  The twisted gnarled trunks remind us that winter has cruel months, the death of bracken looks so much neater that the sweep of leaves that cover our lawns and drive.
Yesterday on the radio they talked of the extinction of the ash tree, (which I have written before) there are millions of this tree but there is a disease slowly taking over.  There will be dieback, similar to the elm, of course there will be trees that will not succumb and we should use these trees to replace those that died, in nurseries we should nurture their seeds, in our gardens plant one, so that higgledy-piggledy network of trees once more cover the land.
Not forgetting the magical sacred nature of the Ash tree, the Yygrasdil tree from which Odin hung for nine days.
When I eventually find my photos of the rowan trees further down the beck, I shall put those on.  Of course the rowan tree is also magical, especially for the winter birds.

Wednesday 21st November

The weather is dreadful, cold, wet and drear.  Watched a stoat try to climb the wall of the church yesterday and then he slipped along to the great tree with holes in it.  The jackdaw raise their young here every year, and the stoat swanned up and and down, in and out much to our amusement.  Could hsve been a weasel of course, and I did worry about the bantams but I have a feeling the creature would have been after the eggs.  It would explain all the broken egg shells, probably from Nelson's smallholding you find along the field walk.

Yesterday was 'quiz night' at the pub, we did well but not as well as the people who always win, they need handicapping, like confiscating their mobiles for a start ;)  Tuesday night is pie night, which everyone in the village enjoys, I get a delicious lasagne as I am supposed to be vegetarian!

The hoard of raffle items, went down pretty quickly and no one wanted the York City football tickets which I found rather surprising.  Not so many people as usual, but the hard core of the village inmates were there and it was less noisy and more enjoyable.

Paul had got himself a new computer a couple of weeks back, and gets cross with the 'newfangledness' of it, so yesterday he did a foolish thing and went back to basic settings, because he did not want AMD radeon setting, which of course lost everything he had put on, this will include email accounts with contacts and photos, though I have his photos on one of the external hard drives.  I can see a fun day ahead!

Monday - Waking up to the world

“The main reason people are moving is because they don’t have anything to eat. This has a strong link to climate change – we are seeing tremendous climate instability that is radically changing food security in the region.”

We are all aware of the nature of the immigration problem, no not that one which is underlined by Brexit, but the larger world wide phenomena of people moving from their countries for economic reason.  It worries us, this movement of people, what can we do about it?  There isn't an answer of course, it will happen.   When the better off countries turned the world upside down with their proxy wars, many people had to suffer, these people were like you and me... Syria, Yemen, Libya and Palestine to name but a few pulled out of the hat.

War does that to countries, when you destroy their crops, kill their cattle.  But there is a bigger beast looming on the horizon, it is called 'Climate Change', the young are addressing it literally in Switzerland.

STOP GLOBAL WARMING", "WE ARE THE FUTURE GIVE US A CHANCE" and "#1.5C".

"The last message refers to the maximum level of global warming that scientists say should be aimed for if the planet is to remain liveable."  

The glaciers shrink, as we warm the air with our needs for a comfortable life.  No matter how many protests take place, wasn't there one on Saturday, Extinction Rebellion, closing the London Bridges for a time?  the politicans are arguing about something else, knee deep at the moment in the mire of Brexit.  Well Brexit will be short lived if we only have 12 years to bring the galloping horse of climate change to a halt, and not for just ourselves but for those immigrants trekking all round Europe and America.

The first quoted paragraph by the way was taken from a Guardian article about the wave of people walking through Mexico towards a better life in America, goodness knows what will happen, again no answers.  The simple answer is of course there are too many humans on this Earth, and no logic to how we should all live in harmony.

In medieval history, first born inherited the farm/manor, younger male siblings sent off to monasteries or death in war, women were really useful as wives and mothers and constructing allegiances;)

There is a certain tongue in cheek here as I desperately try to get my head around such traumas that exist in the world,  I am angry about the loss of wildlife, elephants, tigers, rhinos, this morning I even signed a petition against scraping (all) the kelp from the bottom of the sea round West Scotland, because we have the f****** machinery to do so, this will not only wipe out a lot of sea life but the otters as well.

So apologies for the rant, I will leave you with a gentler photo...

and if you want to sign...https://www.change.org/p/scottish-parliament-ensure-that-mechanical-kelp-dredging-does-not-happen-in-scotland

Saturday morning

The start of the day:  Chase Lucy round the lawn after the head of lettuce (which is going funny and being fed to the hens) she ultimately chews half up and the hens get the rest.  Letting two hens out of the coop, Lady Jane likes to sleep in splendid isolation in the square rabbit hutch so she comes out next, she keeps it clean and refuses to sleep with that bully Phoebe.  Lady J has the personality of royalty, she is slightly mad, will be seen rushing madly around for no reason whatsoever but normally sticks with her sister Fey.

To be done...leaf collection, the more mundane aspect of Autumn!

I have taken possession of my 'craft room', very untidy but I know where everything is.  Three hearts and two bags made this week, after we mended my sewing machine.  The bags are to hold work in progress and will, when I get round to buying one hung from a row of knobs.

I sorted the countries problems out last night, dreamt about Egypt, then thought as Britain is going down the drain, rather then moan we should start building pyramids and temples, ruined cities in the countryside, so that posterity can look back and say well they did something useful in creating such places.... When all those politicians have gone to a better place in the sky, just remembered this....

Which wasn't the original thought, but it is so calming.  The original goes like this, babies and politicians need changing quite a lot.  What do they have in common? they produce a   lot of s***.

For somethings to be desired............. from Bils and Rye.  Look at the elegant shape of those cups, dimpled finger hold, softly glazed colour - yum.

 And this - polished marble?

Meet Charlie - smile and clean your teeth!

Bought at the gardening club, you can see from the gnashers that he is a Venus fly trap plant.  We had a talk from the grower of these plants, and he had some beauties, but at £20 a throw for the large ones I went for a smaller one to see if I could keep it over winter.  They live in wet, boggy and swampy land, you give them rainwater and they just love sitting in water in a freeze as well.  So this one will live in the bathroom and hunt flies in there.
Sticky nectar draws the fly to its fate, those evil spikes close round the struggling body (it must struggle), tightening all the time, till all the juices are extracted.  Sounds a bit of a horror story doesn't it?
But there was some beautiful carnivours plants, we have them in this country as well,  Trump talks of clearing the 'swamp' land, well whether he means real swamps or mythical city swamps don't let him.

Wackswickedplants.

Thursday 15th November

Looking through my photos for a 'wildlife' one in the garden for the gardening club I went to yesterday none came up.  But I transferred a few and thought begone Autumn let us look at a sunnier time.

Daffodils in the grave yard

perennial geraniums

honeysuckles are one of my favourite climbers

Rugosa

Jam and Jerusalem

Lillie always an original dresser, with Ben, Matilda and Paul making coffee.  Something Lillie always does when she visits us.

London in the rain

Roy, Paul, Jeff and Sue at King Arthur's enclosure.

'They hang you on a little string, and wait for you to give up'

Could not resist. Thanks to Amateur Therapy.

Going belly-up.  What is you may ask. well it is that dreaded move (Brexit) we are making next March.  To be honest I have given up, the reams of speculation that goes on, get us absolutely nowhere, and as the more sensible politicians who hit the screens yesterday evening said - read it first for the facts! the 500 page DRAFT (note that word).

Don't they look gorgeous, I just love yellow sweet tomatoes

So I will return to a better email in my mail, the discussion on 'Plastic Free Packaging for Fruit and Vegetables'.  It is a start, yesterday I read of a small supermarket in London going plastic free, cheeses wrapped in a wax substitute and bacon  as well.  Small moves I know, but we know that Iceland and Morrisons are already dipping their toes into the water on this issue.  Somehow the lazy attitude of our manufacturers of plastic will get the message, and slowly the entrepreneurial skills of small firms will overcome wholesale dependency on plastics - it will be a long road, we need to thank David Attenborough for the start.

So many problems in society, which subject to start with? Both Paul and I watch, with ever increasing mystification, people on Victoria Derbyshire's tv spot in the morning as we make the coffee. If there is a person there is a problem needing to be tackled by whatever social organisations exists.  It is sad  we have all returned to gazing at our own navels, the fault of social media of course........

Another bit of a rant!!! Fracking, it won't hurt says the government, those minor earthquakes that Cuadrilla is experiencing at the Lancashire site - harmless.  Yes, well have you seen the damaged houses in the Netherlands?  100,000 houses damaged so far, and the title above comes from the video embedded in the article.

As was fit - Lest we Forget

We watched all the ceremonies for Remembrance Day, and as Weaver of Grass said, was it not beautifully organised.  From The Armistice ceremony in the morning in Paris, the leaders gathering together,  Merkel and Macron together, representing Europe.  There was a tinge of sadness that our leader did not stand there as well, but Theresa May's duty was to stand at the Cenotaph with her own people.

There was one leader here in England, the German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who at the end of the ceremony at Westminster Abbey shook the hand of the Queen, next to the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.  This surely is the ultimate show of peace and reconciliation, staged of course but a beautiful gesture.  It was here in the grand gothic vaulted abbey, that tears came to my eyes, listening to the choir, watching those nine young people walk the long walk up the aisle holding onto their wreaths, the young lad who dragged his leg, symbolic of the reason why we welcome all to ceremonies and our country - we are one.

I will not grouch or find judgement on any of the ceremonies, the immaculate kept graves, so many of them, stretched in long lines are a constant reminder that war is evil.  Our pledge to those that died is there written in the soil of Europe.

The storm approaches

From the West 

Lighting the Autumn leaves

Until the rain poured from the skies

Wednesday 7th November

Seamus Heaney catches the mood of the moment in his poetry.  There is a lot of Seamus Heaney's poetry on this blog, he did a degree in Archaeology, and occasionally I forget him which is a pity. This small verse taken from the link could address the fields of France as well.  As men go in search of long extinct battlegrounds, bones are uncovered from the last  but one World War.

                                                            A desolate peace. 
                                                             Our mother ground 
                                                             Is sour with the blood 
                                                             Of her faithful, 


A rich  burial of a Celtic Princess and her child at Bettelbuhl neocroplis in South Germany.

The grave was preserved in the water-logged soil. It is so intact that they have been able to put an exact date on the woman's death. The oak they found on the floor of the chamber was felled 2,620 years ago. Assuming they were cut down specifically to build the chamber, the princess died in 609BC. Also surprisingly the grave had not been robbed over the last 2,600 years.  taken from

The horses face plate is remarkable, in its beauty for a start, a shield in war.  Did she own the equivalent of an 'E type jaguar' in her horse, did she love this creature, were its bones found in the burial? as they are in the burials in Pocklington, East Yorkshire Iron Age 'square barrows' of the Parisi tribe.

a reconstruction

Sometimes the accoutrements of death in prehistory remind us of animals that were also respected and admired.  Valued as we today value the ownership of an expensive car.  More wayward than our automated four wheeled chariots though.

When we flit through the news of the day, with its wars and want, it is well to remember that history carries its own news as well, unearthed in the clay are the remnants of other lives, lived as richly as ours.  The Princess's amber and gold jewellry was also beautiful as you will see in this link.

Well I come back to my blog a couple of hour later, a friend has just brought us the plans of their ecohouse they plan to build on their two acre plot.  Great excitement for them, almost stymied by the 'great crested newt', doesn't half get around England that newt;).  But if Natural England gives them the go ahead on the five ponds on their land, then next stop is planning. A passive house, with a gassified boiler, I shall have to look that one up.

Monday 5th November

 Dames Violet -Taken from;  

Ptelea - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27068768

1) Dame's Violet, Hesperis Matronalis - Sweet Rocket.  I had been reading a book about our village and the author had mentioned phlox down by the river. My mind said surely not and then realised he had meant the delightful Dames Violet, which I had seen near the crab apple tree and old gate, growing amongst the nettles.  I have been in love with this flower for years but reading the Wiki entry on it, and apparently it is a terrible weed in America and Canada, not so in this country I think but an escapee from the garden a few centuries ago.  Anyway I still love its frail whiteness and scent, though you can get a lavender coloured one to.

What else struck me this weekend;  a large queen bumblebee, feasting on the tiny white flowers of an evergreen shrub in the front garden as I was collecting some last roses for the house.  The lawn is covered in leaves as they fall in this Autumn weather.

2) Hilma af Klint; 1862 -1944, Swedish abstract painter. Came across her in a magazine, first abstract female painter before Klandinsky and her paintings were not seen till way after her death, though her conventional work as an illustrator supported her.  I suspect, apart from the fact that she did not want to show her 'life' work, was the company she kept, when I mention such words as  Theosophy and Anthroposophical (and you can pick me up if it is spelt wrong) and this spirituality coloured her thinking.  To me the paintings follow the forms of amoebic creatures, and the paintings themselves had a life of their own according to her.  Springing onto the paper already formed.

I mention her because female painters are hard to find in the lexicon of artists, yet there were some fine European painters during her time and earlier.

3)The Skinningrove bonfire;  Do you reckon Santa is about to be burnt?  I remember a few years ago coming down a steep lane from up above into the village of Skinningrove, it was dull and wet and the village so downbeat that it left a feeling of misery in one's heart.  Yet every year they build a great bonfire to be burnt down, it is a tradition.  The village terraced houses were once where the mining people lived, iron was mined in the area  but industrialisation of this area slowly came to a halt  in the 20th century giving it a somewhat bleak aspect today.  Near Saltburn on the East coast.

Briefly

Stolen item - this from Aril..... just for its sheer exuberance.

I have been up since 4 o clock, Lucy again, watched the 'Barefoot Contessa', found her food a bit rich.  Was woken up on a dream, that all the cakes we had collected from R and J yesterday had tipped over onto the beautifully swirled butter cream on top of them and were an absolute mess.  It is a coffee morning at the church today, Paul helped move all the pews to make 'gossip' squares and as Rachel and John can't make it we are taking their cakes in.

Talking of dreams, I had a real scary dream on Halloween night, sitting once more with that dratted dog, I woke up to see a pair of hands holding mine.  No body attached, really spooked at the power of the mind over matter, but I still don't believe in actual ghosts or the power of the graveyard next door!

Welllllllll except, the last burial last week, was an old pub owner of the Inn next door, just picked up the book he had written of life in the old village, now that has set me wondering, was it him?

Ephemeral

Lucy at my feet under the desk!  The dreaded window cleaner has come, with brushes and water at the bedroom windows, Lucy gets scared.  Also  the bantams, the yellow water hose snaking down the driveway is the largest snake they have see this year.....

And for colour, the crab apple jelly so reminiscent of Autumn..... and I would also say, that I squeezed the jelly bag and it still came out clear.

Confused

Plastic

Sometimes the truth is unpleasant, watching Simon Reeve the other night and he illustrated the lives of the immigrants that work in Almeria in Spain growing vegetables and fruit for many of us.  The immigrants live in terrible conditions, very much like slave labour.  And why plastic, well the whole area, probably about a 100 kilometres is covered in plastic, the photos of this phenomena speak for themselves....

"Many Spanish workers find it too hot to work and the conditions too brutal so the sweat-houses are staffed mainly by legal and illegal immigrants from Africa and Eastern Europe. One hundred thousand immigrants are thought to work in the greenhouses and many believe it is the lack of workers-rights that help the businesses to be profitable. Many ‘farms’ have no toilets and women are often forced into prostitution. Some workers are also sold contracts to work, which have to be repaid to their bosses. "

How did we arrive here??  Does the EU have blame, do we have blame, or perhaps capitalism.  Does our easy comfortable lives hide a terrible truth, a bit like the Morlocks and Eloi in H.G.Wells - The Time Machine, or is this how the human world has always been?

Thoughts run through the head like the wildebeest on  African ground, the lion is our consciousness chasing a truth, or is it a truth? We have been raising a song and dance about the terrible carnage in the sea caused by plastic, yet here is a vast landscape of plastic, which ends up choking dried river beds in Spain, did anyone do anything about it?

This morning I heard someone quoting George Bernard Shaw, though to be honest the commentator said it was Gandhi who had said it, but stop quibbling...

“I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals.” 

 All very fine, vegetarianism started a good century ago One third of people in this country are not eating meat, or at least cutting down. There are various reasons, not liking it, conscious about eating animals and the environment, and then it has become too expensive to buy.  

What puzzles me is that the powers that be know the mess the world gets into and yet does nothing about it, the sin here is surely greed.  Could it be that in a hundred years we will become a Mayan wasteland, the jungle grown over civilisation, the ruins poking through the trees.  Chernobyl by the way has entered a new phase of animal/vegation life now that humans have left!