Arianne Shahvisi is a senior lecturer in ethics at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Her book Arguing for a Better World was published in June 2023.
Angus Wilson once described Aldous Huxley as ‘the god of my adolescence’. When I read those words as a teenager, I was sure I’d one day want to borrow them. It’s a hundred years since the publication of Huxley’s first novel, Crome Yellow, and I’ve been rereading his books at twice the age I was when I first encountered them.
Regardless of its dubious etymology, ‘Everest’ – a hyperbolic adverb raised to the superlative degree – is a fitting appellation for an extreme, lawless world in which ordinary moral conduct is suspended. Above eight thousand metres, acclimatisation is impossible. (The highest human settlements are at five thousand metres.) Everest stands at 8849 metres, which means climbers are effectively dying in a queue and must get to the summit and back before they succumb. If the person ahead of you keels over or goes blind, it isn’t unusual to step over them and carry on. Should someone else’s oxygen canister jam or explode, you wouldn’t be the only one keeping quiet about your spare. Climbers pause for a rest beside the body of ‘Green Boots’, thought to be Tsewang Paljor, who died in a blizzard in 1996. All this is normal on the ‘roof of the world’.
Part of the trouble is the idea that trees are just wood, wood is carbon, and carbon is fungible. Most of the wood pellets burned in the UK are imported from Canada and the United States, where mature forests which underwrite vast, complex ecosystems are being felled to meet the growing European demand for ‘renewable’ energy. The official line is that pellets are made from offcuts from the timber industry, but scientists and environmentalists report that trees are being felled to go straight to biomass.
Cladding and insulation are only the most notorious problems faced by those living in new developments. Lax building regulations mean that careless gaps between cladding and internal walls function as chimneys through which blazes can surge. Timber balconies, arranged like kindling over the cladding (and often used for risky activities like smoking and barbecues) are also implicated. Flammability isn’t the only concern. A survey conducted by Shelter in 2017 found that half of newbuilds have serious and costly structural defects. Some have shoddy mortar that crumbles within months, leaving bricks wobbling like loose teeth. A recent audit concluded that three-quarters of developments shouldn’t have been given planning permission. It will surprise nobody to learn that the Conservative Party receives millions in donations from property developers. The government is neither compelling developers to pay for necessary improvements to buildings, nor is it prepared to do so itself. Many leaseholders, particularly those in shared ownership flats, won’t be able to cover the projected costs. There is a very real risk of bankruptcy.
When I was eleven, my mother sat my older sister and me down and told us a man had attacked a girl in our neighbourhood. From now on we were to be careful walking to and from school. She didn’t use the word ‘rape’ but my sister told me afterwards that was what she meant. It wasn’t clear what we were supposed to do to be more careful, but that wasn’t my mother’s point. She was training us in a grim new way of life: be fearful, be alert, treat every man as a potential threat.
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