Conservation Comment: We live in Dylan's predictions

BOB DYLAN: You better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone.

By Rosemary Penwarden

Now there's something new blowing in the wind. Radical, determined grassroots movements are blossoming again. IWAS just wondering what Dad would say if he knew Bob Dylan had won the Nobel Prize for literature, when there he was in Nelson Lebo's Conservation Comment last week.

Nelson's excellent article got me thinking more about the link between Dylan's lyrics and climate change. Growing up in 1960s Whanganui, those lyrics shaped my world.

Other songs played their part: Abraham, Martin and John made me cry, Big Yellow Taxi got me mad, For What it's Worth confirmed my suspicions -- "There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear".

That strange man James K Baxter was up the river doing goodness knows what, and my mother told me not to play Let it Be backwards because it might hypnotise me. I wore that record out.

My favourite was Dylan, but the times they weren't a-changing fast enough for me. Get your head out of the clouds, Mum said. I had chores to do, homework to finish. Then there were jobs, travel, children, mortgage, and all of a sudden I'm a grandma and the times they have a-changed, but not in the way I dreamed, screaming out Blowin' in the Wind to the westerlies (and to Scott, the dog) from the top of the gully in 1960s Brunswick.

Now we are living Dylan's predictions. The waters around us have grown and we had better bloody get swimming or we'll sink like a stone.

Dylan's lyrics stirred feelings about war, justice, caring for our world, living more simply. They were not polite. They were part of a determined, grassroots movement demanding change with marches, sit-ins, concerts, rallies and riots, to the racist, militarist, sexist system of the 20th century Cold War western world. They resulted in changes to civil rights, women's rights, clean air and clean water legislation and more.

In Brunswick I embroidered flowers on to my bellbottoms. At school Mr Taylor predicted that, with consumer goods soon meeting all our needs, my generation would have more time for recreation. But then Flower Power got overtaken by the great military-industrial complex that Dwight D Eisenhower warned against in 1961, became packaged, commercialised and consumerised. Needs morphed into wants and now we are drowning in Stuff. As a result our fossil-fuelled consumer-driven society drives climate change; the biggest conservation conundrum ever faced.

Now there's something new blowing in the wind. Radical, determined grassroots movements are blossoming again. Young minds, raised to care more about celebrities and the next smartphone than who lives next door, are throwing off their consumer shackles and finding meaning and purpose.

There's plenty of motivation; this generation has the task of trying to figure out how to take power away from the people who are destroying their future.

The urgency is obvious. In the same week that our Government again invited oil companies to explore and drill in our oceans, Oil Change International released a report that says to keep the world below 2C of global warming and honour the Paris Climate Agreement, we cannot afford any new drilling.

Thanks to Nelson Lebo for reminding us that planting trees is important. You can't go wrong with trees. But that's not enough. It will take a movement big, creative and lively enough to match the seriousness of what we face. It won't be polite.

My father hated Bob Dylan. He never got past that croaky voice to the lyrics. He'd turn in his grave to know he'd just won the Nobel Prize.

� Rosemary Penwarden is a freelance writer and member of several environmental and climate justice groups.