20 MILLION TAPS

For years now we have been acutely aware, says he, stat­ing the glar­ingly ob­vi­ous, of Cat­alo­nia’s water cri­sis and the cli­mate emer­gency. Yet how well in­formed are you? What power do you have?

Many peo­ple are fig­ur­ing for them­selves how to be re­spon­si­ble. Vil­lages, towns, cities and the Gen­er­al­i­tat talk earnestly on how to change hearts and minds and are in­vok­ing good pol­icy.

But what about the mil­lions of vis­i­tors from north­ern Eu­rope? Tourism is es­sen­tial to Cat­alo­nia’s econ­omy – more than twelve per cent of gross do­mes­tic prod­uct, and num­bers are now back to pre-pan­demic lev­els and ris­ing. That is twenty mil­lion more peo­ple a year using fi­nite re­sources and for whom there may be no sec­ond thought when lux­u­ri­at­ing in a half hour shower or leav­ing the tap run­ning while clean­ing their teeth.

In­di­vid­ual ho­tels and as­sorted other ac­com­mo­da­tions can and must ad­vise, but there needs to be a col­lec­tive ini­tia­tive, Cat­alo­nia-wide sup­port to do this. I strongly ad­vo­cate a sin­gu­lar wel­come/ad­vice video free to all hosts, as well as pub­lic broad­cast­ing mes­sag­ing on tele­vi­sion and radio to make res­i­dents’ water wis­dom as com­pre­hen­sive as pos­si­ble.

Sim­ple, ac­ces­si­ble ad­vice on small things brings in­cre­men­tal, fast and sig­nif­i­cant re­sults, if peo­ple get clear, in­spir­ing and achiev­able ad­vice and own­er­ship of our col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­ity and power. The same is true of fire risk, lit­ter, etc. Use the tools peo­ple ac­cess every day in their lives to drive key mes­sages home. We need to get ahead of the curve.

The farm is de­cep­tively lush. Some Oc­to­ber rain and record warmth well into No­vem­ber has stirred na­ture when it should be slip­ping into a deep win­ter sleep. Vi­brant grasses and wild rocket, the white flower heads adorned with but­ter­flies, crowd the stumps of re­cently de­ceased or dying fruit trees. The gen­tle warm and still­ness, the car­pet of green, is a trap. Pol­li­na­tors have emerged think­ing it is spring.

I will fell the old wal­nut tree in front of the farm­house with a heavy heart. It is not just fire that is killing trees and forests but thirst of course.

Look to sto­ries from the tourist hotspot Gar­raf co­marca south of Barcelona where there is clear ev­i­dence of im­por­tant for­est masses dying be­cause of the pro­longed drought. It is in­dica­tive of a fun­da­men­tal, fright­en­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion. We will see more, going to the roots of vil­lage com­mu­ni­ties, co­op­er­a­tives and busi­nesses.

Cop28 will come and go this month. More suits, more hot air, more short-ter­mism and pro­tec­tion­ism by the world’s wealth­i­est. That is as cer­tain as the onset of the cli­mate dystopia. At last year’s COP27 sum­mit, more than 80 coun­tries wanted the final state­ment to in­clude a call to phase-out fos­sil fuels. Yet de­vel­oped na­tions re­spon­si­ble for the emer­gency con­tinue de­vel­op­ing fos­sil fuels. Mad­ness.

So lobby like there is no to­mor­row. Take to the streets. Lead. Be strong (some­thing else Cata­lans excel at).