What I Did in My School Holidays

It put Buckinghamshire to shame. You could probably tow Cornwall off into the middle of the Atlantic and its people would hardly notice. Their culture is rich in local food and local energy. We stopped off in the small harbour town of Mevagissey and looked in the museum. There, pride of place, was a Mevagissey one pound note. A hundred years ago they had their own currency and own bank. These days are returning to Cornwall.

Cornwall used to be quite the center of industry for Britain. Oddly enough, when you travel around Cornwall you expect to see abandoned Tin Mines. It is now part of the scenery. But we forget it is a symbol of industrial decline. Industrial change. It may be a tourist attraction now but this was once people's lives. Less well known is the China Clay industry that still lives on even though it is a shadow of its former self. China Clay used to be exported out of Charlestown port up until the mid 1970's. Nowadays it is not only a museum - the port a near-permanent film set. You can see it at the end of the last "Alice in Wonderland" movie by Tim Burton. The 1970's is only forty years ago. It is within my lifetime.

The China Clay industry has now moved down the coast to Fowey where a modern dock facility is fed by train line whose only job is to feed the port. It is ugly as sin and stained white from the clay dust. Recently they lost another 700 jobs as the industry slowly moves offshore to Brazil. Give it a few years and no doubt this port will fall silent too. Will the tourists of 2050 take a sail boat up and down the river to look at the rusting remains?

Part of the Cornish Mining history can be found today in the Luxulyan Valley north of Par and not too far from the Eden Project. Not much to see now as you walk around the forested valley. As you walk up the hill the first bit of history you discover is the abandoned Trevanney China Clay Kiln. It is a tall chimney connected to a roofless building. The large array of modern breeze blocks betray its youth. It was only shut down in the 1960's.

As we walked past the rubble and decaying ruins I wondered what this told us about our own future. The Luxulyan Valley is an over-grown forest today yet fifty years ago the area was a thriving industry. What could I have told a worker there in the 1960's? "Sorry mate, this is all a tourist attraction in 2011." Would he believe me? I turned to our five-year-old and said "Soon all our oil refineries will look like this."

Of course she had no idea what I was talking about. She's five. In 2061 she may well be as nonchalant about the industrial ruins she walks through, as we were that day in August 2011. We seem prepared to give away so much but find it hard to imagine that so much is still to be changed. In fifty years entire industries shall be founded, shall rise, and shall fall. The fossil fuel industry is but one more to be cast aside by the march of history.

The birth of our inevitable post-fossil-fuel world may well be a painful experience. I hope we too can be philosophical about it a half-century from now. Oil, gas and coal have proven to be an enormous bounty that has lead to an explosion of population and complexity over the last 200 years. Without it can we enjoy the same complexity? What clothes will the tourists of 2061 be wearing? The fine threads of seasoned travellers? Or the rags of survivors who don't know the meaning of the word "tourist"?

It is our choice. There is a better way.

To submit comments to this Blog please pay us a visit over at www.transition-wycombe.org.uk/blog or join the debate at http://groups.google.com/group/tthw

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here