Spiralling Upward: Historical Perspective on the 22nd Century / Esmé Beaumont

SPIRALLING UPWARD: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE 22ND CENTURY/ ESMÉ BEAUMONT

Fiction

The university library roof garden has always been my favourite place to study; the fresh air, the vibrant colours of the calendula and the tulips, and the muffled hum of people going about their lives in the city below provide the perfect environment for writing essays. It’s funny: I wonder how many of those people come up here and feel the same way I do—how many of them have the opportunity to get this perspective on our community, to consider where all of this came from. I doubt I would have thought to ask, had it not been for that one teacher who encouraged me to study history— she said I’d be good at it, and at sixteen I had no idea what else I might do, so taking the A-level made sense. She was right, though: I was good at it, and more importantly it was the first school subject I found truly fulfilling to learn.

This essay is the perfect demonstration of why: the story of a historical figure so often overlooked in favour of the exciting lives of explorers or the court scandals of kings and queens of centuries past. I love a good adventure story, don’t get me wrong—but my favourite kind of history is the kind that explains how we got to where we are now, as a society. I remember that teacher showing us photos of London back then—it was so different! Where were the roof gardens? The solar panels? The community orchards and the solar-powered railways that I used to travel to my grandma’s house? Even the rivers were grey and polluted, and they looked so empty without the gondolas decorated with colourful bunting. It’s not like I’d never seen a picture of a car before, but when you see just one in a museum, a historical artifact out of context, it really doesn’t compare to seeing how utterly alien the streets look when they’re covered in the things.

So, I’m sitting here with my half-finished essay plan and every relevant textbook the library had, trying to trace the story back to the beginning.

The 21st century was the age of fossil fuels. Well, the early 21st century—the long 20th century, some historians have begun to call it. Now, I’m a nineteen year-old history student, not a scientist, but my understanding is that the fossil fuels people used to burn for fuel had unintended consequences—polluting the air and releasing gasses that stopped the earth’s atmosphere from protecting us from the sun’s rays. The earth was heating up, a seemingly miniscule amount that nevertheless made a massive difference. It was becoming a global catastrophe, and by the mid 21st century a lot of people had given up hope, believing only a miracle could save them from what many were saying would be annihilation.

In fact—and this is why I adore this period of history so much—just as a tiny increase in global temperature could cause disaster, so a seemingly tiny action by one person inspired an upwards spiral of much bigger changes for the better.

This upwards spiral is the movement that started a fascinating series of changes. Fossil fuels were running out—not in the abstract, distant way of the 20th and 21st centuries, when people knew that these resources were finite but didn’t really think about it, but actually depleting before their eyes. Most governments knew this, of course, but in Europe and America they kept this from the public, and the oil companies pretended everything was fine but kept raising the prices slightly every year, just enough that it took a while for most people to really notice. Of course there were people who couldn’t pay even with the first small increases, but it was when the middle classes couldn’t pay that the petitions started, the protests; there was one image that really stuck with me, a photo of people stood outside Number 10 with signs—“Affordable power now!” “Electricity is a right, not a privilege!” They looked so desperate, so angry—their world had been built for them with oil, and now it was being taken from them. Of course, that didn’t do much. I don’t know if they really believed it would. But then the really cool thing happened. It seemed so small at first. Alva Lindberg, an engineer who had moved to Bristol from Sweden, started a little grassroots movement— just herself and a few friends at first—fitting solar panels on the homes of people whose electricity had been shut off because they couldn’t afford to pay anymore. They did it quietly, just helping out a few people they knew, nothing that would attract much attention to themselves or the people they helped. It cost them a lot—solar panels were far more expensive back then—and when word of what they were doing spread further afield they started getting emails from people all over the world. There were far too many people for just their small group to help, so they put out a plea online, and, to their surprise, people donated—not a huge number at first, but as their plea got shared around more and more people donated, or offered their services. Some started their own groups, too, in other countries, inspired by Lindberg’s determination to take matters into her own hands, and the movement grew exponentially, until by the end of the 2050s practically every house was fitted with solar panels. Wind turbines, too, in countries where solar power was less practical.

The left half of this page background. It depicts a large elaborate white greenhouse building with detailed, pointed roofs. It is framed by trees in the foreground.

@oliverneedham on Unsplash

That’s about as much as I can fit in the word count of the essay, I think—but it’s the most exciting thing. We all take it for granted, but that one engineer who knew how to fit a solar panel and wanted to help started something that would change the way all of Europe functioned. It’s not a story of one individual changing the world, of course; it took thousands and thousands of people, across multiple generations, to create the society that we live in today. Any historian knows that there are infinite causes and effects attached to every seemingly small event, and in interviews later in her life Lindberg herself named lots of people she was inspired by. But that doesn’t take away from her significance, for me. From her work came, eventually, all of my favourite parts of the city: the beautiful stained glass windows of the greenhouses attached to the library; the outdoor music venues where my cousin’s band played for the first time; the orchards behind my old school where my friends and I would have picnics after lessons; and the old shopping centres turned into free communal living spaces where my friend Sophie stayed after her parents died, where she took art classes, which led to her painting beautiful flowers on the back of an old denim jacket for my eighteenth birthday. I’ll have to ask her to paint a portrait of Alva Lindberg for me—the university librarians were looking for something to decorate the newly renovated history wing, and I think she deserves pride of place.

The right half of this page background, showing the roofs of smaller greenhouse buildings, with trees behind them and in front of them.