My Easter weekend was nauseatingly wholesome. There were multiple Easter egg hunts. There were sous vide eggs. There were malfunctioning GWR trains accompanied by giant Cornish pasties. Then there was a visit to the Eden Project, the first for my daughter. This former china clay pit that has been transformed into a world-famous eco attraction has been on a global mission to show us that we should be ‘living with the grain of nature’. Or to lift a potent verse from Disney’s Pocahontas belter, ‘You can own the Earth and still/All you’ll own is Earth until/You can paint with all the colours of the wind’ (OG soundtrack of choice for Earth Day, and don’t get me started on the lessons that film taught me about interracial relationships).
Therefore, what better place for my daughter to really get to the nitty gritty of climate change — two incredible biomes housing tropical and Mediterranean flora and fauna that need us to care for them if we want them to care for us. Along the ‘climate zig-zag’ walk down to the biomes, ‘Enid’ and ‘Alan’ were guiding the under-10s through their little quest to save the planet. ‘So if we have the solutions, what’s the problem?’ asked one placard. A pertinent question, but when asked alongside the distraction of an activity book wordsearch, the lure of a Cornish ice cream truck and, oooh, A GIFT SHOP, suddenly the world’s CO2 emissions are forgotten. By the time we made it into the tropical rainforest and there was talk about Costa Rican native crops, the six-year-old began to fan herself with foraged banana leaves and lie down in the cool room. In the literal bubble of Eden’s biome, the world’s problems are presented through gentle signposting, excellent facilities and it feels that, yes, the planet can be beautiful with the right custodians. It was perhaps optimistic though to think my daughter would go all Greta Thunberg and grasp the sense of urgency.
