Have you met Ade?
Posted on 22. Sep, 2009 by annied in green media
Ade Thomas, green.tv’s founder (our very own version of George Monbiot) has a chat with the bloggess: For a guy who runs a tv channel and a web-design firm and works in London, he’s quite the naturalist. Ade talks about his boys, growing up in Oxford, fishing, urbanization, and rapacious, invasive American invaders.
Would you call yourself a naturalist?
I would say that’s more true now that it’s ever been. I would describe myself as an environmentalist. As I’ve become more old and conservative, I have become more of a naturalist, but I am more firmly an environmentalist. I come from a social sciences background so I think about the socio-political context of things. In a way a naturalist agenda would connect with an environmentalist agenda, in a sort of concern for disconnection from the natural world. In terms of not knowing about soil degradation from extensive agriculture, not knowing individual species of butterfly, bird, or tree. That sort of sense of discussion is a fundamental issue in terms of humanity not understanding that we’re part of nature. We somehow think we’re separate from it and that separation has a serious consequence when you think about the way that we, on a structural basis, just destroy the environment wholesale. And misuse it’s resources so that equates to serious CO2 emissions and climate change. On the micro level we don’t understand how birds and bees and trees and coal fit into things and we are rapacious in terms of our use of the environment as a consequence.
How did people become separated from the natural world, do you think? Is it living in cities too long?
An urban shift whereby a greater proportions of the world’s population live in cities. That’s a major vector for this kind of change. You’re not connected to the natural world you don’t live in the natural world. You live in concretized urban environments. You don’t have that sense of connection.
How do you keep your connection to the natural world?
I try to get out into it as much as I can. I try to remove myself from the city as much as I can. Standard issue stuff live walking. But also stuff like butterfly spotting. And I’ve taken up fishing.
Fishing, from an animal welfare prospective there’s definitely something questionable about it. But from a more abstracted level there’s something incredibly intense about connecting to the natural world through angling–fishing– which is a sort of low level form of hunting which doesn’t actually entail killing the animal rather than return it safe to the river from whence it came. There is something genuinely profound about that connection through fishing.
So you throw them back, the fish?
No I don’t throw them back, I put them gently back.
Any particular spots you like best?
There’s a spot called Medley, which is just north of the city of Oxford. It is a lovely wide gravel area of the Thames. It’s nice and easy to fish and it’s generally quite productive.
How have you seen the river change since you were a boy?
One particular form of degradation that’s occurred to the habitat is the invasion of the American signal crayfish which is a larger US crayfish…. It was initially promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food as a way of creating a new aquaculture for growing and selling these crayfish because they are quite larger and very tasty, apparently. And they escaped from crayfish farms into the natural environment. So you go fishing for fish and end up with these tiny lobsters on the end of the line. They’re quite aggressive…. they need to be removed from the natural world as a very dangerous and rapacious, invasive species…. American invaders should be avoided at all time and sent back from whence they came.
As an American, I’ll keep that in mind.
Who do you fish with, your boys?
No, no they’re only nippers. I went with my friends.
How old are your boys?
Brin is three-quarters of a year and George, 3.
How do you intend to keep your boys attached to the natural world?
I want to get them out of london as soon as possible. I’m conscious of children being brought up in London having no reference to the natural world whatsoever. They are incredibly referenced in a built environment and a fashion environment. Young children grow up in cities with no knowledge of the natural world, they don’t live in it, they don’t have any connection to it. I know for example some intelligent young children who don’t know what a badger is and who don’t know the name of a young horse or a young cow is called. That’s quite bizarre isn’t it?
I’m hoping to move soon, in the next few weeks to Oxford. It’s a nice split between the natural world and an urban world. It’s a civilized city but a relatively small city and because of the planning regulations of Oxford University it has a lot of open green spaces right in the heart of the city. And the river runs through it, a nice green conduit.
You grew up in Oxford, can you share any boyhood memories?
Cycling is good. I used to think it was the most beautiful county in England. I once cycled from Redding to Oxford along the Thames, forgetting that there was a huge meander from Abbingdon to Oxford which means the journey is probably 5 times what it is as the crow flies. So I arrived in Abbingdon after having run out of water on a very sunny afternoon and it took me another two hours and almost killed myself with dehydration. Wasn’t very pleasant experience of the Thames, which is my favorite environment in the whole world…. It’s a very sort of objectively beautiful river apart from underneath where it’s now infested with crayfish.