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Is it just me, or does everyone else feel guilty for being alive too?
As I write, some photographs printed earlier are washing in the bath upstairs.
They are of environmental subjects, it’s true. But I used a gallon of petrol
getting to the site, film and paper are coated with gelatin and silver,
the developer was toxic and the prints must be washed. Plenty of scope for
guilt there . . . My life is built on the back of oil refineries, chemicals
factories, mines and slaughterhouses.

The current issue is the water. This substance covers 70 per cent of
the Earth’s surface, sometimes to a depth of 10 kilometres. It pours through
a hole in my garage roof by the bucketful. Recently it has been declared
to be a Precious Resource. To make me realise this, I shall soon have to
have a meter somewhere – near to the house is best, because the pipes leak.
This will enable the water company to charge me by volume for something
which it appears to get for next to nothing. I don’t object to this, not
being a soaker in deep baths for my health or for pleasure, and not having
children. (Children! I should say not – it’s guilt we’re talking about!)

Along with everyone else I shall doubtless choose to adapt my habits
where easily possible in order to gloat over the small size of the subsequent
bill. This will both save a precious resource and force the water company
to increase its prices in order to sustain its income. No matter; the means
justify the end. If rivers flow year-round, it will be worth it.

I am more concerned about the effect on all of us of this plethora of
modern choices. To wash or not to wash. To use leaded or unleaded. Biological
or phosphate-free. The strong implication is, if we make the wrong choice,
the results are our fault (as indeed, they are). The theory is that we choose
to evolve into a society which cares for the planet and goes about its business
on environmental tiptoes.

I have my doubts about this. The trouble with guilt is that it can become
obsessive and spoil life in general. Take a recent discussion programme
on Radio 4: the Meteorological Office had been criticised for putting value
judgments into the weather forecast – ‘It’s going to be a lovely sunny day’,
for example. The Met Office defended this by saying that they were judgments
which most ordinary listeners would themselves make. Quite so. But up pops
a Guilty Person from Suffolk, to point out that with local water tables
falling, ‘we in East Anglia’ certainly do not regard dry weather as something
to be welcomed. This is a tricky one for me. I live in East Anglia. My tap
is running. I love dry weather.

As any priest or vicar will tell you, guilt can be absolved only by
receiving forgiveness from the wronged. Peace of mind, on the other hand,
can be bought with money. This is what the water companies will rely on.
By soaking our pockets, they will ease our conscience. This will cause strange
anomalies; the modern equivalent of the me-dieval (guilt-ridden) benefactor
who bought entrance to paradise by endowing the local church. The modern
rich will be able to consume precious resources, safe in the knowledge they
can afford it. This already happens: ask any golfer whose club waters the
greens. Better, ask a member of the club in Adelaide which waters the fairways
as well, all night, every summer night. Wasteful, yes – and the membership
fee washes away the sin.

But to what or to whom can the impecunious turn, seeking absolution
from crimes against the planet? That’s a difficult one. We could gain credit
by a stint of voluntary conservation work. That’s what I do, and it definitely
helps. But if everyone did it, the countryside would disappear under the
weight of bowsaws and billhooks. Recycle waste? If everyone did, there would
be no market for it. Stop using the car? If everyone did, the economy would
collapse. You see, it’s not my fault, it’s everyone else’s.

Failing forgiveness, we can only look forward to punishment. Its form
will be tailor-made to suit individuals. Sunbathe in Queensland and you
will get skin cancer as punishment for drinking cold beer and using the
car’s air conditioning. Eat a hamburger and you will get heart disease or
food poisoning for causing rainforest destruction. Be a British Tannhauser
and enjoy too many baths – you will get huge bills for wasting a precious
resource. Eventually, and probably soon, we shall all be reduced to creeping
about in disgrace, nervous of our simplest pleasures.

What a paradox! The world is beautiful and filled with fascinating places
and creatures. These should be a reward for being alive, not the source
of our gloom and shame. We seem to have condemned ourselves to an existence
of timidity and hopelessness in order to preserve them. How did this come
about? Was it because we ignored what was around us until it started to
disappear; because, as the song has it, you only know what you’ve got when
you lose it?

Isn’t our guilt really the final acknowledgement that we took it all
for granted, didn’t notice, didn’t find it interesting, didn’t care, and
still don’t? As a biologist, I enter a plea of innocent. So there! Time
to take the prints out of the bath. It’s going to be a lovely sunny day
tomorrow. Guilt or no, I shall try to enjoy it. Maybe I’ll go for a bike
ride. I refuse to succumb.

Jeremy Burgess is a freelance science writer.