The Planning Authority has just approved the development of a showroom, flats and garages (what else?) in a place aptly known as Tal-Qares, across the road from the L-Għarusa tal-Mosta garden. There are many reasons for us non-developer sods to raise our eyebrows.
Tal-Qares is a Class B-designated Area of Archaeological Importance. A rubble wall along the perimeter of the development site contains ancient ashlar blocks which may indicate megalithic remains, that in turn might quite possibly include a hypogeum.
Vine trenches have been discovered on site, and assessors have recommended laser monitoring as well as a thorough geophysical survey of the area. An ecological impact assessment would likely conclude that Tal-Qares is a Site of Scientific Interest, due not least to the presence of rare or endangered species listed in various data sheets.
If this sounds self-parodic, it is. What’s worse, the showroom and garages will be built, and no one will care less about laser monitoring and data sheets. That’s because it’s hardly reasonable to expect people to do anything but yawn, given that kind of ecoprattle. It’s a language that very few people understand and even fewer care about.
The point is made in a newly-published book of essays by Paul Kingsnorth. Kingsnorth is doubly well-placed to write about the language of environmentalism. His debut novel The Wake won him the 2014 Gordon Burn Prize, and he has since written more fiction as well as a poetry collection. He has also produced a large number of essays and polemical pieces on the environment and its protection (or lack of it).
Kingsnorth puts it to us that the green movement has “torpedoed itself with numbers”. What he means is that environmentalists have increasingly foisted on themselves a language that sounds all grown-up and serious but ends up leaving people indifferent. They feel obliged to “act like speak-your-weight machines in order to be heard”. In sum, the green movement has been taken over by “quants” who reduce everything to data sheets and technical assessments.
There are two things the matter with quants. Both have to do with the language they use, which I shall call Quantese. First, Quantese may be the product of strings of degrees, but it is cerebral, bloodless and in the main, unintelligible to all but the holders of those degrees. It leaves people at large unconvinced and unmoved. Which is a big problem, because environmentalism is successful only inasmuch as it is broadly convincing and moving.
Ecoprattle. It’s a language that very few people understand and even fewer care about
To use our Mosta example (the choice is ample), it is too much to expect people generally to know what ashlar blocks and red data sheets are. It is even less reasonable to expect people to be moved by them. In fact, there would be something creepy about someone who found Class B designations wildly exciting.
The second problem with Quantese is that it is a borrowed language at best, an imbecile mimicry at worst. When environmentalists limit themselves to it, they are effectively speaking the same language as those they are meant to be opposing. (There isn’t much difference between ashlar and concrete blocks, truth be told.) This robs environmentalism of its originality and ability to present an alternative world view.
Back to Kingsnorth, his opinion is that the green movement needs less quants and more poets. What he means by poets is not necessarily people who flood themselves with the light of the immense, although there would be much to commend about that.
Rather, he has in mind stories about the environment that tell of things other than data sheets and soil composition. One might talk about the little pools of water that dot the rock at Tal-Qares, for example, or the value of open space so close to a public garden. On a good day, the story of the kidnapped bride of Mosta is not without its charm.
Still, there are good reasons why the case for poets is not straightforward. First, stories are hardly the kind of solid and unflinching stuff needed to make rational arguments. By definition, they are quite the opposite. Unlike the width of a vine trench or the abundance of a plant, a story is open to different readings. The quants, it would seem, are on firmer ground than the poets.
Except it’s actually very easy to stand even the hardest of hard facts on their head, or to navigate a way around them. Developers know this, which is why they hire their own quants to do the job. A good example is the proposed eco-everything, all-boutique hotel at Kalanka in Delimara. In an information video launched last week, the developers used precisely the language of environmentalism to argue their case. They stopped just short of saying the hotel will bring the dodo back.
Another apparent problem is that poetry and stories expose environmentalists to charges of tree-hugging and Thoreau-style crankiness. But this is exactly my point on alternative world views. First, I should rather have someone hug a tree than destroy it. Second, it’s clear that Quantese isn’t working. With or without the laser monitoring, Tal-Qares will still become a showroom. As a last-ditch argument, there really is nothing to lose.
A couple of months ago developers and environmentalists debated the Imrieħel towers. There was a surreal moment when someone brought up the issue of ‘visibility’. The word they really wanted to use was ‘ugliness’, but then ugliness isn’t as quantifiable and graspable as visibility, especially not in formal planning circles.
Thing is, the towers are being built as I write, and they will be both very visible and very ugly indeed.
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