#environmentaldecline

What is needed to survive environmental decline?

More from Marshall Vian Summers at Marshallsummers.com

In three months, I’ll be 32. It’s hard to believe. Three decades of watching this country transform, and not in ways that fill me with pride. Born in the early '90s, I grew up in a Britain that still felt connected to its roots. There were fewer people, fewer houses crammed into every square foot of available land, fewer cars choking the roads. The world didn’t feel so suffocated by tarmac and concrete back then.  

Now? It feels like we’ve traded something irreplaceable for convenience and consumption. Trees are chopped down to make way for cookie-cutter housing estates. Natural wetlands, once teeming with life, are drained and paved over to build car parks and office blocks. We’re manufacturing spaces for people to exist, but we’ve forgotten how to let them *live.*  

I’ve been watching this decline since the early 2000s, but it feels like it’s accelerated with each passing year. There’s an eerie sameness creeping across the country. Once-diverse landscapes are homogenised into sprawling suburbs and soulless developments. The unique charm of towns and villages is buried under identikit high streets, filled with the same chain stores and fast-food outlets.  

Where are the trees? The untouched fields? The rivers meandering through their ancient courses? They’re being replaced by roundabouts, dual carriageways, and miles of grey nothingness. And with them goes the soul of the land, the deep, unspoken connection to something older and wilder than ourselves.  

My heart breaks to see it. It breaks to know that what I loved about this country is vanishing, and that those who come after me will never experience it the way I did. They won’t remember what it felt like to walk through a forest untouched by urban sprawl or to stumble upon a quiet wetland brimming with life.  

I wonder: when did we decide that *more* was always better? More houses, more cars, more people, more *stuff.* It’s not better. It’s suffocating. The balance is gone, and I fear it won’t return.  

As I approach 32, I can’t help but feel a growing urgency. We have to stop this rot before it’s too late. We need to reclaim the wild spaces, preserve what remains, and plant new roots—not just trees, but values. Values that prioritise nature, history, and the things that truly nourish the human spirit.  

Explore more teachings by Marshall Vian Summers about world change and how individuals and humanity as a whole can prepare for the new world here: www.marshallsummers.com/world-change/