Yours sincerely, a well wisher

10th November 1995, 12:00am

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Yours sincerely, a well wisher

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/yours-sincerely-well-wisher
LIFELINES By Alex Johnston with Jonathon Porritt Red Fox Pounds 3.99 - 0 09 936041 1. David Jobbins on one 13-year-old schoolgirl’s efforts of to change the world

A deep-seated concern for the environment and the future pattern and pace of development is one of the most striking phenomena among school children over the past l0 years. Many classroom projects have been built around this interest and the demand from children themselves seems to be insatiable, even if the staying power is sometimes lacking.

One such school student, 13-year-old Alex Johnston, decided that the way to make a lasting impact was by persuading her father to type her letters on his ageing typewriter, each one expressing her opinions in correspondence with that indefinable group, the Great and the Good.

Her letters, and the replies they drew, published in Lifelines, co-authored with long-term conservationist Jonathon Porritt, are a blueprint for a world based on compassion and common sense. Most of her carefully-selected correspondents agree, but are as powerless as she is to turn the plan into a reality.

Much of the book deals with everyday conservation matters, but Alex ventures into the wider issues associated with the dangers of too-rapid development - destruction of the rain forests, modern farming practices, product labelling, the tyranny of private transport, and global over-population. Testing her ideas against the opinions of people who ought to know better, her letters and the replies they generate are a fascinating effort by one 13-year-old to halt the decline created by the developed world’s search for continued economic growth, indifferent to the consequences for the rest of the population without power.

Alex’s letters are a combination of naivety and ruthless child-like reasoning. Their directness makes adult evasion obvious, exposing the pomposity and lack of comprehension of a number of her distinguished correspondents. MPs, Government Ministers, and the Archbishop of Canterbury and his officials fare worst; not surprisingly well-known environmentalists (James Lovelock, Sir Max Nicholson, Oliver Rackham, Anita Roddick) emerge with greater credit.

Perhaps the most revealing section deals with the issue of over-population. Alex’s timing was impeccable - the International Conference on Population and Development was under way as she carried out her correspondence. While two MPs, one Conservative, one Labour, found time to enter into a true dialogue with her, Baroness Chalker, the overseas aid minister, left it to a civil servant to send a stock two paragraph reply enclosing a leaflet and referring her to a published speech.

The immensity of the task is shown by a final series of replies to a request for a peep into the future. Tinged with pessimism, they paint an unappealing picture of the environmental legacy we are leaving for future generations. But Alex’s postcript displays an optimism that engaging powerful people in a reasoned dialogue can produce changed attitudes - and perhaps tip the balance in favour of a better future.

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