The planet can only be saved from catastrophe if people live more simply. A Yorkshire-based writer argues that this creates an opportunity to create happier, healthier communities

The despair took me by surprise. It had all started so hopefully too. The hills were beautiful with May, and my excitement had built as I cycled along the little lanes. Arriving at my favourite nook, I lay my bike in the Queen Anne’s lace, and waited. White with blossom, the hawthorns climbed the steep slope above me. Below me, the dale was flecked with lady’s smock. On the far hill, the oaks burnt with spring’s new green. Any moment now, I knew I’d hear the anthem of spring, the cuckoo. Every year, its call echoed from these slopes. Every year I came to listen to the cuckoo music – the ordinary miracle carried here annually from Africa, for many thousands of years.

I waited. I waited. I waited. Nothing. I came back the next day. Again, nothing. Returning a few days later, I drew another blank, and realised that the cuckoo wouldn’t be returning this year. One by one, our local cuckoos have disappeared, the bird that used to sing close to our house, the bird that cried from the next village, the singer in the woods, and now this. The last cuckoo within a bike ride of home, had fallen silent.

Pedalling home, I thought of all the other local losses: nesting curlews, lapwings, yellow wagtails, spotted flycatchers, swallows and a flock of over-wintering golden plover. Of course, I’ve long known that migrant bird numbers are crashing, but I’d always believed that we could successfully reverse one of the main causes – climate change. But now, doubt crept in. Vested interests were too powerful. Governments were too inadequate or too corrupt. We lacked the technology.