20 pledges for 2020: Sustainable parenting was the last thing on my mind with a new born arriving amid a global pandemic

Colin Drury has pledged to be a more sustainable parent in 2020 – but, like everyone else perhaps, he’s rather had other things on his mind this month...

At least three babies in Germany have been born with deformed hands, sparking an investigation (Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images/2013)

I guess I’m not the only one for who the environment hasn’t really been at the forefront of my mind of late.

Since my last post, both our second little one and a global pandemic have arrived.

She came hurtling out fast and early, spent five minutes getting lippy with anyone who held her and then barrelled right off to sleep without so much as an apology for interrupting Real Madrid and Man City. It, the contagion, turned up more slowly, creeping in from across the world; from a wet market in a Chinese city I’d never heard of right into the Yorkshire hospital where our newcomer slept that night.

As the kid was born, others in the same building were already gasping for breath and struggling with this strange new illness, Covid-19.

It wasn’t yet quite March then – the month the world truly changed – but the crisis, I think, was already arrived. For those who chose to see it, the horror to come was clear. If normality still existed, its first fractures were at least visible. Hand sanitiser had appeared at the two-year-old’s nursery.

In any case, I can now vouchsafe that having a baby born into a national emergency is not ideal. If nothing else, being in lockdown means you can’t dropkick the sprog onto the grandparents for a couple of hours. Zoom is a godsend and everything but it has its limitations: my mum point blank refused keep an eye on the little one via video link.

I jest, of course. Because what else can you do?

In truth, the situation reminds me of an interview I once did with a pilot about fear of flying. There was one single factor above all others, he told me, that caused otherwise unafraid people to develop the phobia: becoming a new parent. The fragility of your own existence becomes more explicit, he said, when you first realise others depend on it.

So it is with this coronavirus and I.

It has unsettled me more than is probably proportionate. I am relatively young and healthy – though asthmatic – and dull enough to find certain aspects of social distancing more a respite than a chore. The first two (though not the latter) can be said of the mother. The odds are stacked in our favour.

Yet at 3am, in the half dark of a child’s night light, a mind does have a habit of wandering. Questions of mortality – yours and your loved ones – creep up uninvited. I have found myself in the early hours – phone in one hand, four-week-old in the other – scrolling news sites and scanning feeds, desperately looking for any minor signs of good news, of corners turned, of end games. I have become anxious about external events in a way I never have previously. Why are people still dying in Italy? Why are ventilators not reaching hospital here? WHY ARE CARE HOME WORKERS HAVING TO WEAR MARIGOLDS?

Finding out the prime minister – a jogger, a cyclist and, by any definition, a right old shagger – is on the ropes has left me entirely discombobulated. If he, why not me? More pertinently, does this really mean we're now all in the charge of - good Lord - Dominic Raab? Talk about bad to worse. I have no love for Boris Johnson but I want him fit and healthy. I want this pandemic over. I want something I never thought possible: Brexit back in the news.

None of which remotely relates to my 2020 pledge to become a more sustainable parent. I haven’t thought about it for weeks, truth be told. If my carbon footprint has come grinding down as a result of the coronavirus – hats off to the little blighter in that regard – that is merely a by-product of what is happening; not a conscious decision on my part.

But, then, maybe there are wider lessons that can be extrapolated too?

This pandemic, it strikes me, has been so ruinous because we – human beings – were unprepared. Even though we knew it was coming – virologists have warned of Disease X for decades – there were, we all see now, pitiful few measures in place to absorb the shock. Everything done since has been done on the back foot.

Similarly, we – human beings – know global warming is coming. There are deniers but, as a mass, we know. Yet, similarly, too, pitiful few measures are being put in place to reduce this future crisis, absorb those future shocks and ensure our future selves are prepared and on the front foot.

At 3am in the half light of a child’s light, I stand, rocking a four-week-old, hoping that, from these uncertain times, such lessons will be learnt.