Lauren St John
- Name: Lauren St John
- Favourite book: Jane Eyre
- Favourite word: Heaven
- Previous jobs: Journalist, biographer
- Worst Vice: Procrastination
- Latest title: Dolphin Song
- See all titles from Lauren
“We only have one planet…”
Whenever I hear the words “global warming” I have an overpowering urge to dive under the duvet and put a pillow over my head, and I don’t think I’m alone. Mention “greenhouse gases” to anyone and they’ll either start yawning or look confused.
If global warming means we’re going to get long, hot summers, isn’t that a good thing? Especially if it means that we can keep taking our cool, 4-wheel drives to school.
Then last month I picked up a newspaper to see a picture of the Yangtze River Dolphin, extinct after 20 million years on the planet. Killed by man’s greed. It broke my heart because my latest novel, Dolphin Song, is about a group of kids who try to save a pod of dolphins dying because of sonar testing.
Other dolphin species will become extinct too if we don’t take urgent steps to save them. It’s easy to say that the loss of the Yangtze River Dolphin is not our fault. That it was the fault of the Chinese government who dammed the river, or the fishermen who took away its food supply or killed it by trawling the river with huge, lacerating hooks.
But we’re all to blame. It’s our fault if we ever, unknowingly, ate a fish that came from the Yangtze River, just like it’s our fault if we ever ate a hamburger that came from a cow bred on one of those ranches in the Amazon which have cut down millions of acres of rainforest. It’s our fault if we ever ate a tuna sandwich that came from a tuna boat that kills and maims dolphins when it scoops them up in nets.
That means it’s our responsibility to stop any other animal becoming extinct. I’m a big believer in conservation in schools because kids are the conservationists of the future. So start small. Plant a tree. Switch off the light whenever you leave a room. Hold a cake sale and raise the money for your class to adopt a dolphin, tiger or panda. We only have one planet. It’s up to us to save it.
Lauren St John was born in Zimbabwe in 1966 and grew up on a farm with a game reserve. Her house was a mecca for injured or orphaned creatures of all kinds so her pets included a baby monkey, two warthogs, three pythons, a goat, dozens of lambs, calves, dogs, cats, horses and an assortment of antelope and birds. She also had a pet giraffe called Jenny, who was part inspiration for The White Giraffe.
Another huge inspiration is Lauren’s interest in environmental issues which feature strongly in her books. Lauren now lives in London but makes frequent trips back to Africa.
