Rowan's Green Dream

We've come a long way, Baby - A moment of thanks to the Women's Movement

2010-12-22T04:11:00.000-08:00

When you think about what life was like a generation ago, it is easy to imagine that people lived in simpler, happier times. And of course in many ways that is true. But while the media revel in nostalgia for old times and often curse today's celebrity-obsessed, consumer driven modern lifestyles. It is rare that we ever stop to take stock of how many good things have also happened since those "good old days".

So that is why I was delighted that BBC Women's Hour highlighted some outrageously sexist advertising that used to grace our newspapers without question back in the day. This festive advert illustrates the kind of thing I mean, but you can see the full display of 48 ads that wouldn't make it passed the advertising standards board these days at http://owni.eu/2010/11/08/top-48-ads-that-would-never-be-allowed-today/.

Now, I'm not saying the battle for equality is won, but I am saying, maybe it is worth taking a moment to be grateful for some of the good things that we have achieved in the last fifty years. We've come a long way, Baby!

Not that I would ever say "I told you so"...

2010-12-22T03:52:00.000-08:00

But... Vince Cable's indiscretion with two lovely young mums in his surgery (who just happened to be from the Daily Telegraph) illustrates my point about cognitive dissonance perfectly.

Vince is suffering so greatly with the psychological torture that is the coalition, that he just had to blurt it out to a friendly face. He is reported to have stated that ministers should be “putting a brake on proposals that are in danger of getting out of control" and he confessed that behind the scenes, the Tories and Liberal Democrats are fighting a “constant battle." Unfortunately for him he said this to journalists and now his reputation is in tatters.

The moral of this story: Compromising your true values will cost you dearly!

Quote of the day

2010-12-14T13:02:00.001-08:00

"Modern man fits his ethics around his profession, not his profession around his ethics"

Nassim Taleb

Why toeing the line can cost you your soul - an introduction to cognitive dissonance

2010-12-04T07:20:00.000-08:00

Poor old Vince Cable. Gone are the days when he could boast a Facebook following that proudly stated "In Vince We Trust". Today's Vince looks decidely uncomfortable in his new governing position.

Never was this more obvious than this week when he had to publicly state his voting intentions on the Coalition's plans for university tuition fees. As one of the authors of the Lib Dem manifesto, the government's new proposals will directly contradict his own personal beliefs, yet he is bound by convention to vote against his values in the interests of the Coalition. He is clearly facing a crisis of conscience over how to proceed.

I see this as a classic case of "cognitive dissonance", Leon Festinger's 1957 theory that human beings crave consistency in their beliefs. The theory goes that when something that you do jars with what you believe, this dissonance either forces you to alter how you behave or change what you believe. Cognitive dissonance is very painful and for Vince it means that very soon he will have to either rationalise his values to suit his new position or he will have to quit. Something's gotta give.

But it is not just politicians who face this challenge. Many working people at some point in their career have to park their beliefs in order to get a job done. And it is the repetitive suspension of core values that ultimately leads people to fundamentally change their beliefs over time. As Churchill once said: "If you are young and not liberal, then you have no heart; but if you are old and not conservative, then you have no brain." If this weren't a truism then there wouldn't be so many former hippies who now read the Daily Mail in Surbiton and vote Tory.

To fit into the mainstream and cover a mortgage and the weekly shop, liberal ideals often have to be left at the door. And if you're not careful, eventually they get abandoned altogether in favour of an easy life. Think about it for a second. How long could you do a job that goes against your very core belief system? I don't know... maybe being an arms dealer? You might think you would never do such a thing, but what if it was called a "product manager" in the defence sector? You might just cope by rationalising it and looking at the "bigger picture": the status; the pay; the commute; the benefits - until you no longer remember what you didn't like about it in the first place. Dilbert explains this with clarity in this strip:

So why is this important? For me cognitive dissonace is a key reason why people lose their connection to the natural environment. For example: you may hold the core value that biodiversity is precious and should be protected, you may even be a member of the RSPB or WWF, but to do your job you may inadvertently harm the environment through the materials you source or the waste that your organisation creates. It's not your fault, it's the company's - you're only doing your job. But you have to live with it and to do so, you have to shift your values or leave the company, or the cognitive dissonance will get too much. And this is how your work can sever the connections you hold as a human being to your values.

Just think of our Vinnie: to remain "loyal" to the governing body that he represents, he needs to toe the line and vote against his instincts. And in the process lose his soul.

There just might be another way. Perhaps there is. It's called tempered radicalism... But more on that another time.

Sustainability vs Survival: When the going gets tough do you still buy organic?

2010-11-21T07:08:00.000-08:00

Even with this weeks bright news that we have an (austerity) royal wedding on the cards, the palpable sense of doom is still rife in the UK. In our house, that is probably something to do with the fact that my husband is Irish and horrified at the news that the IMF is going in to Ireland to take over the banking crisis. More broadly, my colleagues in the public sector are all considerably jittery about their jobs and the future is certainly looking uncertain. So what happens to a sustainable lifestyle when it is put under pressure?

According to a recent post om Amelia's magazine, the financial mess we're in ain’t going nowhere, but it could provide an opportunity to change our lives for the better. She gives a fierce account of what could be in store in http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/earth/transition-towns-conference-2010-the-automatic-earth-stoneleigh-lecture-on-the-financial-crisis/2010/08/06/. But in the end she is upbeat, saying: "We are living through exciting times of change. We cannot sustain our current pathological capitalist world economy so now is the perfect time to prove a more positive model of living and the folks involved sustainable initiatives around the world are perfectly placed to showcase these new ideas."

For me, I constantly struggle to find a balance between contributing to the mainstream economic system as it is and trying to live a greener life. Some things have become more 'green' in an age of austerity. For example, I am still not clothes shopping and my son still wears hand-me-downs; we still don't own a car and we grew a lot of vegetables this summer. The fact that international travel is so expensive will also probably mean that we forgo the long-haul this year in order to save money (despite pressure from far flung friends and family to visit!). But those things that require investment are also on the backburner: that loft insulation I've been meaning to put in; the organic farm delivery; the complete life overhaul that would make us more self-sufficient. The Good Life it ain't. Not yet anyway.

A sneak peak into a life without wings

2010-04-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

I live in Southwest London, a leafy suburbish part of the world that just happens to be in the Heathrow flight path. Since the Icelandic volcano, an eerie calm has descended upon us. For a while we couldn't quite work out what it was - but then it dawned on us - 'twas the deafening silence of a world without planes.

While I know this aircraft lockdown has been a near tragedy for many (including my poor little sister who is currently stuck in Singapore), the plus side (along with the peace and quiet) is that it provides us with food for thought about what the world might be like without international air travel. The philosopher Alain de Botton was on the radio this morning imagining just that. In his view, a future world without aeroplanes might be as follows...

"Children would gather at the feet of old men, and hear extraordinary tales of a mythic time when vast and complicated machines the size of several houses used to take to the skies... Everything would, of course, go very slowly. It would take two days to reach Rome, a month before one finally sailed exultantly into Sydney harbour. And yet there would be benefits tied up in this languor. Those who had known the age of planes would recall the confusion they had felt upon arriving in Mumbai or Rio only hours after leaving home, their slight sickness and bewilderment lending credence to the old Arabic saying that the soul invariably travels at the speed of a camel."

This reminded me of a Middle Easern saying I once heard that goes: "My father rode a camel, I drive a car, my son flies a jet plane, his son will ride a camel". Perhaps in a couple of generations time we may actually live in a new world like this. As mineral resources and fossil fuels dwindle, the idea of air travel in the distant future - say 2110 - may be completely ridiculous. We may by necessity return to a lifestyle that no longer depends on Kenyan beans in the shops, but rather stocks local produce; one that doesn't expect to be able to get to New York from London in an afternoon, but rather to take a week on a boat. As that great geezer Gandhi put it: "There is more to life than just increasing its speed." So maybe, unlike the current pace of things, the future might actually be slow.

Wouldn't that be nice.

Why car-free is care-free - in praise of the pedestrian lifestyle

2010-04-10T02:04:00.000-07:00

In 2008 we gave up our car. It was a nice Prius too, so when we waved it goodbye it was a sad day. But nearly two years on and I can honestly say that the car-free life is the only way for me.

Today is a beautiful sunny day in London and we are off for the weekend to a friend's house in the countryside. We have a 12-year old and 2 year old in tow and we need to get two trains and a rural (ie. two a day) bus. But this is no lament, I am really looking forward to it. Apart from the schlepping the buggy up the stairs at the train station, everything else in this journey is an adventure. 12-year old can play with her dad's i-phone and read a pile of magazines that her online life at home prevents her from getting round to, 2-year old can look out the window and shout "moo moo, horsey and doggie" to his heart's content and dad can read the paper. And the bus ride will be the best bit - a chatty two year old will on average make five new friends on every bus ride. Of all the commuter modes there are (car included), the bus is the most friendly. People sometimes smile at you. Old ladies chat to you. You can see the driver (unlike the tube and train). It can be a bit skanky sometimes, but generally, the bus is best.

I have been without a car for practically the whole of my son's life and I have never felt limited by it - in fact we've probably taken more trips into town than my car-bound friends who would find parking impossible, so prefer to stay in the suburbs for fear of the dreaded parking warden.

And that is my biggest problem with the car - the stress. If you look at car advertising you would think that a car brings freedom, safety and speed, but the reality of car-life it is more like fear, danger and fines. Here are some cases in point:

Fear:
A good friend of mine came to visit last week with her two kids. Some idiot kids chose her car to break into and smashed her window. She had to drive home on the motorway with a binliner over the gaping window with two small children screaming in the back. She then had to get it fixed which costs a fair whack because if she claimed on insurance she loses her no claims bonus. The whole event left us feeling like the city was a fearsome and miserable place (which in truth, it's not)

Danger:
Far from being the safest mode of transport, the car is the most likely method of road transportation in which you will have a fatal accident. Horrid point - but true.

Fines:
This is where I have found the most relief now that I no longer have a car. In London there are so many ways you can end up paying fines. If you forget that you drove a little too far down Hammersmith Road, you get fined for not paying the congestion charge. If you drive in a bus lane and are caught on camera you get a £50 fine. If you park anywhere in London in the middle of the day and forget to pay your ticket or get back late to your car, a parking attendant will hunt you down on a motorbike and charge you £60, and if you go a teensy weensy bit over 30 miles an hour on the approach to the A13, you get done for speeding. Yes all these things did happen to me when I was a car-user. No wonder I was such a stress case.

So car-free is the way for me. I know it can't work for everyone - rural life generally requires private transport, but I feel that if you live in the city, it really is not a loss to go without. And of course, it is generally better for the environment, but you're probably tired of me banging on about that, so I'll stop there!

“I promise that I will do my best”... The problem with pledging

2010-03-27T06:44:00.000-07:00

At 8.30 tonight it is Earth Hour in the UK – our timeslot in a worldwide initiative led by WWF to get everyone to turn the lights off for the same hour to make a point about energy consumption and climate change. I like the idea and took part last year. This year I have plans to go out which were arranged long before I realised and so we won’t be home to turn the lights off and it’s a big ask to get the babysitter to do it. But anyway, that’s not the point I want to make. What this made me ponder was the gap between the pledge that you make when you join a campaign and changes in peoples' actual behaviour.

Social and environmental campaigns have gone global over the last few years and there always seems to be a big media event trying to capture our attention. Whether it be Red nose day or Race for life, there are plenty of good causes to pledge your allegiance to. But this is my problem: while effective communication is great, what is the long term impact of getting people to buy a bracelet or switch their lights out for an hour? My worry is that, just by pledging, we actually feel we’ve done our bit.

I have two examples to illustrate this point. The first was that big sexy Make Poverty History campaign which attracted the world’s most famous to front the ads and click their fingers. I always remember with a wince that moment when Will Smith started clicking in rhthym with a massive concert audience in Philadelphia to illustrate the pace of child mortality in Africa – that kind of dumbed death down a bit too much for me.

But there were other awful moments – most memorably the celebrity endorsements. There were posters of various famous types looking serious in white shirts and wristbands all with the simple tag: Make Poverty History. The one that stood out particularly for me was of Ashley Cole. I was struck by the incongruity of a premiership footballer who earns £35,000 a week standing there telling me to do my bit for poverty. It seemed the most enormous hypocrisy, and yet, because he had pledged himself, had lent his name, he was therefore helping write off third world debt. Making poverty history takes quite considerable more work than that in real life – it takes diplomacy, legislation, cancelling national debts, capacity building and equality measures – some of which Bono might have had a hand in, but Ashley Cole wouldn’t have been seen for dust. Needless to say, a few years on and poverty has somehow not been made history and Ashley is still living in a £7.5 million mansion near Haslemere in Surrey (well he was until Cheryl kicked him out).

And then there is my own tale of shame. Earlier this year, alongside Colin Firth, the Conservative party and other celebrity tree huggers, I signed up to 10:10, the big campaign to reduce carbon emissions in the UK by 10%. Nice idea. Nice website (http://www.1010uk.org/). I took the test and worked out what I needed to do to make my 10% reduction in carbon that I had promised to do. I know I need to insulate the loft with 400mm depth lagging and I need to replace two windows. But three months and a £300 gas bill later, I have done nowt about it. So it is now time to bridge that say/do gap and get my arse in gear, because if I don’t get that insulation up, then effectively I am no better than Ashley Cole: lending my name to a cause but actually doing sod all about it.

Tonight I wish Earth Hour all the best, but rather than leave the babysitter in the dark, my Earth Hour pledge is to work harder at reducing my everyday energy usage and actually do something about climate change rather than just talk about it.

Confessions of a shopaphobic

2010-03-08T07:26:00.000-08:00

When I was writing about hand me downs the other week, I made a quick mental calculation about my own annual expenditure on clothes and I realised that I only bought three items of clothing in 2009 and 2010 so far. While I would love to claim that this was in aid of saving the planet, it is actually because I hate shopping. I really cannot understand the appeal and I go to the mall only when I really have to. This weekend, however, I was dragged against my will into the Southside Centre and (even worse) into Primark by my 12-year old stepdaughter. Under normal circumstances (ie: the need for a replacement school skirt) I’d find an excuse to wait outside while she grabs what she needs and waits for ages in the queue to part with her fiver, but this time she convinced me to go in.

My God it is a terrifying experience.

The amount of tat that you can buy for two or three quid is just extraordinary. You can’t help but think of sweatshops when you look at the piles of cheap shirts, but whether the clothes are made in sweatshop conditions or not (and it’s important to note that I have no knowledge of poor working practices at Primark), it is the culture that comes with the cheap fashion phenomenon that is the real problem.

My stepdaughter loves Primark. “It is so cheap, you can just wear it once or twice and then chuck it” she said. This made my heart sink. I tried to talk to her about the environmental impacts of the clothes that she was buying but it was not the conversation she wanted to be having on a Saturday afternoon. And this girl is no tween airhead, in fact she is a very smart, cool kid, who has actually studied sweatshops in school, but while she really does care about the state of the world, what matters most in her life is her friends and their common interests, and what 12-year olds like to do in their spare time is shop.

So, maybe she’ll grow out of it... Not if my favourite futurist Ronald Inglehart is to be believed. His hypothesis is that individual values (eg. materialism) are embedded as a child reaches adulthood, and very little changes thereafter. He says: “The relationship between socioeconomic environment and value priorities is not one of immediate adjustment: a substantial time lag is involved because, to a large extent, one’s basic values reflect the conditions that prevailed during one’s preadult years”. So if shopping is the most common cultural activity for a kid during their early socialisation years, their future as avid materialists is pretty much set in stone.

So what can we do as parents or activists to stem the tide of materialism and help kids see that there really isn’t the need to have more and more stuff? How do we help them see the long-term consequences of buying clothes and then chucking them after a couple of washes, especially when retailers like Primark are so good at catering to their needs? I don’t have the answers. I’m not sure I know what gave me my distinct fear of shopping. Actually yes I do... I worked on the cashdesk at H&M in Oxford Street for the best part of my teenage years. Seeing shopping from the other side of the counter must have put me off it for life.

That’s what my stepdaughter needs then – a job in Primark.

True to my word... I made some palm-free biscuits

2010-03-06T11:33:00.000-08:00

However, I might be the only one in our house willing to eat these biscuits as they're a little bit burnt on the bottom. Senan turned his nose up straight away and even my husband hasn't had a second one (which is a very bad sign). Ah well... I'll keep trying!

Why the right choice for baby might be the wrong one for the Orangutan

2010-03-02T12:35:00.000-08:00

The other day I was idly looking through the ingredients of the Organic baby biscuits that I had paid so handsomely for and to my horror, even though they are organic, I found that they contain palm oil. So I pulled out the rest of the biscuits I had in the cupboard (of which there were few as nothing keeps in our house) and from this unscientific study of one biscuit tin it seems that practically all shop-bought biscuits contain palm oil too, probably because it’s the cheapest source of vegetable oil. But its price belies its real environmental cost because generally speaking, most palm is grown on land that was once home to the vast rainforests of Borneo, and the natural habitat of the orangutan.

Nine years ago I went to Borneo. It was an extraordinary place full of lush forests and mangrove swamps. But even then, the conversion of forests to palm plantations was occurring on a massive scale, with large-scale logging and road networks being built. According to http://www.orangutans-sos.org/ it is these factors that are responsible for the loss of over 80% of orangutan habitat over the last 20 years. On our trip in 2001 we visited a protected area called Sepilok which is dedicated to the rehabilitation of orphan orangutans, where 80 apes now live free. It is an amazing place where I saw for myself the extraordinary likeness between a human baby and an orangutan infant and was left feeling powerless about the demise of this beautiful creature as a result of deforestation.

But the really sad thing that I am coming to realise is that as a consumer in the West, it is my consumer power that is actually (unwittingly) fuelling demand for the orangutan’s habitat - because I buy biscuits. Looking into this issue further I found a BBC Panorama investigation into clear-cutting in Borneo which claimed that the thirst for land on which to plant palm plantations is actually growing exponentially. The programme also criticised manufacturers for their dubious sourcing policies. The BBC said: “Many of the big manufacturers who buy palm oil via European wholesalers say that while they are starting to find oil from sustainable sources, they are not yet in a position to trace the origin of all of the oil they use. Currently, only 3% of the world's palm oil is certified sustainable, meaning it comes from plantations that pass an environmental and social impact test."

So as a consumer I have to make a stand. While I will watch with interest the progress of UK retailers and manufacturers who have joined the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, the best thing for my baby in the short term is home made biccies. I'd better get those recipes off my mum. That will be my small contribution to saving the rainforests. Whether he’ll like them or not is another question...

Sustainable Futures Hero #1 – Jamie Oliver

2010-02-15T07:06:00.000-08:00

In my spare time I daydream about scenarios of a brighter future. Amid all the miserable news of public spending cuts, troop surges in Afghanistan and Katie Price’s new husbands, it’s sometimes hard to conjure up a vision of a better tomorrow, so when I hear a public figure putting his or her head above the parapet to make a difference, I feel I have to give them their due.

So Jamie Oliver, you get my first prize for Sustainable Futures Hero on this blog (a pretty unsubstantial accolade I know, but a gong nonetheless). I award this to Jamie because he has taken his campaign for healthy eating beyond the school dinners of Greenwich and is now trying to change the way they eat in America. There’s something special about that Oliver lad – he’s got gumption! Maybe it’s his passion, his cheeky chappiness or his complete fearlessness that does it, but his mission to change the way the world views food is truly laudable. It may seem like he’s on a crusade, but it is one that I totally believe in.

In case you don’t know who he is, Jamie Oliver has been on TV in the UK for nearly fifteen years and in that time has gone from being a goofy kid on a moped, to a school dinner champion, to a political heavyweight in the realm of healthy eating with Jamie's Ministry of Food. He’s now on a one man mission to fight obesity – and he’s taken it Stateside. He has some pretty serious statistics to back him up as well. Currently 10% of healthcare costs in the US go directly on obesity – and that is set to double within a generation. At the same time there are frightening indirect costs that bad diet affects: for example heart disease is the biggest killer in the Western world and in many cases is directly related to what we eat. His mission is to get food back on the curriculum in schools across the world in the belief that if children learn early about healthy food then they will eat well throughout life.

Jamie is up for the TED Prize in 2010 where his main goal is the following: "I wish for a strong sustainable movement to educate every child about food, to inspire families to cook again and to empower people everywhere to fight obesity"

To find out what it’s all about watch his presentation on Jamie's TED Talk. Here he offers a brilliant incisive description of the way fast food is slowly killing us – and what we can do to change the way eat. I say: vote for Jamie for a healthier future.

Quote of the day - Prosperity without Growth

2010-02-10T07:06:00.000-08:00

Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100...

...But the current economic crisis presents us with a unique opportunity to invest in change. To sweep away the short-term thinking that has plagued society for decades. To replace it with considered policy capable of addressing the enormous challenge of delivering a lasting prosperity.

For at the end of the day, prosperity goes beyond material pleasures. It transcends material concerns. It resides in the quality of our lives and in the health and happiness of our families. It is present in the strength of our relationships and our trust in the community. It is evidenced by our satisfaction at work and our sense of shared meaning and purpose. It hangs on our potential to participate fully in the life of society.

Prosperity consists in our ability to flourish as human beings – within the ecological limits of a finite planet. The challenge for our society is to create the conditions under which this is possible. It is the most urgent task of our times.

From Prosperity without Growth by Professor Tim Jackson, March 2009

Thought for the day

2010-02-05T13:14:00.000-08:00

Hand-me-down and hand-me-round: Stylish secondhand toddlerwear

2010-01-31T02:38:00.000-08:00

It's all got a little bit serious of late, so I thought I would take the pressure off and look at hand-me-down chic. Toddler style of course, because it is our little boy who enjoys the luxury of friends who give him all their old stuff rather than us. Now I realise that just by switching from new to secondhand we won't immediately eliminate the footprint of our clothing, but giving clothes a new lease of life does make some inroads in living a lower impact life. It also leads to some rather fine sartorial combinations. As illustrated by Senan here. To the right we see the little man channelling Arthur Daley for his best used car salesman look. For this we can thank his cousin Hannah for the coat, and his buddies Sam and Cameron for the hat and gloves.

The Urban Dandy look to our left is entirely thanks to 2-year old Cameron. 3-year old Mattie gave us the Weekend Sportsman look below. These secondhand clothes save in both fiscal and environmental terms and while this may sound laughably trivial, buying no new clothes for our son does make a difference in our low impact living. Calculating the precise carbon saving is not that simple, and as you may know, I don't like to look at things through a solely carbon lens. The impact of new clothes is also far bigger than carbon: the production of clothing consumes vast quantities of other finite resources such as water. For example: one cotton shirt takes 3,000 litres of water in its manufacture.

In a recent article in the Guardian, Chris Goodall, author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, said that we buy an average of 20kg of new clothes every year. He claims that each item made from natural fibres has a greenhouse gas footprint more than 20 times its weight. So not buying new clothes could actually lower our family's consumption by around a tonne of CO2 a year and that means Senan's hand-me-down wardrobe plays a big part in bringing down our impact. And once he's done with them they go on to his good buddy Sam who has just turned one. So they're not so much hand-me-downs as hand-me-rounds.

From Sustainability to Resilience: why a small change in terminology has big implications

2010-01-25T06:29:00.000-08:00

This week there’s an ad in the Economist for a job at the UN as “Program Head for Climate Strategies and Resilient Development” to support climate adaptation activities in developing countries. So what? I hear you cry. Well, a year ago that job title would probably have been Head of Climate Strategies and Sustainability, and while it may look like a small change in terminology, moving from sustainability to resilience has big connotations.

Adaptation is very different to mitigation. The latter suggests the possibility of a sustainable future, the former accepts that if you can’t beat climate change, you’d better join it. But why the shift – is sustainability really unachievable? I think that if sustainability has become shorthand for maintaining the way we live today, then maybe it isn’t possible and resilience might be the way to go.

Climate change isn’t something that will just pop up in 2050 and bite our grandkids on the arse, it’s happening now. Climate scientist Dr James Hansen of Columbia University says that: “Changes are beginning to appear, and there is a potential for rapid changes with effects that would be irreversible.” In Strategies to Address Global Warming, his data demonstrates that we have already caused atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase from 280 to 387 ppm (parts per million) and this means that we are already beyond a safe limit. He says: “The safe level of carbon dioxide in the long run is no more than 350 ppm. Earth’s history shows that an atmospheric CO2 amount of say 450 ppm eventually would yield dramatic changes, including sea level tens of meters higher than today... we would hand our children and grandchildren a condition that would run out of their control, a situation that should be unacceptable to humanity.”

So even if we put in place mitigation measures, we should perhaps accept that we cannot avert some environmental crises and therefore planning for resilience is not a bad idea. The situation in Haiti demonstrates how preparedness is vital in responding to a national emergency. Can you imagine something like that happening in your neighbourhood? But hang on, before I spin off into utter gloom (you’ll know by now that I’m no fan of doom-mongering) what does resilience mean for us? Moving to higher ground with a load of tinned beans and a shotgun? I hope not. Here’s what I think we’ll need to hand our children and grandchildren.

Resilient communities:
This would probably mean neighbourhoods where the need for travel was minimised. That might mean families living near each other, producing the food supply from allotments and market gardens, and socialising and working locally. Critically though, protectionism should play no part in resilient communities – we need neighbours who are adaptive to change and welcoming if those from elsewhere need sanctuary.

Resilient services.
Again, localisation is key to this. We will need a local infrastructure that can provide food, education, policing, health services and goods readily in uncertain times. Removing reliance on global logistics to get us the things we need is key. Just look at how the snow affected the UK recently with schools, libraries and even supermarkets shutting. We need to be better prepared than that!

Resilient people.
This is the hippy dippy bit. Resilient people will be those who can live through crises without succumbing to fear, depression or protectionism. To be adaptive to change is not easy, but we must raise loving, kind and, most importantly, adaptable kids. They’ll need to be flexible if they’re going to live fulfilling lives in uncertain times.

So does that mean “Sustainability is dead, long live Resilience”? I hope not. I hope that our collective efforts to reduce our environmental impacts work and we can retain the better parts of our modern society long into the future, but a little forward planning for what we might do if they don’t won’t do any harm.

Endnote. I must acknowledge that this post is based largely on a conversation I had with a colleague on my masters alumni weekend. He is the brainy one who made all the salient points and I just added the bit about shotguns. I hope I reflected the discussion appropriately without him feeling used!

The Audacity of Hype: Why Obama’s strength has actually been his weakness

2010-01-19T13:02:00.000-08:00

20 January 2009. Can it really be a year since Barack Obama’s inauguration? I remember it with such clarity. I was so inspired and for the first time in years I could visualise a better future. One year on, does it still look so rosy? Sadly no. The poor guy has been beset by baying masses throwing tea parties on Pennsylvania Ave, Republicans rising up against his proposals and the Democrats rebelling. His approval rating fell to 47 percent in the latest Gallup poll – the lowest for any president in recent history. 2012 midterms are looking in the balance. But why?

In my view his big problem has been the gap between his rhetoric and the reality. Obama is an excellent communicator, possibly the best speaker the White House has known in the televisual age, but ultimately it is this incredible presentation style and statesmanlike manner that have shot him in the foot. He is just too good at the talk.

This is the curse of the great orator. That man can talk BIG, but his calls for massive, transformative change have been followed up with watered down actions that are disappointingly twentieth century. While he describes himself as a postmodern – even feminist – man, his presentation style is actually more befitting of the archetypal heroic alpha male. And a hero is what America thought they were getting: someone who would single-handedly kick butt with the economy, win wars and revive America’s flailing spirit.

Ronald Inglehart describes this as the “Authoritarian reflex” that triggers a need for a hero, he says: “Rapid change leads to severe insecurity, giving rise to a powerful need for predictability. In secularised societies, severe insecurity brings a readiness to defer to strong leaders, in hopes that superior men of iron will can lead their people to safety. This phenomenon frequently occurs in response to military defeat or economic or political collapse.” (Inglehart, 1997: 38)

Let us not forget, he took over at a time of both economic and political collapse in the US. And while he readily promised a return to the good old days of the American dream, the reality is that he could never deliver on such a promise, at least not in his first year. The kind of change he called for – for a better America, and therefore a better world – can also not be achieved without the people taking some responsibility for change too. I don’t think that voters realised that their actions would be a central part of making change a reality. In finding comfort in his big words, we forgot that Obama is still only human and even if he had balls of steel he could not drive through massive change alone.

Personally I don’t think he’s done a bad job considering the poisoned chalice that he was handed by Bush and the ongoing display of utter vitriol that he receives from his (many) critics. It must take some fortitude to handle with grace such a cascade of criticism that calls you a nazi, a communist, and casts aspersions on your race and religion. So I’m choosing to look back on his first year with delight rather than despair for the following reasons:

• He made a good start with the plans for Guantanamo releases.
• The fact that nuclear disarmament is even talked about in the White House is amazing.
• He got in quick with his commitment to ban torture by US soldiers.
• He is attempting healthcare reform. If you’ve seen Sicko, you’ll know America needs that.
• He made an optimistic extension of the hand of peace to Iran.
• It is a relief to have a president in power who accepts that climate change is a reality.
• The core of his economic renewal plans rely on a surge of green jobs.
• While Cop(out)hagen was a disaster, at least he was there. The Republicans would have boycotted the talks.

Here’s to a better 2010 for Obama. Let’s hope he can use his superior communication skills more sparingly next year and focus on the job in hand. Let’s celebrate the path for change that he is forging if for no other reason than by virtue of his difference to the mainstream (his colour in itself is flushing out a cascade of prejudices that have remained largely dormant since the civil rights movement in the 60s). He may be down in the polls, but he’s still a hero in my book.

Quote of the day

2010-01-18T03:22:00.000-08:00

“Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society – its world view, its basic values, its social and political structures, its arts, its key institutions – rearranges itself. And the people born then cannot even imagine a world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born. We are currently living through such a transformation.”

Peter Drucker

Oops! I forgot the cake...

2010-01-13T05:54:00.000-08:00

...In case I offend my family by forgetting one of their vital contributions to the green wedding, my mum of course made our lovely wedding cake.

My big fat green wedding

2010-01-12T06:14:00.000-08:00

My sister got engaged last week and this got me thinking about green weddings. When I got married three years ago I proudly touted it as a green event, but looking back on it, I’m not so sure it was so squeaky green. Here’s what we did:

• Invitations: I designed the invitations myself and had them printed on recycled card. I made all the table decorations from hand-made paper on and printed the menus on recycled paper.

• Venue: We got married in central London and encouraged guests to use public transport. We hailed a cab to and from the venue to avoid wasting cash and carbon on fancy cars.

• Dress: My dress was made for me by a local dressmaker. I tried to employ a “don’t buy what you don’t need” strategy because the frivolity can really get out of hand when you are in wedding shops. The lace was vintage, but the silk was not. My jewellery was either borrowed or made by a friend.

• Flowers: My poor florist got the full force of my Bridezilla as I asked her to source only seasonal and local flowers that were also dazzlingly beautiful in March. She did an amazing job and grew many of them herself, getting the rest from New Covent Garden Market.

• Food and drink: We went to great lengths to source local organic produce for our meal. The wine was all organic (although the champagne wasn’t!). We sourced our meat from the Ginger Pig, a butcher in London renowned for its ethical sourcing policy. (This was blinkin’ expensive!) We wrangled with the venue over the silliest things, over why frozen UK peas were better than fresh imported ones. I’m absolutely sure he was happy to be rid of us!

• Rings: a local craftsman in Ireland made our rings from white gold.

• Gifts: We asked that instead of giving gifts, guests could donate via justgiving to our two chosen charities (mine: the Rainforest Foundation, Brendan’s: The Connection at St Martins). We raised well over £1,000 for each charity but there were those who didn’t like the cold anonymity of cash donations and wanted to give us a tangible gift, so for them we set up a small list on http://www.ourgreenweddinglist.com. I must say it was nice to get a few gifts delivered when we got back from honeymoon, the most exciting of which was a rainwater butt (that is not sarcasm - it really was exciting!!).

• Transport: We encouraged our guests to offset their transport emissions via the carbon neutral company which invests in renewable energy projects.

• Honeymoon: we travelled around continental Europe by train and committed to making no long haul flights that year.

If I could do it all again, my top three tips would be the following:

1. Consider having a smaller wedding.
The carbon cost of the guests' travel was astronomical, so I would consider making it smaller in the first place or thinking twice about long-haul invites (er... not so easy when it is immediate family who live in Canada). Our wedding required 6 return flights from North America (6.6 tonnes), 2 from Australia (6.4 tonnes!!!), 60 from Ireland (12 tonnes) and 4 from continental Europe (1.2 tonnes). In total that is a whopping 26.2 tonnes of Co2!!

2. Go vintage.
While I went for a little vintage lace shrug, going the whole hog would have been better. Vintage (er... second-hand) is the answer to cutting the majority of both the environmental and ethical costs of the day. There are many vintage dress shops that can alter beautiful dresses to suit any figure, and were it not for the particular shopping madness that overwhelms most brides-to-be, I’m sure that this would be more common practice. Vintage jewellery could also help stem the tide of waste that accompanies gold mining: Payal Sampat, director of the No Dirty Gold campaign recently told Treehugger.com that: "Producing a single gold wedding band leaves behind 20 tonnes of waste at a mine site."

3. Look for an eco-venue or at least a place that has eco credentials.
Even though it was only three years ago, eco-venues are a lot more commonplace now than they were then. It was pretty knackering having to constantly explain our choices to our venue, when their major concern was cost and simplicity. It’s not like we weren’t on a budget too! Dealing with an eco-minded venue would have made the process a lot simpler and also given us the peace of mind that they have the energy efficiency and ethical sourcing parts of the wedding puzzle sorted. We got ourselves twisted up in knots sourcing our own food and wine to be prepared later by the venue. There are many eco-venues popping up all over now, so giving them the business over old-school room hire is the way to go I’d say.

The problem with proselytising...

2010-01-11T05:37:00.000-08:00

There are perils that come with promoting yourself as a greenie in the blogosphere. The main one is that at some point you are bound to get caught out being un-green by some keen-eyed buddy who read your blog. I had never thought about that while I happily typed away about my fabulous virtuous low carbon life in the comfort of my own living room, but on Saturday night at a party a friend looked over my shoulder as I filled a plate full of chicken wings at the buffet and said, “Flexing that ’tarianism I see”.

Busted.

I had no idea where the meat came from and it didn’t cross my mind to ask. But having written about the virtues of carefully considered meat-eating, I was caught out ignoring my own rules. This is the problem with being evangelical about a lifestyle choice, nothing can sustain 100% perfection. I do try on an ongoing basis to live a good life, but there will be times when I fail. And that isn't the end of the world, it just proves that I am human. It has prompted me to think about the big hypocrisies that us environmental types fall prey to - fodder for a future blog...

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway: Making a transition from fearing the future to a life sustaining society

2010-01-08T14:22:00.000-08:00

As I learn more about climate change I find it harder to avoid despair. With such an urgent call to save the planet, I often feel scared and useless. And it is the green movement that's pushing the fear hardest. The language of climate change is anxiety-based and blame-ridden. We talk about an imminent cascade of crises, environmental catastrophes and extreme weather. My anxiety about this future is then further exacerbated as a new mother whose child has his whole life ahead of him! But, then I remember that this fear is a complete waste of energy.

Now I’m not denying there’s a crisis, but where’s the fun in all that doom and gloom? Yes, there is a clear mandate for a transition to a low impact, post-materialist society, but must we fear that? How are we serving the next generation if we despair of their future? Surely joy and fun will also be part of a sustainable future alongside clean energy and low carbon buildings?

In order to maintain happiness, I aim to live lightly on the planet both in word and deed, and to remember that having a laugh with a friend might be as important in creating a brighter future as any action I take to reduce my carbon footprint. I have found solace in the writings of environmental philosopher Joanna Macy. She suggests that in order to quell the need for haste that comes with fear, we must hold a wider perspective about who we are as humans, recognising that we are a short life in a long history of many short lives. She says:

“As humans we have the capacity and the birthright to experience time in a saner fashion. Throughout history, men and women have labored at great personal cost to bequeath future generations monuments of art and learning far beyond their individual lives. And they have honored through ritual and story those who came before. To make the transition to a life-sustaining society, we must retrieve that ancestral capacity – in other words, act like ancestors. We need to attune to longer, ecological rhythms and nourish a strong, felt connection with past and future generations. For us as agents of change, this isn’t easy, because to intervene in the political and legislative decisions of the Industrial Growth Society, we fall by necessity into its tempo. We race to find and pull the levers before it is too late to save this forest, or stop that weapons program. Nonetheless, we can learn again to drink at deeper wells.” (Macy 1998: 136).

If I can detach from fear I can tap into Macy’s concept of “deeper time” which helps me to envision a brighter future. By projecting myself outside of my own generation, both to the past and the future, I can gain a better perspective about the present. I still feel the fear: don’t get me wrong, this crisis is real. But I live my life anyway, with as much laughter, snowball fights and kitchen discos as we can fit into a day.

The carbon credit crunch – why calculating your carbon footprint isn’t easy peasy

2010-01-04T13:59:00.000-08:00

Today I decided to quantify my carbon tonnage. Yes, I know it was just last week that I was moaning about the oversimplification of the environmental crisis into Co2, but I figure that I might as well know what I’m talking about if I am going to rage against that particular machine. So, let’s think back to the beginning of 2009 when my husband and I committed to reducing our carbon footprint in an effort to live a low impact life. Now I want to see how well we – or more specifically, I – did before we set sail into 2010. To do this I used three online carbon calculators on the assumption that there would be a little variability but that I could get an average baseline carbon footprint. The results were more than just a little variable, here’s what I came up with...

Carbon Calculator # 1: Act on Co2

I started with http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/actonco2/home.html , the UK government’s Act on CO2 web site, where I inputted a little information and was given the very modest score of 2.74 tonnes per annum. As I was under the impression that the average UK lifestyle had the output of about 11 tonnes per annum, this seemed too good to be true. I decided that rather than taking it as proof of my saintliness, my low score was probably down to the fact that this calculator only measures home heating, electrical appliances and personal transport and critically it misses out on water, waste, food and consumption. So this calculation only really accounts for around 40% of my carbon footprint. In a nutshell, this one is not the most accurate carbon counter there is but it is a helpful and easy to use site and it gives good tips on what to do to reduce your impact, just don’t be fooled that you are as good as it tells you you are.

Carbon Calculator # 2: Bioregional

I decided to find a more detailed calculator and googled “one planet living” to see if I could get a more comprehensive measurement. I was pointed to the One Planet Living microsite run by Bioregional http://calculator.bioregional.com/. This calculator took about 10 minutes to complete and looked at home energy usage, travel, household waste, food, water use, retail consumption, garden, wildlife habitat, health and wellbeing. It also includes some quite random questions like “Have you ever looked into the history of your local area?” (How exactly would that impact my carbon output???). After finishing the questionnaire on this site my carbon footprint shot up to 8.9 tonnes and I was told in no uncertain terms that if everyone in the world lived like me we would need two planets to support us, but I was able to take some solace in the fact that I am still below the UK average of three planets. This site gave me the most comprehensive analysis and clear tips for what I could do to further reduce my impact.

Carbon Calculator # 3: WWF

So then I thought I’d see what WWF had to say as they are the originators of the concept of one planet living. The WWF footprint calculator http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/ has a bold interface and is very easy to complete with quick-fire questions grouped into four categories: food, travel, home and stuff. You get through the questions in about 3 minutes, but some of them do skim the surface a bit (eg. no specificity on the type of loft insulation you have which does make a difference). After the quickfire questions the site then encourages users to join the WWF campaign to reduce Co2 and gives snappy tips for how to make changes. Shockingly, however, it calculated my carbon footprint at a massive 13.78 tonnes per annum and 2.66 planets, which just about bowled me over.

2009 Carbon Calculations

I was left wondering how these three sites could take in the same data and come up with such different answers. Because they varied so wildly, I decided the most reliable calculation was the Bioregional one as it used the most comprehensive data. So I have my baseline: 8.9 tonnes, but did I also find out if I reduced my carbon footprint at all in 2009? Well, yes, but I had to seek out other web sites to help me calculate that. Specifically I wanted to calculate the savings made as a result of two key changes we made last year – 1) giving up our car and 2) composting all our food waste. Giving up the car saved 1.9 tonnes per year (source: the carbon neutral company http://www.carbonneutral.com/) and by composting all our food, garden and cardboard waste, we saved emissions equivalent to 0.28 tonnes of carbon dioxide. (source: Centre for Alternative Technologies http://www.cat.org.uk/). That is a total saving of 2.18 tonnes – which roughly means we cut our carbon emissions by about a quarter last year. That is not perfect maths of course, but then again those carbon calculator web sites were not exactly demonstrating Carol Vordeman precision!

New year resolutions

So if we managed 25% last year, we can certainly cut our emissions by at least another 10% in 2010. I have signed us up to 10:10 http://www.1010uk.org/, alongside squillions of celebs and big companies, and I’ve got a few ideas about how we can reach that target. Firstly we need to tackle the house – it is too draughty and the loft insulation we have is too skimpy. With a baby in the house we keep the heating on more than we did before so we really need to replace three windows and increase our loft insulation to 400mm depth. I also plan to invest in an electricity meter and a chimney balloon for the unused chimney stack. However, the area that I’m not sure we can impact this year is air travel as we aim to go back to Canada in the summer, so I will have to look into the issue of “love miles” in more depth in a future blog.

Reflections on climate change denial #1 – why oversimplification has made global warming a cult

2009-12-31T06:06:00.000-08:00

There I was having a nice cup of tea listening to Radio Four when Peter Hitchens came on to talk about why energy saving light bulbs are proof of the tyranny of the nanny state and that man-made global warming was a load of old hokey. This got me rather hot and bothered even though the heating was off and my tea was cold, but rather than internally fume I decided to think more broadly about what he is saying. On reflection, what occurred to me is that climate science has become so dumbed down for public consumption that people now find it hard to believe.

So let’s look at the oversimplification of climate science. Two years ago few people knew what a carbon footprint was, but now it has become so ubiquitous that I even saw a man in Westfield shopping centre yesterday wearing a sweatshirt that said, “keep your carbon footprint low dude”. Some might say that this means that the message is getting across, but I bet if I’d asked that man what his footprint was he wouldn’t know. What we – the communications people – have done by reducing a complex science down to neat digestable messages and "top tips for what to do" is create this simple equation:

man-made stuff = carbon emissions = 2 cm sea level rise in 2050

By essentially editing out great swathes of scientific information we have made it easy for people to believe or deny that equation. If we broadened it to reflect the actual components of the environmental situation, it might look more like this:

Growth of mass production and consumption of commercial products, livestock, food, transport, services, minerals, etc + population growth = Deforestation + acidification of oceans + mass agriculture + species loss + peak oil, etc = Pollution, greenhouse gases, unstable international relations, war, poverty, extreme weather events, flooding, etc.

Because the true picture is systemic: whether we like it or not, man is a species that sits within – not outside of – the eco-system which in itself is entirely interdependent. Noone would deny the dependence of plants on bees for pollination or animals on plants for oxygen, but too often we take ourselves – man – out of the system altogether which in turn enables us to deny that our actions make any impact at all.

By simplyifying our impact into a short equation about carbon emissions, we further distance people from the multi-species holistic eco-system that we live in and we make “man” the villain and "earth" the victim. This of course polarises people into “for” and “against” camps because who, other than bleeding heart liberals like me, wants to admit to being the villain? So by oversimplifying a complex problem into a digestable message, we therefore make it possible to deny the existence of an environmental crisis altogether. And the media then sees it as an argument with two sides and TV producers can make films called “the Great Global Warming Swindle”, and silly people like James May and Peter Hitchens get air time on BBC 1 and Radio Four to say “I don’t believe in man-made global warming” like it is a cult or something.

Climate change in itself has become an easily thrown about soundbite with the polar bear as its charismatic mascot. In this oversimplification, we no longer look at man’s actual impact on the environment, but rather we choose between the option of man = villain or man = hero, and select which side of this totally unscientific binary argument we sit on. It’s not hard to understand where climate change denial comes from when you look at it like that. Even I'd rather be a hero than a villain.

Recycle, Reuse, Re-Gift – how to have a planet-friendly Christmas

2009-12-17T06:38:00.000-08:00

While things are hotting up in Copenhagen, London is getting a light dusting of snow and I’m feeling a little festive. So I thought I would look at the impact our Christmas will have on the environment. It is set to be a somewhat frugal affair this year, but before you label me a Scroogella, here’s how we plan to have big fun with a low impact...

Firstly, the gifts. There’ll be no new toys from Santa this year. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be toys at all. Senan is at that lovely age when the marketers haven’t got to him yet – at 18 months old he has yet to be swayed by the mantra that new is best and he’s fine with all his plastic gear being second hand. While there is no truer statement than “if you give a toddler a big plastic toy, he will get more entertainment out of the cardboard box”, sadly for me my son really LOVES brightly coloured plastic toys too, and so our home is far from plastic tat-free. My way of justifying this is to ensure it is second-hand. We have lots of great friends and neighbours with kids who are delighted for us to take their old toys off their hands and even better, we have a great charity shop for kids nearby (Fara Kids, http://www.faracharityshops.org) where I can pick up good-as-new toys cheaply and then take them back to the shop when he grows out of them for them to sell them on again – recycling and charitable giving all bundled into one!

Then there is the art of re-gifting. Trust me, this has to be done artfully. Regifting (ie. giving an unwanted gift away to someone else) has been a tradition in our family at Christmas since I was small, so I am not offended if I get back what I gave to my mother last year, but this will certainly not be the case for everyone. Here’s how to do it right...

1. Have a bag set aside for the gifts that you don’t really want or need.

2. After everyone has gone home and the home made thank you cards have gone out, audit the gifts into two piles, those that will make great gifts for others and those that can go to charity now

3. In the “go to others” pile, list who gave you what so as to avoid the mortification of giving it back to them next year

4. Keep the list with the items so you can refer to it next year.

Regifting doesn’t just have to be things that you received as gifts. I won a raffle this year – what a bonus – now I know what my husband is getting! The golden rule for re-gifting is never re-gift rubbish, just the stuff that is nice, but just not quite your taste.

Then of course there’s food and drink. We aim to get a local veg box delivery pre-Christmas and cook a free range turkey the Jamie Oliver way. There will undoubtedly be delicious additions from my family who are joining us for lunch – but local and seasonal is the goal for us all. Our neighbours will also be home this Christmas (emissions from air travel must go right down during a recession!), so we are flinging our doors open for some homespun cheer throughout the festive season. Mulled wine and mince pies for everyone – oh and some of that lovely chutney Mum made last summer.

And finally, our tree... Some might say that reusability is the only thing a plastic tree has going for it, given that it is likely to be made from polyvinyl chloride. However, with reforestation numbers not stacking up I am proud that we are reusing the plastic tree that my parents bought in 1972 and have had in their house every Christmas since then. My mother, the queen of posh bargain shopping bought this now 37-year old treasure from the Harrods window one snowy Christmas eve. They gave her the baubles too, and we still have them now. A good plastic tree can last lifetimes, so we are committed to reusing this baby for many years to come.

Calculating our impact.

After Christmas we’ll do a triple bottom line review of Christmas (oh yes we will, we’re nerds like that!) to see how well we did on minimising our impact. Watch this space to see if our measures for a low impact Christmas really stacked up on the day.

From veggie to flexi... In defence of a mixed meal

2009-12-07T06:27:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, Barbara Ellen in the Observer lambasted the new, less committed vegetarianism that is spreading across the country with the rather unsexy name of “Flexitarianism”, she banged on about lack of commitment and people not having the staying power that they once did. This kind of riled me, because while I probably wouldn’t announce myself as a flexi at a dinner party, it is what I am and I actually think that it is the way to a more sustainable way of eating.

I was vegetarian for 23 years, but I did eat fish and eggs. This was mainly because I became vegetarian when I was nine and my mum worried that all I got for protein in my school dinners was a lump of cheese. I also didn’t really think of fish in the same way I did other animals, and as I was a sucker for a cute cow’s big brown eyes or the fluffy tail of a rabbit, the idea of eating them was totally unpalatable.

I made it through my teens and twenties without succumbing to a bacon buttie as so many veggies do, but then in my thirties a couple of things happened: I started to think about fish differently and I got pregnant.

The fish thing came first. I read a book called “Cod, the fish that changed the world” and began to comprehend the sheer decimation of the world’s fish stocks. Suddenly my tunafish sandwich habit felt utterly incongruent with my vision for a sustainable planet. So I decided I needed to eat less fish, and make sure I knew a lot more about the fish that I did consume. At the same time I started eating chicken, which seems odd, but I felt I needed a protein replacements (real veggies would call me lightweight I know!)

Then I got up the duff and alongside feeling DREADFUL, I also felt a compulsion to eat more meat. So I even tried (organic, local) beef, bacon and sausages. And ever since then I have been trying to wean myself off them for good. It’s as bad as fags though, you do get a craving.

So rather than chastise myself forever, I have embraced the concept of flexitarianism. I try to eat very little meat. I avoid my four legged friends altogether as they are largely responsible for rainforest landtake and methane emissions. My chicken habit is still pretty large I guess, but I always go for organic free range, and sustainable sourcing is key to eating fish. Paul Macartney’s idea for a meat free Monday even means that my red blooded Irish husband refrains from digging in to the rashers on a Monday – and in the grand scheme of things, I hope that makes a difference.

The moral of this tale, is that there is room for more than one type of diet when we are try to do our bit for the environment. Being a considerate flexitarian does not necessarily mean that you lack commitment, it just makes you an omnivore.

Bumpy landing

2009-10-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

So we got back from Canada about a month ago and re-entry into city living has been a bumpy ride. The first week everything seemed so loud and fast; the second week I felt a strong compulsion to make plans and have dates in the diary and since then I have been moving at an escalating pace - having lunches, meeting people, keeping up with current affairs, taking Senan all over town and spending an inordinate amount of time on buses and the tube. It really has been interesting to watch myself transform back into an urban gal.

We followed the principles of slow living while we were away - we ate meals together, did physical work in the fresh air every day and went for long walks on the beach as a family in the evenings. We watched no TV, ate fresh food from the garden and drank practically no alcohol. Reflecting back on this time what I have noticed is that when we were out there I did not get any kind of a sense of "lack" - I never felt like I was missing out on something, even though we were doing very little. Nor did I see any mundanity in my daily routine of feeding, walking and playing with my toddler.

However, back in the "real world" (more analysis of this ridiculous concept later) I am keenly aware that I get bored or irritated with the repetitiveness of visiting the same park every day or doing the same chores. I suddenly feel that being a stay at home mum is hard work - there seems to be no time beyond the childcare and housework for a glamourous lifestyle or the important "proper" work I see all around me in this city.

But I don't let it get me down and I try to remind myself that that fabulousness is merely an illusion. So many people (including myself sometimes) busy themselves because they feel that this is what they ought to be doing (mums seem to be the guiltiest of all at this!), and they feel acute discomfort being still and not doing anything at all. But perhaps being comfortable in not doing anything is one of the important steps to living a low impact life. It ain't easy in the big city, but I am going to try to recapture some of the peace we experienced on the island and bring it back into London life.

I like this quote:

Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.

Does my bum look big in this?

2009-07-18T07:15:00.001-07:00

Being out here on the island, away from the rapid pace of life in London where it is easy to get caught short, I am putting Senan in washable nappies. I have been using eco-friendly disposables (ie: those that are marketed to busy mums with a desire for a greener lifestyle), but now that I am not so busy, i have no excuse not to go washable. Here are my observations:

A washable nappy...

provides a softer landing to a baby who is learning to walk and keeps falling on his bum
makes a baby look like he has a fat ass even when he doesn't
is not the easiest thing to deal with when out and about - think large scale pooperscooping
requires at least one full change of clothes a day - making yet more washing...

I'm glad I'm not adding yet more crap (fnar fnar) to landfill, but there is a fair amount of water and electricity in this washable thing. I'd say so far I have averted 40 nappies to landfill and run probably 15 washes (with other stuff obviously), I need someone clever to run the numbers on that one to find out which has the larger overall impact.

2009-07-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

Today is Senan’s first birthday – what a difference a year makes. This time last year he had black hair, bold eyebrows and a nose too big for his face. Somehow in a year he transformed into an angelic-looking blond toddler. Happy Birthday Senan!

Senan today in PEI

Uncomfortable reading

2009-07-14T06:52:00.000-07:00

From my outpost in the middle of nowhere, Canada (as my facebook friends will know, we are so rural here that the village liquor store's opening hours made the headline news the other day), I have been reading while Senan sleeps and Brendan chugs by on a tractor or is up on a ladder fixing things. So I thought I'd share...

I have just finished "Hell and High Water, Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition" by Alastair McIntosh (of Soil and Soul fame) and I felt compelled to suggest it as a good read as it looks at climate change issues head on (in a similar vein to Monbiot and Lovelock), but then addresses the internal work of the human condition that we will need to undertake beyond the government cuts and sustainable lifestyle choices.

I loved Soil and Soul so much that I dived into this book with zeal, and it was not quite the joyous read that I expected, sometimes it is very very poignantly sad, but there is a chapter which could make a great reading on consumption and marketing. I would highly recommend it and of course if you haven't read S and S yet - start with that - it is the daddy (or should I say mother) of all them enviro-books.

I am now reading the Power of Now and struggling with "surrendering" which is an illuminating challenge. Bren has taken the baby down the beach to give him a dunkin' and I am practicing not worrying about it at all. er... I'll let you know how long this zen buzz lasts.

2009-07-06T09:44:00.000-07:00

Day 6 in Country House

2009-07-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

This is a test more than anything - I am starting to write down my emerging thoughts about how to live within my own ecological means... I really should do some thinking about it before I start telling the world what to do!