No pictures in this one – sorry!
My previous post was about books I had been reading, two of which were about the way we humans have been (largely) inadvertently trashing the planet. I have loved reading your comments.
One book, ‘The World-Ending Fire’ by Wendall Berry (edited by Paul Kingsnorth), was about the importance of staying put, learning to know and love a piece of land and therefore to care for it. The Second, ‘Nomad century’ by Gaia Vince argues that it is too late, large parts of the planet are becoming uninhabitable and millions of people will need to up-sticks and move to more hospitable habitats. That will, of course have massive impacts on those who move and those who find themselves hosting a lot of strangers. It isn’t an easy read!
A post by Jill Dennison (Filosofa’s Word https://jilldennison.com/2024/02/09/what-makes-a-nation-great/), who is American and whose brain is exercised by the political mess over there, about values set me thinking. Some of you already know that I use Permaculture Design a great deal as a way of thinking about projects large and small. Although it arose from considerations of agriculture (hence the name – Permanent Agriculture) a good design system can be applied to anything. The connection to those books and Jill’s post is that permaculture is based on 3 ethics – Earth Care, People Care and Fair Shares (sometimes expressed as Future Care) and any designer should have those 3 in mind whatever they are working on.
I am pretty sure that most of you would be happy with those ethics whether you believe that climate change is real or not. But to fully espouse them is daunting verging on the impossible. To care for the earth should I give up driving my car? Go vegan? Buy only food and other things produced entirely within a certain distance from home? (If I couldn’t drive that would be my only choice but life would be very limited) Throw out any plastic I own? Which people should I care for? I am sure we have all met do-gooders who wear their martyrdom with pride! But in reality I can’t care for everyone! Fair shares throws up similar dilemmas – do I try to live on the mean global income? It wouldn’t cover my Council tax!
So I can say it is all too hard and give up; Do nothing; Business as usual. Or I can try to do it all, fail, get dispirited and give up. Or..
To help us with those tricky ethics there are a series of pithy sayings to help us with our designs. Thoughts of various people who have learned by experience. Ones like ‘Obtain a yield’ meaning don’t do something just for the sake of it or because it is what everyone does, what is expected. So if no-one in the family likes eating Brussel sprouts don’t grow them or cook them for Christmas dinner; If you are tone deaf don’t get bullied into joining a choir; if you no longer enjoy a friend’s company accept that lives move on and gradually cool the relationship. By the way yield can be something like a beautiful view, a sense of joy, a full stomach or a puzzle solved as well as a literal yield of stuff.
However my favourite is ‘Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can’. Another way of avoiding doing anything is to argue that we could if we lived in the country with a garden to grow our own veggies. Or lived in a town with good public transport so didn’t need a car. Wherever we are there will have to be compromises so we might as well get going with the things which are possible.
So maybe I can care for the earth a bit better by trying to use my car a bit less and combining errands or giving someone who is going to the same event a lift. Perhaps I could start trying a few vegetarian or vegan foods to see if I actually like them. (A radical change of diet isn’t easy. When my late husband’s kidneys started to fail he was advised to cut out foods high in Potassium – strawberries, being one of them. It was the height of strawberry season and we had the best crop ever. I literally wept as I put them on the compost heap!)
Could I start smiling at people in the street, thanking the checkout operator, saying hello to faces I recognise as I catch the bus or train? Those little things can give a stranger a small but useful boost.
What would happen if I asked myself ‘Do I really need this?’ before buying it? Or if I learned more about how, where and by whom the things I buy are produced. Fairtrade, Organic bananas are dearer than the standard ones so if money is tight caring for myself might mean going with the cheaper option. But using less petrol or electricity will save money so can be done on a tight budget.
I recently found an App for my phone – Earth Hero – which is full of simple ideas and has one of the best carbon footprint calculators I have come across. As you choose and then achieve challenges it adjusts your footprint so you can see how much difference they have made. I have been aiming to live more lightly on the Earth for years but here were quite a number which I had not thought of and were easy to implement. (No I am not paid by them!)
We may not prevent climate chaos by doing any of these things but they certainly won’t make it worse.
Going Batty in Wales 