Pete, Nicola, Lola, 11 and Nell, 8, spent the summer of 2007 travelling around Britain with an eye on their carbon footprint. Now they're home and trying to find ways to get out and about in a carbon lite way. This entry is from Nicola. (pic of girls looking at the UK's only polar bear who lives in Scotland)
It takes the Guardian's hope-o-metre of one polar bear (the highest is five) for me to get this, read all about it in 19 December 2009 pieces here. With the world now set to warm up by at least 2 degrees low lying Pacific islands (as in the picture) and the super-flat Maldives, and anywhere with coastal homes/cities is going to be in serious trouble. As a result more than a third of species look set to become extinct.The next day I wake (after a crap night of borderline sleep) feeling furiously low. The sky may be a beautiful, bright winter blue but it's obvious to me that it's just a picturesque tease. Everything I've loved is at an end: Borders is being sold off, ergo book writing is doomed (or at least the weekend free reading in a warm room with real coffee percolating out of the cafe). My list of complaints include cash crisis (mine, world), lack of paid work (mine, world), worries about food/inadequate stockpiling (me, world)... Pantomime doom and gloom really.
But after a cup of hot black coffee, I pick up a useful sort of a book called 52 ways to change it by life coach Annabel Sutton (website here), flip the pages to allow the text to choose what I read today and the perfect pick me up appears. Here's the quote: "There's no such thing as a wrong decision", which is backed up with calm balm... quoted here from p 17.
"No matter what happens, whichever decision you make it won't be wrong - it will simply result in a different outcome. Either way, there will be new things to learn, new people to meet, new opportunities will open up, and so on."
I'm going to hang on to that, because it makes the idea of the world learning to be more energy efficient, matching climate refugees with their hosts and taking advantage of any new opps a great deal more attractive.
2 comments:
Whether we are causing climate change or not we still can't go on as we are, but the way I see it, change has to be a partnership between ordinary people and governments.
We 'little people' can't do it all on our own, but governments don't want to do anything that will lose them votes and the support of multinational giants. So we have to show our governments that we are serious about changing the way we live. We have to shop with the environment and shortage of resources in mind, we have to walk more & use more public transport and use drive & fly less. We have to switch to green electricity and use less resources generally. When enough people live like that the governments of the world will think doing something about climate change is worth their while.
To cheer you up read the latest from 'No Impact Man' http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2009/12/trust-the-spark-within-and-find-your-own-path.html
Btw that was me, I was signed into the wrong account.
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