Small Revolutions: Voluntary Simplicity in Devon

Well Done Google!

Given that over 75% of the internet population use Google for searching, anything they do to raise awareness of environmental issues makes an impact.

Today they've "turned the lights off" on the Google homepage - the screen has gone black:

They're also encouraging people to calculate their own carbon footprint with their carbon footprint map.

By calculating your carbon footprint, you can work out where to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide your lifestyle produces and therefore reduce your impact on climate change - it's as simple as that.

So if you haven't done that already, please have a go. Even if you've calculated your carbon footprint elsewhere every single click and every single footprint calculated shows one of the most influential companies on earth for reaching developed world audiences, that what they're doing attracts interest, makes a tangible difference, and that they should do more of it.

Let me know how you come out when you calculate your carbon footprint today and add yourself to the map like these good people below. If you want to know who landed in the sea just off Dawlish - that's me ;)

 

Word of the day: Slacktivism

I love getting my daily fix of the Urban Dictionary. Today I got a great one:

1. Slacktivism

The act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem.

Signing an email petition to stop rampant crime is slacktivism. Want to really make your community safer? Get off your ass and start a neighborhood watch!

2. Slacktivism

The search for the ultimate feel-good that derives from having come to society's rescue without having had to actually gets one's hands dirty or open one's wallet.

It's slacktivism that prompts us to want a join a boycott of designated gas companies or eschew buying gasoline on a particular day rather than reduce our personal consumption of fossil fuels by driving less.

It tickled me, but it's got a serious side too.

Maybe I'm just tired as I write this, but I am getting fed up of people who think that they recycle a bit of cardboard each week and think they've "done their bit" for the world.

I just think "Well, thank god you put your empty loo roll in a separate bin - we can all sleep safe tonight now..."

Don't get me wrong, recycling is very important. But it's also part of a larger set of behaviours:  Reduce, Re-use, Repair, Recycle.

Recycling is the very last step if you can't do any of the others.

If you want change, you've actually got to do something. Token efforts just don't count or let you off the hook. Sorry.

I worry that there are too many people thinking that they're doing enough with token gestures (for example, big banks giving a nominal donation to a green charity when you buy their product, whilst on the other hand said bank is making money hand over fist investing in companies and industries that are ruining the same bits of the world the charity is trying to save, and doing it a lot better than the charity can undo it). There's a word for that too: greenwashing (new take on whitewashing).

I've decided to be watchful of myself and weed out any slacktivism. It doesn't mean I have to run myself into the ground working tirelessly 24/7 but really just stop doing the things that clearly don't make a difference and being all self-congratulatory about it.

Gosh, that sounded like a bit of a rant. Should I start a new blog for my dark green angry alter ego?

Epicurus

"Not what we have but what we enjoy constitutes our abundance."

Regrets

“I would much rather have regrets about not doing what people said, than regretting not doing what my heart led me to and wondering what life had been like if I'd just been myself.”

- Brittany Renee

Peak Oil oges Public

At last, peak oil is entering the vocabulary of politicians and businessmen!

Ken Livingstone has mentioned it as an opportunity, and Richard Branson has acknowledged peak oil within as little as 6 years.

Not only that, but Monty Don in his Around the World in 80 Gardens visited Cuba, and has written about it in Gardener's World.

I don't know any of these people. But I do know our actions have helped bring it gradually into the public consciousness.

And I'll say this in really big letters to people who are burying their head in the sand and not doing anything about the problems as well as the people fighting and becoming disillusioned because it looks like a losing battle:

We can, we are already changing the world.

So for the fighters in this world, the hopeful, the people making a difference, give yourself a pat on the back today and say "well done, good job old boy".

Then lick your finger and chalk one up on the blackboard of eternity, and remember we're playing to win.

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Join up, say hello.

World Views

Problems & Solutions

The problem is that we're all connected.
Everything we do, affects everything else.
No action is independent, isolated, contained.

The solution is that we're all connected.
Everything we do, affects everything else.
No action is independent, isolated, contained.

One law of physics is that nothing ever disappears from the universe. Energy, matter, nothing is ever lost, it only changes shape. And everything is connected.

Every action affects everything else. No good is ever lost from the world, it just changes shape.

The recycling, the reduction in carbon footprints, the trying to find new ways to live that mean we can all live in a healthy world - yes, it does sometimes look like it disappears without a trace.

But the truth is it never disappears. It just transforms. It changes shape.

In the I Ching there is an image for one of the hexagrams and I forget which one it is. But it's the picture of a flow of water into a hole. The stream seems to have stopped. But it hasn't. It's filling the hole and at some point it will spill over and contnue its journey.

So many people in the green movement are getting dis-illusioned at one point or another and no wonder.

But the truth and nature of things is that 99% of the time we will never see the positive effect of what we do. But just because we can't see results, doesn't mean the change isn't happening.

Sometimes it's important to visualise the change that you can't see.

The child in Africa not emaciated and ravaged by famine and drought, the freak storm that didn't kill people, the landfill that never got built, the fish that never got sick and poisoned.

Nothing good is ever lost from the world. So just because you can't see it, don't kid yourself that it doesn't exist.

It's the small actions that changes the world, though the way they work may well be invisible to us.

Drops of water wear away stone, though no single drop appears to make the difference, they all did it.

When you do something good, you enter eternity.

Cuba's Response to Peak Oil

Everything Changes

after Brecht, 'Alles wandelt sich'

Everything changes. We plant
trees for those born later
but what's happened has happened,
and poisons poured into the seas
cannot be drained out again.

What's happened has happened
poisons poured into the seas
cannot be drained out again, but
everything changes. We plant
trees for those born later.

	-- Cicely Herbert