This is my last post for Community Care, and I'd like to thank all readers, especially the few who have written interesting comments, and my employers at Community Care who have been so good to me.
Regular readers will know of my interest in how money affects sustainable development, stemming from my early involvement in York Local Agenda 21. The three pillars of sustainability, according to Agenda 21, are our natural environment (air, water, soil, ecosystems and living things) our social environment (people) and our fiscal environment, which is how we organise our trade, taxation, businesses, banking and how wealth is spread between us. Our monetary environment is just as important as our biosphere and our fellow humans.
Over the past few years there's been a lot of noise about the evils of plastic bags. They've been blamed for filling up landfills and inflating people's carbon footprints, mimicking jellyfish and confusing turtles, even being labelled 'witches knickers' when blown into Irish hedges and trees. Now, in the grand scheme of things, plastic bags are not the biggest of our consumption 'wrongs', despite a million being given out every minute. But every little thing we do to improve the problem helps us go in the right direction.
I quite like the idea of Lent, despite my not being Christian. I like the idea of giving up stuff... eating less... perhaps no chocolate, or stopping something more 'sinful' like smoking... Anything which can reduce our profligate consumption has got to be good, and if this reduction helps our health, even better.
Earlier this week I took the train up to Middlesborough to do some filming wih the BBC, for the programme 'Inside Out' which has local editions for the different regions. I'd been asked to go and help a radio presenter, John Foster, start a week of living on a pound a day. This was inspired by a book by Kath Kelly called How I Lived a Year On Just a Pound A Day.
Food is responsible for the largest part of our individual carbon footprints, more than transport or household energy and heating. So when it comes to greening our lives, reducing food waste is one of the top issues. Obviously there are things we can do in our own lives which will cut our individual and family food waste... such as getting portion size correct, learning how to re-use leftovers, and, initially, taking a shopping list to the supermarket and sticking to it!!!
I'm not sure if I have any regular readers... certainly no-one has mentioned my little break from writing this blog. I've had a month's holiday... over Christmas and New Year I just didn't feel like writing anything. And no-one noticed! Well, no-one asked why I wasn't keeping to my usual once a week routine. I didn't go anywhere on holiday, I've been at home, looking after the children, my wife, cooking, composting, managing logpiles, doing occasional Professor Fiddlesticks gigs and trying to keep on top of the paperwork. I suppose I've been a bit low, not as far as depressed, but not feeling my usual joyful optimistic self.
I subscribe to a number of email newsletters, and one came through last week with news of an eco-calendar which has caused a bit of controversy. Ethical Junction member Flipside Vision have produced a 'Calendar of Climate Change' for 2009 with a plethora of wonderful images depicting our world, many of which have significant connections to climate change themes. For instance, February has an image of a Dutch painting of a windmill and a canal, and alongside this, a smaller picture of modern windmills which generate electricity.
The current 'Credit Crunch' combined with high energy prices is seemingly causing a recession... a period of no economic growth or contraction. Part of me welcomes this, despite the discomfort we will all experience (such as reduced entertainment bookings for me) as in a greener world we'd consume less, and in a recession we do just that. One of the weird effects of this economic situation is that with reduced demand, some prices will fall... so I'm not suprised to see the fuel prices dip temporarily.
I became interested in poverty when I got involved in Local Agenda 21 in the mid 1990s, a few years after John Major signed a document called 'Agenda 21' at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. This committed all the signitory countries to explore and implement 'Sustainable Development' by encouraging Local Authorities to empower their local communities to find local solutions... I learned that sustainable development was a balance between our natural environment, our social environment and our fiscal (money) environment... and that the number one enemy of sustainable development was... POVERTY.
