Starting to be Green (LINK)
February 26th 2008 08:20
I’m not the greenest person on the planet, and I’m not even convinced that Global Warming is a reality – yet. (My suspicion is that we might wind up with the same nonsense that came out of the Millennium Bug.) However, I do keep up with the green issues, and am concerned about the state of things on this remarkable and lovely planet.
So fairly regularly from now on I’m going to write about green stuff on this blog (and probably elsewhere too), partly to keep my own focus on it, but also to try and figure out what (small) things I can do to help.
Two books have turned up in the last two days on green issues: one I found in Whitcoulls yesterday going at half-price (I’m sure there’s some sort of irony there), so I grabbed it. It was the last copy. The title is:How Many Lightbulbs Does it Take to Change a Planet? with the subtitle: 95 ways to save Planet Earth.
The author is Tony Juniper, the executive director of Friends of the Earth, so I suppose that’s a fairly good credential. I only got a chance to look at it tonight, and am a bit disappointed. It certainly isn’t aimed at the small person doing small things one step at a time, but rather looks at the very big picture, things I know I’m not likely to have a hand in.
The other book was one that the Library informed had arrived: The Everyday Activist, by Michael Norton. I’d had it on reserve for some time, after coming across a copy in a UK bookshop (Cambridge was the town, if I recall). It was one of several books I noted down that day that looked interesting, and I’m gradually getting them via the library. (The library is a great way to test the waters on a book; you don’t feel you’ve wasted your money before you’ve had a really good look).
This book is more my style, although perhaps my only complaint about it is that there are so many suggestions of what to do that even the section entitled The Twelve-Step Anti-Apathy Recovery Plan (a somewhat tongue-in-cheek list) isn’t quite enough to stop you feeling overwhelmed. However, the suggestions are practical, and most of us could do something about them if we tried. Interestingly enough, when I look at them, many of them are what people who would have been regarded as ‘do-gooders’ in the past would have done, or people who set out to do ‘good deeds.’ There’s nothing very startling in some ways about many of the suggestions.
For instance, I was reading some of the book on the bus home tonight, and there was the suggestion of picking up rubbish as you walked along the street. Well, I’ve been getting off a ticket section early these days, to give myself some exercise, and I thought: I could pick up some rubbish on the way home. But when push came to shove, I wasn’t so keen on carting the rubbish I saw lying around. In fact, if I’d picked it all up, I might not have made it home.
Okay, that might be exaggerating a bit, but part of the problem as well was the idea of bending over and picking up rubbish and being seen. Hmm. Pride. Nevertheless, one thing did occur to me. Outside our neighbour’s house (a former shop, so he doesn’t use the front ‘door’ of it) someone had smashed a bottle a couple of nights ago, and the debris was still there. The neighbour probably hasn’t seen it, but I’ve walked through it two days running on my way to work, and it occurred to me that this was at least one thing I could do to make my stay on the planet a little more worthwhile.
So, before I had my evening meal, I cleaned it up. I’m not writing this to make myself sound righteous in any way; it was no big deal. And yet it was a bit of a deal, because it meant that something was done to remove rubbish from the ‘earth,’ and also to protect the paws of dogs, or even children running past in bare feet.
Small stuff. Very small stuff. But starting small is no problem. Pushing onwards and continuing with the small tasks is what it takes.
So fairly regularly from now on I’m going to write about green stuff on this blog (and probably elsewhere too), partly to keep my own focus on it, but also to try and figure out what (small) things I can do to help.
Two books have turned up in the last two days on green issues: one I found in Whitcoulls yesterday going at half-price (I’m sure there’s some sort of irony there), so I grabbed it. It was the last copy. The title is:How Many Lightbulbs Does it Take to Change a Planet? with the subtitle: 95 ways to save Planet Earth.
The author is Tony Juniper, the executive director of Friends of the Earth, so I suppose that’s a fairly good credential. I only got a chance to look at it tonight, and am a bit disappointed. It certainly isn’t aimed at the small person doing small things one step at a time, but rather looks at the very big picture, things I know I’m not likely to have a hand in.
Tony Juniper
The other book was one that the Library informed had arrived: The Everyday Activist, by Michael Norton. I’d had it on reserve for some time, after coming across a copy in a UK bookshop (Cambridge was the town, if I recall). It was one of several books I noted down that day that looked interesting, and I’m gradually getting them via the library. (The library is a great way to test the waters on a book; you don’t feel you’ve wasted your money before you’ve had a really good look).
This book is more my style, although perhaps my only complaint about it is that there are so many suggestions of what to do that even the section entitled The Twelve-Step Anti-Apathy Recovery Plan (a somewhat tongue-in-cheek list) isn’t quite enough to stop you feeling overwhelmed. However, the suggestions are practical, and most of us could do something about them if we tried. Interestingly enough, when I look at them, many of them are what people who would have been regarded as ‘do-gooders’ in the past would have done, or people who set out to do ‘good deeds.’ There’s nothing very startling in some ways about many of the suggestions.
For instance, I was reading some of the book on the bus home tonight, and there was the suggestion of picking up rubbish as you walked along the street. Well, I’ve been getting off a ticket section early these days, to give myself some exercise, and I thought: I could pick up some rubbish on the way home. But when push came to shove, I wasn’t so keen on carting the rubbish I saw lying around. In fact, if I’d picked it all up, I might not have made it home.
Okay, that might be exaggerating a bit, but part of the problem as well was the idea of bending over and picking up rubbish and being seen. Hmm. Pride. Nevertheless, one thing did occur to me. Outside our neighbour’s house (a former shop, so he doesn’t use the front ‘door’ of it) someone had smashed a bottle a couple of nights ago, and the debris was still there. The neighbour probably hasn’t seen it, but I’ve walked through it two days running on my way to work, and it occurred to me that this was at least one thing I could do to make my stay on the planet a little more worthwhile.
So, before I had my evening meal, I cleaned it up. I’m not writing this to make myself sound righteous in any way; it was no big deal. And yet it was a bit of a deal, because it meant that something was done to remove rubbish from the ‘earth,’ and also to protect the paws of dogs, or even children running past in bare feet.
Small stuff. Very small stuff. But starting small is no problem. Pushing onwards and continuing with the small tasks is what it takes.
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