For my recent jolly into the subject of Ethics: Ethics – Further Thoughts
Archive for the ‘ethical living’ Category
Ethical Living
Thursday, August 12th, 2010Carbon Capture
Monday, June 7th, 2010
I rather like The Woodland Trust’s latest campaign approach.
They are calling it The Great Carbon Lock-up.
The Woodland Trust are making carbon off-set easy to understand and easy to do.
A Big Shop
Friday, January 8th, 2010
If, like me, you are used to a grocery delivery, the recent weather has probably changed things a bit. My Riverford delivery could not get through so I foud myself having to do a ‘big shop’ – not something I’ve needed to do for a long while. I rely on Riverford from my dairy and groceries, Hazeldene for my local organic meat, Darvell’s for delicious bread, and Lucia’s for ham, oil, pasta and anything else that looks tempting. Eco cleaning materials come from Healthright mostly or mail order. Which leaves Waitrose for biscuits and… oh yes, fish…
…well, as you can see, I’m not a ‘big’ shopper’.
But, running low on everything saw me with a piled up trolly in Waitrose. I was turning the clock back about three years and looking at the system with new eyes.
The choice we have! We could be hungry and walk into a supermarket and get confused about what to eat. We are, literally, spoilt for choice. We say: what do I fancy? We hum and ha. What kind of meat? What kind of fish? It’s all there, so much to choose from. You are almost surprised if they don’t have something. Surely they can fly it in from Israel, of the USA, or South Africa. Someone has to have it, we need it for a recipe!
If I’m honest, the site of all that food makes me sick.
Yes, it’s great that people who ‘can’t cook won’t cook’ can pop in and get a ready meal at the end of a busy day. And in our hectic life cooking can take up so much time. I can see how it all happened. It’s all about demand and supply.
But, and it’s a big but for me, if we lose our relationship with our food we have lost our relationship with something vitally important. We eat to sustain ourselves, we eat to keep alive. Food is how we take in minerals and vitamins that sustain our bodies. This is a pretty important stuff.
Yet, here we are relying on some complete unknown commercial manufacturer to make it for us and add ‘stuff’ to it so that it will last a week or so longer before going off. Yes, there are rules and regs about additives, of course it’s ‘safe’ to eat. But how much goodness is there in it? And I mean real goodness, not chemically manufactured additives and the nutritionalists recommed for daily intake.
And why does everything contain ‘flavouring’ as if the food doesn’t have any?
We need to have a relationship with our food. We need to know what we are eating. We need to understand what it is to eat the right food at the right time of year. Seasonal food provides the goodness we need for that season. There is a lot of stored energy in root veg.
I nearly didn’t publish this as it sounded like a “bah humbug”, but then I read this article in the Economist.
This supermarket monopsonist system is not sustainable. But who is going to say so? Not the farmers. Not the supermarkets. Not the shoppers who are laregley unaware of the problem. Not the government unless the people ask them to…
It’s down to us, guys. Anyone who reads this and agrees.
It’s down to us…
By the way, it’s home made cottage pie tonight – full of all it’s own flavours;>)
Stupid Premiere and Public ‘Education’ on GM
Thursday, September 24th, 2009There is so much stuff happening in the news this week that I just had to get back into my Blog :>)
You can tell it’s Autumn and I’m busy storing as much of the natural goodness growing around and about in jars and freezer and what have you. So much so that I haven’t blogged in ages.
BUT
I just had to spread the word about the Age of Stupid world premiere. It’s going to be bigger than ‘Star Wars’ and a lot greener! Read about it in the Guardian.
Then I got my weekly bulletin from The Ecologist and there was the news that the GM companies are moaning about the public believing all the stuff thrown out by the organic lovers. As a result, they don’t trust what the scientist say. Yee-ha, that’s one up to us for a change. So, it’s time to make sure we have the facts, there is about to be a back lash from the pro-GM brigade.
That’s all for now. I’m off to make some pear jam.
Eco St
Saturday, December 13th, 2008I’m please to say that I have finally discovered Eco St. I didn’t realise they were just over at Wendover. Fab shop full of planet saving gadgets and books and stuff. It’s in the car park at the Wyvale Garden Centre in Aylesbury Road, World’s End.
It is also a place for recycling things you really don’t want to throw away but don’t know how to get rid of: CDs (from magazines or ones you couldn’t write to), old batteries, and used Brita water filters.
Just brilliant :>)
Buy Local or Buy Ethical?
Friday, August 22nd, 2008It’s a big question many of us are struggling with and one that global exporters are feeling the need to justify. With regards food, soft fruit are one of the most obvious of the unseasonal items we see in the supermarkets. The English soft fruit season is a short one yet strawberies are now available all year round. Whilst it is true that much can be achieved by heating a greenhouse, much of this produce comes through imports. And should I be more worried about the carbon footprint of the foreign imports or the carbon footprint of heating the greenhouse?
In the case of strawberies, my ethics say buy local and buy seasonal, and thank the sun for what we receive.
But what about bananas? If we stop importing them, what happenes to the economy in the Canaries? What about red wine? We can’t grow those kind of grapes here in the UK, so have been importing wine from Europe since we cultivated civilisation. But now it comes from South Africa, Australia, California, and Chile…
South Africa relies on exports of fruit and wine. The UK is a viable market for them so would it be ethical to stop buying their goods? The answer is much bigger than us as individuals for we can decide for ourselves if it is OK to buy imports or not. But how should we react as a country or wider still, as a community of Eruopean countries. Or what would happen if every nation decided that importing was wrong and we cut out foreign freight altogether? Every economy would collapse and the UK would be hard pressed to feed its own population.
So, for the time being at least, I feel I can justify enjoying last night’s glass of Fairtrade Organic Melbec from Argentina! Thanks Rob :>)
A Month Without Plastic
Saturday, August 2nd, 2008This will be an interesting blog to watch:
Chris Jeavans of BBC is going to live without buying anything plastic for the whole of August.
Eco is the new Chic
Thursday, July 31st, 2008Everyone’s starting to take this more seriously. It even got scripted into Dr Who! When confronted with slaves on one planet or other, Donna commented that the Earth was beyond this barbaric practice. The Doctor disagreed and said: Who makes your clothes?
Earlier this year, during the Fair Trade week, Clem (Traidcraft) had a ‘tree’ set up and lots of tags. We were encouraged to write on a tag something we would do to become from world friendly. I wrote that I would not buy any more clothes that were not Fairtrade. I’ve stuck to that as well.
So, I was most impressed with the BBC Thread pages. Lots of information and ideas. I’ll have to look out my sewing machine…
Polution Problem Solved!
Monday, July 28th, 2008Saw this on Climate Ark:
“Why we never need to build another polluting power plant: Coal? Natural gas? Nuke? We can wipe them all off the drawing board by using current energy more efficiently. Are you listening, Washington”
It had my attention! Their argument ran this way:
“Suppose I paid you for every pound of pollution you generated and punished you for every pound you reduced. You would probably spend most of your time trying to figure out how to generate more pollution. And suppose that if you generated enough pollution, I had to pay you to build a new plant, no matter what the cost, and no matter how much cheaper it might be to not pollute in the first place. Well, that’s pretty much how we have run the U.S. electric grid for nearly a century…”
The article shows that, if the other states were to follow California’s lead, the US would slash their electricity consumption by 40%. Apart from the more obvious improvements in efficiency of heating and air-con units, they also looked at street lighting and changed traffic lights to work with LEDs. And then they did something pretty crucial which was termed “decoupling”. They decoupled the the profits of energy companies from their production of energy and made it profitable to save energy. Unsurprisingly, the energy company’s seemed to know a thing or two about making savings.
I guess the moral of this story is that, not matter how well intentioned we may be as a race, if the big companies are not making profits, our social structure will de-stabalise and break down. We have built our civilized world, our survival on this planet, on our ability to make profit. Those of us who dream of living a sustainable eco-minded life will always be climbing a very steep hill unless someone somewhere can make a profit out of what we are doing. We have more Rules of Acquisition than the Ferengi.
But there is another way, too. And that way comes back to people. People thinking twice; people caring about issues greater than themselves. It involves stepping back and looking at what we are doing from a global perspective. Food production, waste management, energy consumption, and so on. When enough people care about their relationship with the planet, our carbon footprint will come in line with sustainable requirements.
But that is the long road. Until then, we will continue to live on Ferenginar.
PS. If you want to be one of the people making the difference, join the Transition Town movement :>) Chesham in Transition – coming soon to a meeting room near you!
Time for a Change of Attitude
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008Each day I read the climate change news delivered via RSS feed from Climate Ark, or Science Daily or One World UK and so on. After the Stern Report and then the IPCC report, the news was fascinating as various suggestions and innovations were put forward that looked as though we were going to change our way of living on this planet.
These days it is a continuous stream of information about the way biofuels have distorted the lives of thousands, causing starvation and poverty in various parts of the globe.
Last night I watched a film called Peak Oil. It was put on by the Berkhamsted Transition Towns group. It explains clearly why oil prices are rising. Demand has outstripped supply – and the supply is running out and will never meet the demand.
Instead of looking to biofuels as a replacement fuel, we should be looking for ways of living sustainably. It is a tall order. We need to reconnect with our own planet and each other. Start working together in our communities for the general good. We need to relearn old technology and find ways to improve it. And we can do this with the benefit of today’s hindsight and innovative technique.
Chesham will soon be forming its own Transition Group. Many have already shown an interest and an initial meeting will be held in July. There are now about 700 towns like this, all looking to make a change. We cannot wait for the government to impose changes. It is down to us at local level to do something for ourselves.
And there is much we can do :>)