Manifesto (ish)

The world has changed: important glaciers are melting, extreme weather systems are becoming more prevalent: look at the typhoons in Japan, the wildfires in America, the flooding across Asia. On a smaller scale, we in Britain (and across Northern Europe) experienced drought and heatwave the likes of which many of us have never experienced. As someone who prefers the bluster of autumn and spring, the murk and mizzle of winter, this last summer was particularly galling.

But it is not an outlier. It heralds in the first noticeable changes for the layman – climate scientists were right: climate change is here, and this year, we’ve all felt it, and if we don’t start living more ethically, more seasonally, more sensibly, it will only get worse…

I see a lot of posts saying – quite rightly – that the problem of climate change is the fault of the few, the businessmen, the oil-men, the corporate machine. But then these posts shrug off the efforts of every day people as a drop in the ocean of what needs to be done. I think this outlook is foolish, if you rob people of the simplest change they might make, then how will they ever make the bigger changes to develop a society which cares for this planet and its people?

This is a small change, on my part, to do better by the planet. This blog serves as a means to make myself accountable to my goals.

I intend to start 2019 with a view to living more ethically, eating seasonally and locally, avoiding the mass-produced whilst living on a shoe-string, and campaigning more vocally for real change in the world. So that we might preserve our earth for generations to come, and set an example of stewardship and care.

Let me make myself clear from the outset, this blog is not here to make you comfortable: I believe that capitalism can no longer in any way be ethical in the industrialised world, that we should be doing all we can to dismantle a society that fundamentally preys on the weak and oppressed, and that we should all be making a conscious effort to be kinder to the planet, each other, and ourselves.

With this in mind, I do not intend to preach or seem sanctimonious – I know many cannot make the changes they would like towards living a more environmentally friendly existence for manifold reasons, including funds, accessibility (or lack thereof) and situation. This blog merely serves to document my attempt to change, in the hope it may inspire the same in others.