health,waste,environment,life

What does a just transition mean? Being a supporter of Greenpeace gets me a subscription to their newsletter, one such newsletter I received contained a link to a film about something called a just transition? This piqued my interest as it appeared aimed for North Sea oil and gas workers. Having at one time been in that industry and still many friends and family in that industry, I was interested to find out what this film was about? After watching it I could not work out what the message was or who it was aimed at? It seemed to be aimed at people like me who worked for climate criminals, an encouragement to get new work in environmentally friendly workplaces, the message seemed to be saying that the oil and gas industry were bad employers anyway, which is fair enough, I left the industry with a bad impression of the employers throughout this industry so; I couldn’t agree more, I suppose it had been a growing disillusionment for me at that time, I was becoming incr...

Keswick mountain festival It seemed like absolutely ages ago when I first booked this festival, I had looked at it in previous years but the timings were never right, this time I had been looking forward to it for ages, the plan was to get away from all my climate concern activities, and my busy stressed brain (I was unfortunately wrong about that! Because for most of the weekend I still stressed) Camping is probably my favourite way to enjoy a festival of this kind, getting back to nature sleeping in the fields, as a bonus in this camp site I would wake up to the view of Skiddaw Mountain Its Located-on Springs Road, Keswick, the KMF campsite had plenty shower and toilet facilities, its near Springs Farm which has its own nice wee cafe serving hot food/drinks every day, the vegan option was ok but I was disappointed when on the Friday they moved everything to disposable plates and cups only, this put me off going back the campsite opened at 10am on Thursday 19th May and close...

Why I’m supporting the just stop oil coalition I worked in the fossil fuel (or oil and gas whatever you want to call it) industry for thirty five years, basically from the age of twenty to fifty five, the industry and the world has changed massively during that time, I ended my working career on a gas plant on the Shetland isles, by then totally disillusioned with society, this had nothing to do with any individuals in the industry, I have many friends and family still working in the industry, most of whom do not feel the same way as me which confuses some, I would like them to know why I wish (no I am certain) we need an end to all new fossil fuels exploration and licenses, I view myself as a climate criminal doing a penance for my sins, I have had a fantastic life, but; never for one second up until around five or six years ago did I realise that, what I was doing was stealing from future generations, for that I cannot apologise enough, I am truly sorry not only to m...

New years resolutions All my friends and family know how important new years resolutions are to me, they are such life changing promises for me that - I have even written a yet to be published book about the affect these pledges make on my life, that book was written five years ago in a year that the pledges were numerous, the changes those challenging pledges had on my life were so vast! I hardly recognise the person I was previously, I feel like an entirely different and better human being for it. In previous years; I would always have made at least one pledge that was dietary based, this has led me to be now three years of a dairy free, two years dairy and beef eating free, along with now one year dairy and no animals diet, meat and dairy free lifestyle is now easy for me, I still eat fish occasionally and eggs but sustainably sourced only, I made these changes for environmental reasons, before new year I was considering a year with no fish or eggs either, or ethical only foods...

Ethical banking I read an article that stated; most people who try to shop ethically forget their ethics when it came to money! or more precisely banking and investments, this was a light bulb moment for me as I was one of those people! I was regular paying extra for products that were organic/palm oil free/no plastic waste/ fair trade/rainforest alliance etc, BUT and it’s a big BUT! I had never previously to reading that article considered that my savings would be getting used by my bank to finance nasty things like deforestation, weapons manufacturing, pesticide production, the disposable plastics industry, sweat shops, fracking etc, reading this really saddened me; why had I not considered this previously? The current system of international finance is of course behind nearly all the problems the planet is facing, I had been blind not to think that shopping ethically should also include your financial choices! In fact, this is probably more important than checking product labels...

Ethical insurance I required house insurance and decided I wanted to find an ethical supplier, I had never previously heard of any ethical insurers except for bicycle insurance companies, but; I knew for certain! that many of my previous insurers were just affiliations of one of the big banks, they would therefore be non-ethical, being an environmentalist, I no longer wanted to be part of these planet killers Due to climate change, there has been a dramatic worldwide increase in So-called natural disasters, this has required insurers to make huge pay-outs, the rate of which has been doubling every decade. One report in 2002 warned that more frequent natural disasters in future could bring insurers, re-insurers and banks ‘to the point of impaired viability or even insolvency’. The insurance companies usually offset their potential liabilities by trading some of the premium (like a bookie ‘off-setting’ a large bet with another bookie) with a re-insurance company. Many of these companies...

I was out for a run through a local park; which I was really enjoying, especially through the wooded section of that park, full of the joys of life in the middle of nowhere I came across what was obviously a recently discarded Actimel drink single use plastic carton with its silver foil lid still on? This initially made me think it had been accidently dropped not chucked away, but alas no the foil lid had been closed back the way after the contents had been drank, this really saddened me who would do such a thing what sort of person thinks this is acceptable what sort of society do I live in? these were my immediate thoughts which changed to the sort of person that falls for that marketing trick is the sort of person who chucks away single use plastic cartons in local beauty spots! I had to reflect on that because there was a time I also fell for that trick, it wasn’t truly all that long ago either! it had only been around four years previous to this that I had stopped buying these...