Garden responsibly, and encourage wildlife into your garden and you're doing SOMETHING positive to help with problems of loss of natural habitats and declining populations of pollinators etc.
I do that, but I buy bananas flown from the Carribean and it takes gallons of petrol to fuel my lawn mower every time I but the grass.
If you don,t know where your next meal is coming from, you are unlikely to worry too much about the environment.
If you don't know where your next meal is coming from then a) you're almost certainly not a major consumer of finite resources and therefore not really the problem and b) far more likely to be acutely conscious of the problem, at least if you're not living in the developed world. Yes it's a middle class worry - it SHOULD be a middle class worry. Middle classes are the biggest part of the problem, historically.
Surely what you do in your garden pales into insignificance when compared to: driving a car, taking international flights, how you heat your house etc etc?
Yes. Which is why I'm far more worried about not taking flights (I don't), driving a car (I try not to) and heating my home (highly insulated house and a heat pump) than I am about planting dandelions.
There's something about saying " I am an environmentalist , which carries the same " holier than thou" sentiment as " I am a vegan"
That's in the way you hear it rather than the way I say it. I'm not a vegan. No plans to be. Not even a vegetarian. I've explained my rationale for that elsewhere so I won't repeat it. I have thought about it though, and come to decision, which is all I ask of others. If everyone just thought about the small choices, it would be a start. The big changes have to come from people like me - and my environmentalism - working to shift the policy makers and governments to do more.
I'm not going to apologise for caring or for trying.
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Surely what you do in your garden pales into insignificance when compared to: driving a car, taking international flights, how you heat your house etc etc?
Even things like feeding the birds in your garden can be seen as wrong. Most bird feeding is robbing Peter to pay Paul (fly away Peter, fly away Paul...) and a £200million+ industry is profiting from the ecological destruction of our country. Bird feeding should always be seen as a temporary solution while we restore habitats enough to support a healthy bird population but the money involved is now driving agribusiness to farm massive amounts of seed in a way that boosts garden bird populations but reduces farmland birds. And then there's peat compost and importing plastic grass from China. How you garden has a larger impact than just what happens on your property.
A few people doing environmental things perfectly has less effect than the whole population doing it imperfectly. Try convincing people that buying the cheapest bird seed they can find isn't good for birds though.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
There's been quite a lot in the news lately about 'everyone doing something' being more effective than a few people doing a lot. If you think about it in terms of scale, that makes a lot of sense. I've been concerned about the environment for about 35 years, long before it was fashionable. I would not describe myself as an environmentalist, but rather as someone who takes the environment into consideration both indoors and outdoors. Like everyone, I fail quite a bit but I make some headway. To garden in a completely environmentally friendly way would be not to garden, strictly speaking, or to have only the few local weeds that would enjoy my conditions. But I can work shrubs and birdboxes into my scheme, I can choose insect-attractive flowering plants, and avoid poisons in the garden. It's all about little tweaks that facilitate rather than damaging the environment, and using materials and resources with an awareness of the wider implications for the rest of the biosphere. We don't have to write ourselves out of history, just take environmental issues into account in all kinds of planning, politics, business and domestic life. So in short I don't see a boundary between environmentalism and everyday existence--they are one and the same.
So in short I don't see a boundary between environmentalism and everyday existence--they are one and the same.
This is certainly the frame of mind everyone needs to work towards. I read so much about environmental issues that it's easy to forget that the average person is more interested in celebrities dancing than in whether their children will be able to breathe in 30 years time. Awareness is increasing very slowly but I think the majority of people are still blissfully unaware of how bad things are getting.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
There are some hugely profound contributions in these three pages, not least the last one. We always try to take our surroundings into consideration but I'm consistently frustrated by all the 'jobsworths' that swan off to Davos in the middle of the skiing season when hotels are at their dearest. They return with smug grins on their faces forecasting solution 'x' by 2050 (when none of them will still be in power) but then ignore my question as to whether their deliberations take into account the rise in population by then. We laugh at the ostrich?
"Environmentalist" has become something of a dirty word, in part because of people like Greta Thunberg who go around haranguing people about the damage they are doing to the environment, but think nothing of hopping on a jet airliner when it suits their purposes. So many of them are of the "Don't do as I do, do as I say" school of behaviour.
Greta Thunberg is one of the least hypocritical activists. There are plenty of people who claim to be 'green' and do whatever they like, certainly. She's not one of them. Perfect should not be the enemy of good. No one can be perfect and it's not reasonable to say 'until there's a perfect example I'm not going to budge at all'.
Sadly, that's not the case. There are lots of people who do think about it and try to make changes to help. There are also lots who don't. 'We' probably do - as in people who are gardeners and who mostly therefore are connected to the natural world to some degree and are conscious of the issue. There are vast numbers of people who really couldn't care less and who consume as much as they can as fast as they can because they can.
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I have voted no as this is not a word I feel comfortable using to describe myself. It is enjoyable to work towards having a nice environment just to be able to see the effect this has on wildlife and my surroundings but the endless preaching I see in the media about destroying the planet would make me embarrassed to be called an environmentalist.
Posts
Yes it's a middle class worry - it SHOULD be a middle class worry. Middle classes are the biggest part of the problem, historically.
Yes. Which is why I'm far more worried about not taking flights (I don't), driving a car (I try not to) and heating my home (highly insulated house and a heat pump) than I am about planting dandelions.
That's in the way you hear it rather than the way I say it. I'm not a vegan. No plans to be. Not even a vegetarian. I've explained my rationale for that elsewhere so I won't repeat it. I have thought about it though, and come to decision, which is all I ask of others. If everyone just thought about the small choices, it would be a start. The big changes have to come from people like me - and my environmentalism - working to shift the policy makers and governments to do more.
I'm not going to apologise for caring or for trying.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I'm sure we ALL try to do our bit.
Sadly, that's not the case. There are lots of people who do think about it and try to make changes to help. There are also lots who don't. 'We' probably do - as in people who are gardeners and who mostly therefore are connected to the natural world to some degree and are conscious of the issue. There are vast numbers of people who really couldn't care less and who consume as much as they can as fast as they can because they can.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”