An ode to emotional blackmail

Got me. J’accuse and yep, I’ll take it. Chalk it up.
And I suddenly understand. Your world is still filled with normal.
What landed on you as
emotional blackmail was
clumsily
pitched over from the other side of our Facebook fence
as sheer facts.

I hadn’t seen it from your side.
Because it’s a fact
that all types of animals are eaten
and bred to be eaten worldwide.
It’s a fact
that some lives are cut short into just weeks and some
don’t make hours.
It’s a fact
that female cows only produce milk for
their own calves
and first they have to be pregnant.
Chances are they weren’t impregnated
by an actual bull.
Think about that.
(here’s a toothpick).

It’s a fact
that we choose which species of animal
to glorify
and call family
and which to torture, kill and eat. Kingmakers.
(Except we hunt the kings. Oh, but don’t eat them.)

Just facts.
My wording might be off in parts
but that’s that.
Need more? I can look it up

It makes me sick.
The longer I’ve known
the more I’m alone.
The more frustrated I get as things continue
It’s different for you.
I’m twenty years in to this.
>>>No wonder I’m coming on strong.
So I’ve also become snappy –
I’m asked the same questions so it’s gonna happen
>>>but my answers are always wrong…

and I can’t be bothered, actually, to sugar coat it.
Or excuse you.
Why are no horrors enough
to make
*your taste preference*
less important than what it’s funding?
You know what I mean by horrors.
If that made you feel guilty then good.
If you’re genuinely baffled
look it up.
For God’s sake look it up.
I can’t stop looking it up
and I’m
only finding the truth.
I can’t unsee it either.

And not just for ‘the animals’.
Yeah yeah – they’re cute, it’s awful, whatever.
It’s the landtake.
The pollution.
The waste.
The greed.
The violence and yes the gore.
The human cost too, and
the aggressive corporate core.
The utter pointlessness of it all.
The fact
that the way we treat our fellow earthlings is simply
a shadow
of how we all treat each other.
We dominate and take,
concerned only with our own desires.
Attention flavour security status.
Wars famines greed exploitation: of course I should focus on them.
I choose not to contribute using the one thing I can control: what I pay for,
and I won’t promote eating meat.

(Am I really doing the opposite, when I alienate my friends. All told, the influence I’ve had has been zero in that zero of them have moved any nearer to an animal free life of ease.
I win best promoter of a carnivorous lifestyle! But oooh Iet me share some amazing plant-based recipes.)

I bet this won’t be the first Facebook block I’ve had.
Maybe we weren’t friends after all.
Maybe underneath it *was* emotional blackmail.
Part of me *was* hoping
a fun fact about
the pitiful lifespan of the cutest animal I’ve
seen
would be enough for you to cave and
Come over, Red Rover.
(It’s soooo quiet over here.)
I spoiled the parade I realise now.
That cute animal deserved its awww.
So did you.
It’s been a shitty day.

I learned a new word though –
cognitive dissonance.
I had to look it up.

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Two years without new tree planting grants in England!

This week every day is #CTWW change the world Wednesday! My challenge? Get as many people as I can to hear about this 🙂

Obama’s Plan To End Hunger In Africa Is Really A Plan To Industrialize Agriculture

Hmm, I might have known – what do you think?

ECO-opia

By Magda Fahsi

Last week, while touring Dakar, Senegal’s capital, President Obama touted his vision to reduce hunger in Africa. He emphasized food security, saying that far too many people on the continent endure poverty and chronic hunger while speaking of a “moral imperative” to rectify this. He also announced that Senegal had become the tenth country to join the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. This “alliance,” however, has been fraught with controversy since its launch last year.

The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition is a partnership between the G-8, African governments and private companies including Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill and Yara, a Norwegian nitrogen fertilizer company. The Alliance was launched by President Obama in May 2012 at Camp David to “support agricultural development” and aimed at “lifting 50 million people in sub-Saharan Africa out of poverty over the next ten years.”

Officially, the idea is…

View original post 1,280 more words

Banish? Impossible?

I missed Wednesday again this week. I don’t know where the days go right now, but I did get to see what the Change The World Wednesday (#ctww) challenge was and it’s something that is very do-able: banish paper towels and napkins from your life!

The challenge to banish paper made me smile and it makes total sense. And I thought ‘This one’s going to be tricky’.  Small and the gang have been such a joy to read when I do catch up with them, I’m being so inspired… but straight off I knew this week that I couldn’t do it.

So, fabrics and doing without is the call. I’ll certainly think twice in future at a restaurant, it hasn’t really crossed my mind til now so I’m pleased that already Small and the #ctww crew are helping me as ever. When I started thinking about it, I wondered whether recycled kitchen roll and paper was actually more eco than cloth?

Cloths are more durable but they need to be washed presumably adding grease and food dust plus shudder germs to the water course. Whereas if I use paper on grease, I fold it inside out dip it in some seeds and leave it out for the birds. I spritz my kitchen and bathroom with eucalyptus  or peppermint oil and wipe it off with kitchen roll, which is then composted along with tissues and also when I finish my windows, after a quick clean with white vinegar and newspaper. I wasn’t quite sure tissues were ok for the compost but my friend Clara does so I’ve started composting them too.  I use recycled paper to clean the bathroom along with a plastic scourer and white vinegar and borax. It’s static cloth dusters for furniture already.

I’ve always liked the thought of buying bulk to reduce my footprint and often choose fairly-traded and 100% recycled paper products at a vegan wholesalers, I’m not sure if at Lembas they sell cotton/fabric products in bulk but it’s worth a look.  Cotton, that wonderful material, isn’t grown in the UK – something I keep being asked about my NEAT bags (another blog!) – so then paper produced by sustainable timber and recycled helps keep our flailing forestry industry moving (gosh only knows our trees need help). Don’t get me started on toilet roll produced from intensive agri-timber, though – loo rolls should all be recycled paper, trees are so important! While I’m all about increasing the UK’s lamentable native tree cover, I just can’t reconcile the idea that it’s ok to grow trees just to turn them into toilet roll (it just offends me; I can’t help it.)  But anyway…  cotton is also recyclable of course, and hemp and bamboo fibres are making great cloths. But then, recycling does use a tonne of water; ah doesn’t the initial paper-making process too?

Hmm.  Still, I’m enjoying channeling with the #ctww crew towards Small’s way of thinking. So yep, a little late perhaps but challenge accepted! I could probably do without paper napkins and I can use less rolls. Problem is, I’ve just bought 100.

Keep kids learning to care for nature while they’re young

http://wtcampaigns.wordpress.com/category/nature-in-education/ Three great posts giving a policy, pupil and parent perspective about planned changes in the English primary school curriculum, from Woodland Matters

Is it eco-ESP?

It’s Wednesday again – already! I’m so glad that Change The World Wednesday (#CTWW) has given me an extra reason to remember what day it is, plus a good excuse to blog at the same time.

I seem to be tuned in to Small Footprints somehow because last week, which was manic at work and at home, I suddenly noticed that I’d missed the week’s #CTWW challenge. Imagine my smile though when I did go to see what I’d missed and realised that I’d actually already done it!

Earlier in the week I happened to have a bit of a go at my DVD cabinet one evening, passing on a few films to a friend who hadn’t seen them and keeping a small pile back for the charity bag. Mostly this was because I wanted to use a shelf for a few coffee-table type books, as it’s near to a comfortable chair. But feeling motivated by a good job done, I looked a little more closely around my house and before I knew it I had a small pile of suitcases and travel bags that I’d forgotten I even owned, and – fairly sure I will never need 7 different suitcases and 3 laptop bags – got to add those to the bag as well 🙂 Then I felt compelled to fill it up a bit and so in went some clean unused linen and some winter scarves (still pretty useful here in the UK even though it’s April) – and a pretty quickly a decent charity donation was created!

It’s been a bit of a Change The World Week recently. I’ve been busy keeping up with national curriculum changes (http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/campaigning/our-campaigns/Pages/natureineducation.aspx) and the ‘nature’ theme continues tonight in a meeting to prepare for a public meeting based on ‘Your Environment’ in my local town. I’m part of a small, community-led group and the aim of our public meetings is to share resident’s views about our town with agencies and services like the Council… but the side plan for this upcoming meeting is to help local people understand how they can help change their environment, and not rely on the Council or ‘someone’ to improve things.

It’s funny how this fits so well with my own philosophy, something I often find myself thinking when talking to people who say ‘well done’ or ‘you’re so good to be involved’ when I mention some of the groups or events I’m part of:  if you ever think “someone should do something about that“, why can’t that someone be you? 

I think this relates to so many things, from taking part in government consultations to getting involved in practical action in the community. And CTWW is certainly going to help me link my unofficial motto to my reality. I haven’t seen this week’s challenge yet, but thanks to Small and the CTWW gang for keeping me on the greener tracks. It must be eco-ESP I’m getting from you guys across the pond or something!

Walking with purpose has opened my eyes

It’s Wednesday, so I thought I would take up a Change The World Wednesday (#CTWW) challenge. This is a new thing to me, having stumbled across Small Footprints Cyndi and her Reduce Footprints blog a couple of evenings ago, but catching up with #CTWW on Twitter today I felt really inspired to be a part of things too. Each week a new challenge is set, this time  it was to “walk with purpose” and pay close attention to how we could make that walk work for the environment.  (I think I’m actually a week late on this, but hey)

It was coming up to lunchtime when I read the challenge, and it motivated me to get out of the office and do a bit walking. What purpose could I have?  I decided that instead of wandering aimlessly through the town and ending up in the supermarket, to go straight to the independent Health Store and pick up some more diary-free parmesan which I’ve run out of and buy some vitamins while I was at it – both things I have been meaning to do for ages.  I’d also to say ‘Hello’ to everyone I passed, share a smile with a stranger or two.

However, best laid plans – just as I got out of the building my husband called and by the time we were finished nattering I was practically in town! Too many people to say Hi to at once! So I settled with a chat with the Health Store man and being a good ethical consumer with some vegan and natural purchases. On the way back to the office though, I realised there was no need to abandon Small’s challenge.  As I tramped back up the hill, I would look for signs of spring.

My walk from the office and back is hardly pleasant, on a very busy road with several industrial buildings and not much green to enjoy.  But today, with me actively looking out for signs of the changing season it was great! All the trees I passed are starting to bud, which always makes me smile.  I love nature and as a treehugger am always watching how our trees are doing, but this time I made a concentrated effort to also check out verges and hedgerows as well as the budding branches. And look at what I saw!

Crocii (or is it crocuses) outside the Fun Farm

My first crocuses (crocii?). What a beautiful, happy colour they are.  So thanks Cyndi and everyone who is part of #CTWW for making me notice what is happening around me. And helping me feel part of something special this lunchtime. This is my first blog post, and I’m not sure how regularly I will posting now I’ve started, but with challenges like this to keep me inspired perhaps it’ll be more than I expect – watch this space!