Active Hope: a thread for anyone wanting to take action

[WonkySwan]

Hi - following on from the David Attenborough thread in AIBU this is a thread for anyone interested in discussing Joanna Macy's Active Hope and/or playing an active part in the 'Great Turning' - a transition to a life-sustaining economy. It's to share ideas, support and encouragement and everyone is welcome.

Hi everyone - sending lots of good wishes for a positive and peaceful 2019.

Habadabadoo - thanks for the link - I've signed. I was listening to a podcast earlier which was saying Iceland (the supermarket!) is at the forefront of developing non-plastic packaging and that often the family-owned businesses are in the best position to take action because they don't have shareholders. I'd really recommend it if you haven't listened already - called Mothers of Invention with Mary Robinson

Ghosts - you might be surprised! I understand they're growing rapidly throughout the country both in terms of new groups and the membership of each group - might be worth checking them out and maybe even getting advice on holding a meeting yourself?!? I went to my local one and it was good to be in a room full of people who cared.

Adult I'm really glad you're finding the book helpful so far and I know what you mean about connecting with those feelings of grief. I think it's so important where we can to connect with other people too and ideally face to face. When I watched the presentation at the Extinction Rebellion meeting it was such a relief to be able to talk to the people sitting next to me about it.

I'm crossing my fingers that the new year is a hopeful one!

Hi.
I'm also very worried about this and in particular my husband is terrified. He reads all the articles about how grim it all is and is pretty convinced we're all fucked (I have a more optimistic outlook in that I think governments will eventually HAVE to kick themselves into action, even if awful stuff will have to happen first).
What depresses me most is how few people care. It's difficult to engage friends about it without sounding like a loon.
Supermarkets have so much to answer for, it's obscene the amount of plastic they create. Anyway we're going to try and get rid of as much as we can- we get fruit and veg delivered via able and Cole who don't use any, and none is imported by air.
Near us has opened a plastic free shop- basically you take your own containers (or they have paper bags) to stock up on the basics. Brilliant idea and although opened 2 months ours is doing really well.
Husband is trying to stop eating yoghurt, kids eat a lot which is a problem but trying to get them to eat the big pot stuff instead of the small pots (one big pot better than 8 small?)
We're seriously considering using savings to get an electric car.
Changing energy supplier.
For 3 years we've had solar panels on the roof, not for electricity but they work with the boiler to heat up hot water- very little extra gas needed to heat up hot water between April and October.

Husband has given up meat (the single Most important thing you can do) and says he won't fly again- I'm not at that point yet but cutting down meat as a family so 1-2 times per week and we definitely won't fly very often at all.

I agree about meeting like minded people.

My colleagues don’t give a shit. One rolls her eyes when I gently suggest putting her lunch rubbish in the recycling bins (ten paces away) rather than the landfill bin next to her desk. The chat at work is fake nails and holidays.

My oldest friends are concerned but my local friends - I think most folk don’t care!

I would love to find like minded people

That's awful about the colleague that won't recycle her lunch.
Separating stuff for recycling - there is no excuse not do to that.

She isn’t alone...

I am pretty quiet at work but am still seen as some green “freak” because I am more thoughtful. And I’m not great - I fly once a year and my husband has a 4 by 4!!! But my office is very mainstream and this is the tide we are fighting. Utter apathy.

The chat about celebrity love island is another matter

The thing that I just don't get is the apparently not caring. Threads on MN where the full spectrum of opinion is represented have been eye opening. In my little social bubble the assumption is that people do care (caring profession, alternative-ish life style etc) so I'm so surprised to see people say things which suggest it really isn't high up on their list of priorities. Really feeling for you re the eye-rolling colleague who won't recycle and who has the gall to make you feel bad. I have been getting a bit of a pasting on a thread about DP wanting us all to fly to see his friend in Spain despite us having agreed to not fly earlier this year. I'm being called names and basically told to get over myself by people who seem to find it almost offensive that I want to avoid flying, despite that not even being the point of the thread. Just had a little Chris Packham clip pop up on my FB feed, where he talks about being vegan, but the blurb / text is all him pledging not to be 'preachy' or 'holier than thou' about it. Makes me sad that even CP feels the need to preempt the backlash from those who can't stand the merest suggestion that there is more one can do. It has made me make just one New Years resolution: to talk talk talk about the climate and the environment whenever and wherever I can Not to catch anyone out or hector or scaremonger, but as an opportunity for positivity and inspiration, and to counter the 'not caring' by proactively drawing attention to and praising the positive environmental choices people make. I'll practice on my friends and allies in the workplace first (tricky balancing act between being creepy-cheesy and sincere, but could be fun): "I really appreciate how you have cycled to work for as long as I've known you, rain or shine." "Since you went vegan you radiate health and vitality, and it has really inspired me to cut down on dairy too." "I really appreciated you sending me that promotion for your new green energy supplier." "Would anyone like my pattern for reusable sanitary pads?" Sorry, it's getting late...

AdultHumanFemale Chris Packham is noted for speaking his mind on matters such as badger-culling, so I would have thought he would go on about veganism, if he felt it made a difference. Maybe he's mindful of the fact that vegans often don't get a good press. I think I would be inspired by your positive pep talks!

Hi Frazzled and welcome! It is scary and a little depressing when I think about some people close to me who just don't see it as an issue or a priority. I don't know what we can do to get mindsets changed, but I like Adult's idea of simply talking more about it, though what you then do about people who simply dig in or go on the offensive I don't know.

I just saw that a dispatches documentary about vegans is trending on twitter. A lot of the comments are not kind … but then it does look like the people they've chosen to feature are at quite an extreme end of the spectrum - I haven't watched it myself yet, just going by some of the comments online.

Yeah I think making people aware as much as we can is very important. If every one of us got just one other person engaged and that person got one person engaged etc it would be a great start. My husband got my properly engaged with it and I am getting some friends thinking about it at least so baby steps and all that.

What I think is more worrying in a way is the media's complete lack of interest. BBC especially. Did you know extinction rebellion did a massive blockade of the bbc the other day, various staff and household names were stuck either in or out for several hours and tweeted as such.The protest was about the BBC's complete inability to make it a serious issue - when the IPCC report came out it was all 'scientists think we may be at serious risk of...' wtf! Anyway the BBC completely failed to cover the protest in any shape or form - I only found out about it on the guardian. Shocking!

Adult - yeah I saw your post. I'm a bit in a opposite quandry because husband doesn't want to fly anymore, I am not quite at that point, certainly we should fly less but I tbh I like my warm weather hols too much and feel the kids benefit from holidays in places that are probably too far to drive/train to. Totally get that it's a bit hypocritical but I am doing my bit in other ways. Specifically husband and I want to get our kids' school involved somehow but we're currently mulling the best way to engage with the HT. I think engaging the younger generation is the best hope we have atm.

You are invited to Friends of the Earth's campaign planning meeting with Chris Saltmarsh of the national student campaign People and Planet, this coming Wednesday

13 February 7.30 at
Friends Meeting House
77 Church Crescent
Muswell Hill N10 3NE

43 or 134 bus from Archway/Highgate, or from Friern Barnet

Chris co-wrote a good article about People and Planet’s climate campaign asking Barclays to switch its investments away from harmful fossil fuels: theecologist.org/2018/dec/17/banks-can-ditch-all-fossil-fuels-heres-how-writes-chrissaltmarsh

He has also recently written about the school climate strikes, inspired by the remarkable Swedish sixteen year-old Greta Thunberg:

We urgently need progress to reduce the severity of climate breakdown.
Among the other issues we will discuss on Wednesday are

a proposal for a campaign against single use coffee cups, and for cafes to refill water bottles (to be considered in the light of the plans of Plastic-free Haringey).

Tim Root
Co-ordinator, Muswell Hill & Hornsey Friends of the Earth
[email protected]

I realise I am responding to a post from a month ago, and I don’t mean this to be judgemental, just a statement of fact:

@Frazzled2207, I suspect most people are not doing much exactly due to that line of reasoning. “I like my warm weather hols too much”, “the kids probably benefit “, “I like meat/clothes/gadgets/whatever too much” etc.

It’s not easy for sure. Once people have something that feels good, it’s very hard to relinquish that voluntarily. Hence the shit that we are in.

I am not casting stones, indeed we are considering a long haul flight with the family to visit a friend in a beautiful location, and treating it as a once in a lifetime thing (though we could afford more). Just observing a depressing fact.

(BTW the Eurostar runs to warm-weather Southern France... just in case ;) )

Just discovered the climate change section on mumsnet! Thanks WonkySwan. I will order the book.

Has anyone on here discovered the Positive Deep Adaptation stuff about imminent climate change by prof Jem Bendall? I'm on page 21 of his 36 page paper, partly because it's a bit dry and academic but mostly because I'm having to take a breather of a few days to get my head round it between reads (and cry into a cushion). The paper is here if anyone is interested. And there's a FB group.

BTW the Eurostar runs to warm-weather Southern France... just in case ;)

They do... but we are paying around 400€ for a family of four to fly Lyon to Edinburgh (2.5hrs) return this summer. I looked at the train option: (21 hours) £440 for ONE adult, we’d be looking at least £1500 for the four of us! That’s three+ times the cost of flying, and 10 times the travel time.

I just found this thread - I’m not sure about buying the book but definitely up for discussion of what people can do! For example there’s a big event in London next Wednesday lobbying MPs (Google Climate Coalition to find it) and there’s transport organised from some other parts of the country. Shame this section of Mumsnet is a bit quiet...

STRIKES, REBELLION? WHICH WAY NOW TO SAVE OUR CLIMATE?

You are invited to discussion with speakers

Macsen Brown, UK Student Climate Network

and

Max Wakefield, Campaign Director, 10:10

Thursday 24 October 7.30 PM

at Muswell Hill Methodist Church

28 Pages Lane
London N10 1PP

134 bus or 43 bus from Muswell Hill Broadway

Tim Root
Co-ordinator, Muswell Hill & Hornsey Friends of the Earth
[email protected]
07726 793265

Resurrecting this in the (active) hope there are still people following! I’m reading the book now and have started getting involved with XR and the COP26 Coalition as well as small changes in my own life (renewable energy supplier), limiting journeys, buying less. Would love to connect with like minded people. I still feel like no one around me is even remotely interested!

Hello. This looks like an old thread and there has been a pandemic since it started but wondering if anyone is out there?

Hi Sdra. I can see you are a newbie. I haven’t read the book but saw the documentary about Greta and just felt gutted at the part on the boat where she is weighed down by the responsibility. It should be adults and leaders taking responsibility (she is an adult now but shouldn’t literally have the weight of the world on her shoulders at her age). Any way it galvanised me (again) to take more action. We do our best but there is more we can do.