Feminism and Climate Change

[ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving]

I've been thinking a lot about climate change recently with all the Xr protests going on. Call me naive but I really didn't realise things were that bad. I mean, I knew they were bad, but I thought we were on track to fix it. I thought we had time to fanny around with recycling and reusable coffee cups. Reading the Xr website and seeing the phrase "mass extinction event" used over and over really got to me. I thought things were going in the right direction, but it turns out we're at ground zero. My own fault for having my head in the sand and not looking deeper into it. Anyway, I was thinking about the ways this all intersects with feminism:

1. Reproductive rights . Clearly over population is a big problem here. On the one hand, increasing access to abortion, contraception, and sex education helps with this. But any attempts to limit population growth in a more active way, such as through legislation, will necessarily infringe on women's rights. China's "single child" policy is an obvious example of this, with it's double effect of not only controlling women's reproduction but also increasing sex selective abortions/ the murder of female infants.

1. Consumerism . Rightly or wrongly, when it comes to things like food shopping, gift buying, and fashion, women have a lot more consumer power than man. Obviously this ties into patriarchal expectations such as women being "just better" at gift buying, women doing the food shop because they're SAHPs, and pressure on women to wear the last fashion which lead to the rise of cheap "fast fashion" like Primark. Under patriarchy we earn less of the money, but in many ways have a lot more say in how it's spent.

1. Unpaid labour . A lot of the stuff we're encouraged to do at an individual level to halt CC comes down to an increase in unpaid labour. Off the top of my head this includes sorting and cleaning things to be recycled, washing reusable nappies, researching and buying eco friendly products, and taking longer over cleaning jobs from using less effective but greener cleaning products. This increase in labour disproportionately affects women.

1. Politics . The main green political party in this country has aligned itself against women and alienated thousands of it's female voters. Women are being excluded from women only short lists. The ability of girls to participate fully in education is being reduced. We are seeing first hand how poorly female activists are treated by the police. In short, climate change activism and feminism have a large cross over, and in many ways a lot of the power for change is in female hands, but women are being excluded at a political and social level, and being discouraged from activism. We need more power but even the small amount we have is being taken from us.

So, those were my thoughts so far. How do we re-engage women in green politics? How do we make the changes that we need to make as a society when many of those changes will disproportionately disadvantage women? How do we balance our fight for women's rights with our desire to not go extinct?

"Those who understand this stuff tell me what we want is population density - lots of people in well-designed apartments close to each other. Then forests around that."

This is a complicated question. In a city, yes, density is desirable to some extent, though you do have material limits. What it should look like is something more like what you would see in older dense cities. The modern towers approach tends to require things like air conditioning, elevators, and most glass towers don't hold heat very well. There is also a lot to be said for having green spaces and allotments and such available to people.

Once cities get larger though, they run into other kinds of problems - they tend to need more transport infrastructure for example, more complex waste management needs. Suburbs in large cities can be proportionally quite large. I many ways, the most efficient size for a city is probably closer to a town, the kind of place that is big enough to have some density and lots of different kinds of businesses and people, but small enough that you could walk to most places as well.

City-oriented people though often just miss out on the need for rural areas. The idea that we can just have cities and the wild areas is not really a possible thing.

That woo stuff would only be a distraction anyway, even were it not for your succinct summary that:

"So, to conclude, just because a yoga teacher talks about nurturing and feminine empowerment and just because they appear to be caring and spiritual doesn't mean that they are not connected to a network of criminals and predators."

Again, note that women are just consumers here.

Women are just consumers apart from the feminists working in an anti-trafficking charity who, even after being warned repeatedly, exposed trafficked women to risk of exploitation via a tantric / kundalini yoga cult with a long and demonstrable history of abuses against women.

Women are just consumers apart from the ones who get caught up in cults and become recruiters for said cults

Women are not just consumers, not by a long shot

They may however, be ignorant / brainwashed / deluded / useful idiots - I'll grant you that much

The woo is not just a distraction, it is an indicator of criminality and exploitation. You have to learn about it if you want to understand the modus operandi of the criminals that use woo to enslave and exploit vulnerable people.

@LangCleg you are wrong. If 50% of the population did the same it would make a huge difference. Everybody who starts acting in a more environmentally friendly way influences others to do the same. It is all the small streams that end up creating the large river. If half the little streams of pollution die out, the river of pollution will be smaller. "Think Globally, Act locally" really works.

On another note. I don't understand why people think that it is more expensive to live environmentally friendly. I mean, sure organic food cost more but: The bamboo toothbrushes cost less than we used to pay for the plastic ones and we didn't buy the expensive plastic tooth brushes. We bougth one kilo of washing nuts for £8 two years ago and are still using the nuts from that bag. The washing powder we used to buy also cost £8 per kilo and we used a kilo or month or more. I use a moon cups that cost £9 for two and I get less blood on my clothes now I am using a moon cup instead of sanitary towels.

Mumminmum what is your pension fund invested in though?

Pensions is another interesting facet of this. The pension gap between the sexes is crazy, men retire with something like 5 times greater pensions than women. In terms of where and how our pensions are invested, we have a way smaller financial stake.

I am a proud feminist and environmentalist. The environment is a far bigger concern to me and, I think, should be to everyone.

I agree with many of the points about how being eco friendly is more labour intensive and so I have come to the difficult conclusion that, where possible and affordable, it does make sense for someone not to work and to stay at home - gardening, cooking, washing, mending.

It could be the woman or the man that does this. I can see how our current systems and childbirth may make the woman the default position and so this needs to be worked upon.

But at the end of the day I’d rather have my grandma's life and feel confident about the future of the planet for my children. Having equal pay is going to mean bugger all when there are no insects left.

I also don’t find being environmentally friendly that ‘hard’ or expensive. I no longer fly and really enjoy my UK breaks. My electricity bills are cheaper with a green provider. I have no desire to spend my money on things unless I really need them and so I make huge savings there. My food and cleaning products are ever so slightly more expensive but I am SO much healthier now I cook things from scratch.

A lot of the ‘labour’ has benefits too - for example I go to a series of high street shops rather than an online delivery - green grocer, cheese shop (my baby eats dairy), charity shops for clothes and it is honestly fun taking my time and chatting to people! I’ve learned loads about cooking and gardening.

We are by no means rolling in it - our lives are just simpler and not full of ‘stuff’.

I've ditched the Green Party as well. I just cannot understand how a party supposedly about the UK environment doesn't have a policy supporting lower population growth with an aim for stability. There isn't one environmental benefit to the UK of a quarter of a million additional people here every year. I just can't get over the lack of joined up thinking on this. Everyone who disagrees with me tells me it's crucial for the economy, stupid, but that's the whole problem as mentioned upthread. Growing or maintaining GDP at literally any cost including to our environment.

Anyone remember Swampy and the rows over bypasses? Back then there was plenty of discussion of population and overdevelopment of our country. Then it curiously vanished, replaced by vilification of anyone who questioned the quintupling of net immigration. It used to be 'stop tarmacing over the countryside!'. Now it's 'build more houses!'. We cannot have it both ways.

Who remembers when after a long journey their car windscreen used to be covered in splatted bugs? Never really happens now. There is a reason for that.

yy to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

Being environmentally friendly is, IME, more expensive. There are heck of a lot of things people can do that may save money long term, but the initial costs are prohibitive. Energy efficient appliances, cars, access to things like solar power, locally grown food is often more expensive, more so if it's done using sustainable methods. Housing, which is often the greatest expense people have, is often significantly higher in walkable areas or where a lot of jobs are nearby. New clothing made sustainably is usually very expensive, and even just clothes made to last, especially shoes, can be very costly.

A lot of consumer goods that are supposedly environmentally friendly are not really better, or much better, and most can be done without, but even then cheap plastic versions of things like kids toys are often affordable to people when other things aren't.

It's not the upper middle classes I see doing most of their shopping at Dollarama type shops. I'm better off than most of the people I see there, but I still have to make a lot of choices about where I can best spend the money I have - a lot of things on that list I can't really even think about.

It depends. Lots of locally grown veg such as carrots and swede are very cheap. It is how people used to eat. But it is more boring food wise.

"Back then there was plenty of discussion of population and overdevelopment of our country. Then it curiously vanished, replaced by vilification of anyone who questioned the quintupling of net immigration. It used to be 'stop tarmacing over the countryside!'. Now it's 'build more houses!'. We cannot have it both ways. "

I think this has been a really significant feature of the shift in politics. There clearly are some real questions about population control that raise ethical concerns, so I'd always expect it to be a complex subject, but it was at one time almost taken for granted on the left, and among traditional conservatives, that movement of capital and labour had significant downsides. Globalisation was about the elite benefiting from the ability to move these around internationally and so exploit circumstances. Control of immigration and trade were seen as valid tools for protection of workers, the environment, and local business and industry.

Now, on the other hand, we are told these are ideas that belong on the extreme right, no leftist would ever contemplate them, and obviously they are nutty. I've wondered at times if things like Trump and Brexit weren't engineered by neoliberals in order to discredit the traditional tools of the left.

"It depends. Lots of locally grown veg such as carrots and swede are very cheap. It is how people used to eat. But it is more boring food wise."

Yes, I think people will end up returning to that kind of cooking, but for now, I don't think it even occurs to many. For anyone who is trying to be vegan it would probably be very difficult as well.

I was just responding to the poster saying that eating seasonal locally growing veg is more expensive, it is not. I used to go to a local fruit and veg stall frequented by many very poor people. It only really sold seasonal grown local veg and a few exceptions such as french apples and bananas. There was lots of types of fruit and veg I simply never ate. But what I bought was very cheap, much cheaper than supermarket veg.
Growing up I remember shops selling carrots, swedes, parsnips, apples,bananas, satsumas and oranges in season, cabbage, pears, basic salad items and not a great deal more. I loved it when you could finally buy lots of imported fruit and veg. But no doubt it is much worse for the environment.
I also remember buying ice cream in cardboard, rather than plastic tubs. Disposable wipes of any kind did not exist, and disposable nappies were expensive so most people used them only when they were out for the day. Fruit and veg was all loose, and people owned fewer clothes. People also had far less paid for entertainment, and rarely ate out.
But a lot of people's expectations were simpler then.
Although I support anything to tackle climate change, I am very cynical about it. As most people could not imagine reducing their consumption levels to those of people of 50 years ago in Britain. This is not a long time ago, and yet living like that will seem unimaginable to a lot of people.
And I know 50 years ago the older generation thought consumption had risen a lot from their days and there was too much waste.

I am really doubtful that it's easy to find local sustainably grown veg for the same price as the supermarket in most places.
I can buy some local things here more cheaply, mainly apples, turnip, potatoes, carrots, blueberries. Tomatoes and cucumbers and greens are reasonable in season,

However, they will be conventionally grown on a regular industrial farm. Which is better than imported, but not sustainable. For sustainable veg it means a small farm and it will be more expensive that what I can get at the supermarket. It's also farther away from most places poor people live.
We do have a food bus that sells bags of fairly cheap local veg in poor neighbourhoods now, which is great. They are still conventionally grown.
Meat, fats and grains, grown locally, are expensive. It can be cheaper if you can buy in bulk, but that runs in to the problem of limited up front cash and space.

If you are talking about organic veg that is true. I am curious though what you mean by sustainable..

There are a couple of definitions of «sustainability» that I was taught, but it’s still an ill defined and contested term.

«Meeting thé needs of our generation, without impacting the ability of future generations to meet theirs»

«To be sustainable, any decision or action has to take account equally of the environmental, economic and social impacts - the triple bottom line». Regarding this latter one, we have for many years largely ignored the environmental costs (and expected natural systems to somehow absorb the impacts forever), we’ve paid some attention to social costs (but not enough): the economic cost / benefit of any decision is by far the most significant and often the only That’s capitalism for ya’!

We have never been forced to internalise the financial costs of, basically, chucking lots of crap (resulting from industry, farming, manufacturing, power generation etc etc etc) into rivers / oceans / atmosphere / soil and the impact on other species (many of whom we depend on) and their habitats. The price we pay for food, goods, infrastructure, services, housing, transport and travel - you name it - has never included the true cost to the environment. So we’ve galloped ahead, ignored the environmental impacts and improved our collective standard of living to the point where we’re looking at a population peak of 11 billion? 11 billion people to feed, house, educate, care for, provide jobs and hobbies and transport for? Eating organic veggies and using cloth bags is not going to cut it.

I don’t often agree with George Monbiot but I think he’s finally getting off his high horse and catching on to the scale of this. No solutions though.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/25/capitalism-economic-system-survival-earth?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

For anyone who is trying to be vegan it would probably be very difficult as well.

It’s not at all. Family of vegans, and we practice aspects of frugal living as well as eco friendly living also, since doing so we have saved literally thousands. I haven’t found living this way more expensive, quite the opposite. My teenager isn’t as eco conscious as us but within our household we are.

And (last rant I promise - I am aware we’re rather far from a feminist focus now) the reason why I believe that the little individual changes amount to nothing is that everything is implicated, way beyond those small individual changes.

You decide to cycle to work rather than drive? Great, that’s a green choice. But you want a road / path / bridge to cycle on?(aggregate mining, oil-derived construction products, transport of materials by road, construction using heavy machinery /fuel - all of which had to be produced somewhere). Oh no - you’ve fallen off your bike and hurt your wrist! Maybe it’s broken.. so off to the new hospital (extraction and transport of all building materials including but not limited to: concrete (lots of it), multiple products derived from oil / plastics, rubber, sand, aggregates (both often extracted from rivers), etc etc - all of which is brought to the site by road / truck ). You get your wrist fixed up but decide to go home for the day. You go in, fill the kettle (bought from Amazon, metal, rubber and plastic parts) at the tap (miles and miles of concrete pipes, large scale treatment and purification plant) switch it on (electricity supply infrastructure - metal pylons and plastic coated cables, raw materials extracted, transformed and transported) and make a cup of organic, Fair Trade Tea. You take milk, so off to the fridge (powered by electricity, constructed largely of plastic, foam etc). You see where I’m going?

The companies who build roads, hospitals, electricity and water infrastructure and homes have never been made to internalise the environmental costs of doing so (beyond the fairly basic laws we have - mostly relating to pollution). Initially, this was down to ignorance and believing that resources and the planets ability to absorb waste was infinite. Now we know it’s not - but we have got used to getting infrastructure and services at a price which does not reflect the true cost. And unlike fridges and kettles and tea, where presumably a truly sustainable equivalent could be designed, the consumer doesn’t get to choose which companies provide us with all the above. It’s governments that do this. And as long as we are depending on commercial interests to provide all the above, we will be operating in a capitalist market where we pay the market price for services. Sure, some big construction company could come up with a quote to build a new hospital that includes all the environmental costs (or at least some $€£ equivalent) but it’s going to be far more expensive than those that don’t - and somebody has to pay that cost. Again, that’s capitalism for you.

Now multiply the above scenario across everything we do, and project it across the world. Because those of us with access to water, electricity, gas, roads, bridges, houses, hospitals, etc want to keep it. And those that don’t have these things? They want them - and who are we to pull up the drawbridge.

Organic carrots and bamboo toothbrushes are not going to cut it.

BogstandardBelle
Entirely agree, small things matter but are not an answer. We keep crossing our fingers for technological fixes but there's no overall plan. The longer we leave it the more likely the tech fixes will be insane geoengineering.
Already nuclear fuel is the best option for energy. 'It's the economy stupid', environmentally it's built on the wrong incentives. The market is not rational.

I’m hearing a lot of excuses to continue living life the way it is and to deflect responsibility to government. Both individual and government responses are necessary. To suggest consumers using less is inconsequential is, to me, just not accurate. Yes it requires volume, enough people making those changes to make a difference.

As Jessica says, there's not much use deflecting responsibility to government, no one is coming to save us, they cannot save themselves and that goes for the governments gone before too. We have all known about climate changes for decades. It's not a secret and it's far to late to be twiddling thumbs and playing the blame game. We are ALL responsible and we will all be affected one way or another. Every time we drive or put the washing machine on we are culpable. I'm not saying don't do those thing we all need to get from a to b and have clean clothes in our daily lives but there are things you can do and you can make changes and if you don't we all suffer. It's really that simple.

I'm working more on my carbon footprint now since doing the carbon calculator.

(Sorry if this is a repeat and has been posted before.)

footprint.wwf.org.uk/#/

Even the carbon footprint calculator agrees that you can be as green as you like individually, but unless your government takes action, it is of limited usefulness

_Q: I LIVE A VERY GREEN LIFESTYLE. WHY IS MY FOOTPRINT BIGGER THAN I EXPECTED?
Part of your footprint depends on the policies of the UK government. So for example, if you drive an electric car your footprint may be bigger than you think it should be. This is because the UK’s electricity is not as green as that of some other countries.

In the future when more of the UK’s electricity is generated by solar or wind power, and less from coal, the impact will reduce._

I tried the questionnaire, giving the greenest possible answers for everything (no car, no flights, vegan, recycle everything etc) and it still gives me a footprint of 77%. I personally can't reduce that any more - only the government can. And they'll only do that with pressure from voters... which is the real point of the footprint calculator: it's designed to engage and educate people in a non-threatening, vaguely scientific-but-not-too-complicated way. It's a "fun" way for WWF to get more people on their side and educated about climate change - and supporting WWF as they lobby the government - without scaring them off.

Interesting that they don't ask how many children you have - when not having children is the single highest impact thing that any individual can do in terms of our carbon footprint... but most people going on a family-friendly charity website like WWF don't want to hear that.

Anyway, I'm ducking out. None of us on this thread are on the opposite sides, we just see different ways of getting there. It has been refreshing to discuss this here, rather than the bearpit / complete indifference of AIBU (which I suspect is far more representative of most people in the UK - another reason why individual actions are not going to cut it - sorry sorry stopping now! ;-))

JessicaWakefieldSV
I'm saying the exact opposite of living life the way it is. I'm saying it's governments that have the levers but aren't using them. I have been living frugally my whole life and take full responsibility for my lifestyle and have done for decades.

Bogstandardbelle, some of the old tenant farms that produce local veg were run sustainably. But not many still exist. They are being put out of business by large industrially run farms.

@MissEyre The large part of my pension is placed in a somewhat ethically aware pensions company in my native country: No tobacco, no weapons and no oil. We just found out that they invest in other companies, that invest in tobacco, so now the members have asked them to stop that too. My British pensions company, however, does say that they are considering the ethics of their investments, but it appears to me, they are not as tough on the issue. I didn't have many options, however, as we are not that many people using that pension fund in my company and if we chose another company we would end up paying three times more in fees than we put aside in pensions. It is the pay gap playing a role here.

I do think I have a larger foot print now than I did previously, though, as I take the car to work instead of using my bike or public transportation. But I had trouble finding full time employment and there is no public transport to my current place of work. This is, of course, some of the motivation behind me trying to be extra environmentally friendly in other aspects of my life. My DH did pull a face when I used some cotton yarn from an old blouse to knit kitchen cloths, though. He is used to them now.

They have milk men in our town. I don't really know whether it will be a good idea to switch to buying milk from them or not. On one hand they use glass bottles that are actually recycled, whereas I am not so sure that our plastic bottles get recycled now that China has refused to get plastic refuse from the rest of the world. (Not really sure that I believe that they actually got recycled in China. I think they might just have dumped them in the ocean). On the other hand, I pick up milk when I am in the shop anyway, whereas the milk man doesn't usually appear on my road, so that would be extra car driving.

"It’s not at all. Family of vegans, and we practice aspects of frugal living as well as eco friendly living also, since doing so we have saved literally thousands. I haven’t found living this way more expensive, quite the opposite. My teenager isn’t as eco conscious as us but within our household we are."

Do you manage to eat a vegan, local diet in the winter? You likely have a somewhat better climate than I do for that, my options are similar to one of the Nordic countries. It would certainly be possible to eat that way and a lot of people used to most of the time if they were poor, though the calorie density wouldn't be great. But I think most people these days would find it really limiting.

Even in the UK though, I don't see many vegans doing this - vegan recipes 90% of the time seem chock full of imported foods.

I find that you really don't need to include much animal based food to make a huge difference to a northern diet of that type, and in that kind of climate it's generally quite efficient to have animals incorporated in the agricultural cycle in the levels needed.