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Saturday 21 September 2019

Ten lessons for young climate activists

1. More layers
Don't keep turning the thermostat up when wearing just a tee shirt. We're saving the planet at that 18° setting. Put on more layers.

2. Plastics
Look for well-made clothes fashioned from linen, wool, cotton or even hemp. The other stuff - stretchy, spangly, fleecy, non-crease - is made from plastics or oil-derived synthetics. Don't keep buying new cheap throw-way stuff from Asos and suchlike - you're either serious about the planet or about Instagram. And learn to darn your socks and sew buttons - if your grandfather can do it so can you

3. Lights
When you leave a room, turn the light off. When you leave a room unoccupied for any length of time, turn the radiator off or down to the lowest setting. Don't leave stuff on 'standby'. Dont leave chargers on all the time.

4. Shoes
Cheap glued Chinese and Asian shoes and trainers made from plastics, synthetic rubbers and oil-derived fabrics that last only a few months are killing the planet and choking landfill. Invest in well-made long-lasting footwear from UK makers - leather for preference.

5. Coffee
We know you don't like Starbucks any more, but Costa and the fake-brand 'artisan' chains owned by big-name global corporates are just as bad. Make your coffee at home, take a thermos and donate £9 a day to a climate change charity instead

6. Reuse and recycle
This doesn't mean just chucking stuff into the right bin but not chucking stuff away at all. Why does everything have to be new? What's wrong with your old phone that we need to poison the world with rare-earth cyanides and enslave children in Asian factories just so you can have a new one every year?

7. Walk and take the bus
Your parents are not free Uber. Maybe if you didn't keep treating them like it they wouldn't need that huge SUV in the drive. Walk. Take the bus. Lose a few pounds.

8. Help with the vegetable patch
A little help tilling and weeding the veg patch wouldn't come amiss. You're missing just how much growing our own French beans for the freezer saves the planet. And ditch avocados. Where do you imagine they come from? Somerset? Learn to love courgettes.

9. Forget Festivals
Don't even think about Glastonbury. It's not the fact that you throw away 80,000 plastic tents each year and create 5,000 tonnes of unrecyclable landfill waste but your travel carbon costs are killing the planet - fan travel costs make up 80% - 90% and performer travel costs the balance. And we're talking 10,000 tonnes of CO2 in total for Glasto.

10. Copy your grandparents
 Remember, your grandparents were saving the planet long before you were born. Brewing their own beer, making and mending their own clothes, keeping hens, growing food, making jam and cycling and trips in their old 2CV. You may be surprised that they regard you as an insufferable self-absorbed eco-lout trashing finite resources who talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk. 

Avocados are not grown here

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

VERY good post. Sadly I think your reading demographic already do most of this, and those that should won't be reading it.

Ah well, at least this didn't use paper and ink.

Stephen J said...

That is nowhere near whimsey Raedwald.

These ignorant watermelons are a dangerous negative force, if any of us ever thought that video's or video games were an unhealthy influence on kids in the 90's and 00's, we never imagined what could be coming down the line in the form of Thunberg's parents and other delinquents.

JPM said...

Yes, that's fair advice for everyone, not just for the "concerned", Raedwald.

Charles said...

I still have a leather numo jacket that I acquired in South Africa 40 years ago. They were issued to miners returning to the surface and a probable 30 degree temperature drop. It is bullet proof suede, a leather version of a donkey jacket. Funny that high vis replaced the donkey jacket, you don’t see them on the high street these days. I had a donkey jacket as well for digging in the garden and cycling but it wore out.

As a Somerset resident I can confirm that there are no avocados here. I did find a hidden base of climate extinction in Glastonbury, so no surprise there then.

I do like modern fabrics in the right place. Does anyone remember walking in old fashioned unbreathable waterproof coats? You got soaked. Similarly a modern pair of waders means that I can spend a day in a river up to my waist and come out warm and dry. The fact there are no salmon to catch is as good a warning as anything else that things are not well. Whether it is climate change, or over exploitation and the poisoning of rivers and lochs with under regulated salmon farming something is amiss.

The problem with the whole climate strike movement is that it is fuelled by emotion, very few people are looking at the money behind this. If you look at the amount of money that will be spent, or wasted, on green technology it is mind boggling. There are multimillionaires who have been created by govt subsidies on wind farms.

Raedwald said...

Charles - I'm with you. I've still got my indestructable Guy Cotten Rosbras wet weather gear and am still using a synthetic fleece that was old when I was wearing it to antifoul when listening live to Prince William's wedding on the radio. And of course we need wellies. It's longevity really rather than a strict rule on materials I think.

JPM said...

We grow our own too, but end up giving much of it away. I have got fed up with some of it, notably French beans and courgettes, with which you get particularly swamped.

Mange tout, sugar snap peas, broccoli and ordinary runner beans picked very young are more lasting in interest to the palate, we find, and you can spread the cropping quite easily.

My favourites are the beans though, left to mature into plump seeds, which make fantastic chilli and will store dry.

Billy Marlene said...

Recently read, but bears repeating.......

Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men
and, weak men create hard times.

John Brown said...

Good article.

With regard to reuse and recycle I believe that every council should provide an/a area/location where “stuff” can be left (from pieces of leftover wood to unwanted consumer items) and from which anyone can come to collect free of any charges, rather than simply providing large bins where everything goes straight to the landfill.

Back in the early seventies I found a dump where this was feasible and I was able to obtain very useable pieces of furniture in the days when I simply could not afford to buy such items.

In the end, however, more important than how people live will be how many people are trying to live on our planet.

Mr Ecks said...



The well-off leftist indoctrinated young shite that infest the UK aren't going to do any of that Radders.

Their phones should have been confiscated from them yesterday and smashed in front of their eyes, As a demo of their new lives to come under the Marxist tyranny their greenfreak cockrot is a cover for.

Dave_G said...


We recycle/up-cycle just about everything and are installing a poly tunnel to supplement our fruit growing but when I see those gullible idiots protesting on a subject they are clearly misled/ignorant about I want to go out and put a brick on the accelerator of my 3 litre 4x4.....

I wonder how many youngsters (or even adults) are having anxiety/stress issues over the constant alarmist stance propagated by the BBC et al (including places of education) and when the inevitable legal case is raised as is the usual path for those type of rent seekers to seek reimbursement instead of gainful employment.....

The more I research solar cycles and see their influence on sea level, temperature, cloud cover, seasons etc the more convinced I (and everyone else should be) find myself that the whole 'man made' side of the argument is total hogwash.

Try looking it up yourself sometime if you're of the 'man-is-to-blame' persuasion.

Dave_G said...


@John Brown 09:47 - local recycling centres used to allow this but due to (probably, but I can't confirm this) EU regulations (or simply local Government regs) you need to have a LICENCE to take stuff away!

I could recycle masses of electrical, electronic and motorised stuff I see 'junked' (it makes me want to weep) but have been told I can't take anything due to 'recycling rules'......

Stephen J said...

@Dave_G: Good comments sir. Regarding your final comment regarding the "man made" side of the argument, I have learned recently that most of it is genuinely man-made.

But what is it that we are talking about? Well, it is what we can see, and my eyes were really opened by the work done by the Zimbabwean politician/farmer/environmentalist Dr. Allan Savory. I might have posted a video by him before, but anyway if Raedwald does not object: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7pI7IYaJLI add planned management as a discipline for farmers across the planet, and much of the desertification that we see will be reversed.

The rain forests are not that good at recycling carbon dioxide, since like old people, they are not all that active and breathe much less heavily than young trees. So paradoxically, accidental fires caused by lightning or the concentration of sunlight with a natural lens of some sort, is actually of benefit to the forest, since the burned trees make way for new growth. Where it is planned, the local who did it is probably planning to grow other crops in place of those old trees. We European did this in days of yore, and I don't remember South Americans throwing their toys out of their collective pram.

We need to face the truth, the whole shooting match is aimed at converting normal clever young kids into thick socialists with a green patina, and nothing more. It is cynical and it is rather sick, considering we are paying the corrupters of our youth to educate or entertain them... Not ruin their lives.

Anonymous said...

My grandad had an allotment - they were behind the Sweet Home Inn, which is on the Ringwood Road on the way out of Poole. Before the war Grandad helped build Blandford Camp for the Royal Corps of Signals. When war broke out the Ministry of Labour sent him to work at Supermarine and after six months training he was put to work making wings for the Spitfire. Get this, he cycled all the way from Poole to Southampton every Sunday afternoon to be at work on Monday after cycling home from Hamble every Saturday lunchtime. For two years he worked 70 hours a week on those wings. Almost killed him as his lungs were already shot from working down the pit from age 12. That's why he wasn't called up to fight. He loved the allotment as it helped feed his four children throughout the war. He died at home after the war ended and the Doctor said to my Nan "your husband was completely exhausted Mary".

Steve

Anonymous said...

wonderful stuff Radders and Stop buying/ drinking plastic BOTTLED WATER!

try living, tell the kids to, live in a tent at the bottom of the garden for a couple of winters nights.

Smoking Scot said...

There's definitely a problem with waste disposal in the Dominican Republic.

https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=uPSJu_1569039579

And a similar thing happened in Japan following that infamous tsunami, however that included vehicles.

m davies said...

John Brown 09:47

Quite a number of years ago now, in Edmonton, Canada, I was visiting friends and in their back lane, at the back of most houses, were items that were left out for anyone to take and use. A great idea that should have taken on over here by now. Unfortunately, ...

Span Ows said...

There's more than a few memes about this too. Walking, re-using, hand-me-downs (often more than once), darned socks, washing nappies, using scary hot yellow ball in sky to dry clothes, minimal plane travel, a fraction of the car travel, reused (many many MANY times) non-plastic shopping bags, using bikes for daily chores and travel (i.e. not as 'fitness' exercise) etc.

Pat said...

Since these young people already know it all, it's obviously stupid that they attend school.
Lower the school leaving age to 12 and let's get them out in the world giving us the benefit of their talent. At the same time we would free up a lot of teachers who are clearly wasting their time and get them doing something useful.

JPM said...

VEGETABLE gardeners are pleading with Britain to please, for the love of sweet Jesus Christ on a bike, take some of these courgettes.

Jane Thomson, said: “You have to take them. Oh god, please. I’ll send your kids to private school. Just f*cking take them.

“If you don’t I’ll have to turn my kitchen into a factory-sized production line for whatever the f*ck you’re supposed to make out of courgettes. Courgette jam? I don’t even like courgettes.

“What the f*ck am I doing with my life?

“It’s ironic really because I bet in France, or somewhere, they’ve got too many peaches. And they might like our courgettes. We could swap them.

“If only there was an organised way of trading things easily with other countries in Europe. If anyone thinks of one, can they let me know?”

(With acknowledgements)

Raedwald said...

yeah. Trucking courgettes to the south of France in big diesel belching 40-tonners choking the roads. What a brilliant idea.

Stephen J said...

I have never had a surfeit of courgettes.

They are what I call "fridge food", they look nice but taste of nothing, so there they sit.

The answer is to resist the urge to plant them, try to think about something else...

I know it is difficult, since you have resisted all attempts at reasoning so far cheesy, so the omens are not good.

JPM said...

It was, er, a joke, like, Raedwald.

Charles said...

I did not plant courgettes this year, I was liberated. Ironic because I finally found something to do with them. If you put chicken thighs on a roasting rack, then put sliced courgettes under them before roasting in the oven, all the juice from the chicken soaks into the courgettes while the steam from the courgettes keeps things from getting too dry. Very nice, I will plant one seed next year.

fnord said...

I was told of a small town somewhere in New England so crime free that no one locked their car doors.
Except for harvest season, where if you did not take that precaution you would come back to your car and find a peck of courgettes on your seat.