All down to man-made climate change and this is very sadly just the start… I don’t hold much hope for big changes from #cop26 if the biggest decider is down to GDP vs the climate. We need to change the system of measurement now.
Tag: environment
No mushy middle for Ben & Jerrys
At the intersection of activism and confectionary delight is none other than Ben & Jerry’s. The company has stood up for everything from climate change to same sex marriage to Black lives matter and defunding the police. And in June 2020, the brand took a bold stance against white supremacy, proving that in business, silence is no longer an option.
Ben & Jerry have been consistently amazing with their support for many things from climate change to systematic racism. I do wish more companies would learn from them examples. It can easily dismissed as PR in glance but their consistently is the key.
The continuous ability to be better is something which I see is missing in many places. The status-quo must be challenged and Ben & Jerrys are all about this.
On trying Oatmilk…
Independent of the advertising push to stop dad from buying milk (I think its only just started), During the covid19 lockdown’s, I have been trying things which could make me ill.
This time I thought it was time to try the alternatives to milk. Rice, Oat and Hemp milk? (obviously not Coconut, Pea, Cashew, Soya, Almond, etc) Now to be honest I don’t drink much milk, and when I do it use to be skimmed milk or semi-skinned with a bit of water. I also only add milk to cereal (I tried using water and orange juice).
I don’t really like milk, ever since we had to drink it at primary/junior school. Remember tasting whole milk and feeling so sick. Anyway I added Oatly to my monthly online shop and today tried it with some Wetabix minis.
The colour was a little off white but thats fine, when I actually tasted it. I was very surprised how sweet it was. The important part is there was no gag from the milk taste, I didn’t feel ill like I sometimes feel with milk but I also wouldn’t want to drink too much of it.
In short I would drink it any more than I drink Milk right now. However I will switch to Oat if Rice or Hemp milk are not any better. Be great if I could get a half a litre instead of a litre. I would also give it a try in a mocha coffee, as I can imagine that working well. Maybe I could also finally get my Matcha tea latte going at home.
So in short its better than milk but I need to give Rice milk a try too.
The pandemic is just the start
I have been looking at the brighter side of things but also been pragmatically thinking about the future.
Its been a while since I heard from Noam Chomsky and this speech with additional footage is powerful I have been thinking a lot about the near future beyond this pandemic.
First of all, I do think we are talking about a long run on covid19, I suspect it will be Q3-4 when the vaccines actually become available to everyday people (people who are not at high risk, on the front line or anything like that). Pinning our hopes on things going back to the old normal is not going to happen. Heck even my mum the other day said this to me on our last family call! We already prepared ourselves to not spend the festive season together.
The festival season also brings to the UK, the harsh ramifications of Brexit. Something a lot people have blocked out of their mind as they focus on Covid19. Don’t even get me started about the this as its deeply upsetting and really encourages me to just leave this country.
However as Noam talks about in his speech, the elephants in the room (I would say blackswans but they are not because we are very aware of these, or at least we should be!).
- Global nuclear war
- Environmental collapse
Its clear if Trump wins another term as president of America, the countdown to both global nuclear war and environmental collapse will be so much closer than we can imagine. The election is a concern for many reasons but nuclear war and environmental collapse is something we should all be aware and thinking about; and I don’t mean disappearing into our escape pods.
We already passed the point of no environmental change but we are actively increasing accelerating things including future pandemics. Imagine pandemics are simply a side-effect of our environmental impact. That I feel gives it the real scope of the challenge in front of us.
This can all be a harsh reality kick in the teeth. But honestly see it as a kick up the ass for us all. Together we can do it but we all have to acknowledge the reality and look beyond the current pandemic.
Civilization is falling apart?
I like a lot of what Umair Haque writes but this one titled 2020 is a Warning That Our Civilization is Beginning to Fall Apart. I will be frank is pretty terrifying. I say terrifying not from a fear point of view although its pretty scary for that. Almost all the points Umair makes, I find it very difficult to counter them in any reasonable way.
While the pandemic raged, much of Asia flooded. The West didn’t take much notice — even though China’s largest dam is now at it’s limits. And yet the megafloods Asia just experienced are just like megafires — natural phenomena that are getting worse on a seasonal, yearly cycle. Within a decade or two, these floods will also threaten habitability.
“Habitability,” by the way, is a polite, anodyne way to say: the ongoing survival of countries, cities, societies, economies. Whole gigantic chunks of our civilization are going to simply melt away like the arctic ice.
Sadly he’s very right… During the Covid19 pandemic, I have been thinking a lot about the environment as we should be. Its all very tighltly interlinked together.
Are you beginning to get what I mean by “accelerating pulsation of disaster” yet? As we head into the age of catastrophe, a new range of calamities will become our dismal new normal. They’ll recur, in cycles. Only each time the cycle spins, they’ll get worse and worse. Megafires, megafloods, pandemics, extinctions.
Take another example: Covid. Covid isn’t an anomaly — it’s part of a trend. SARS, bad, MERS, worse, and Covid, world-changing. Many virologists were expecting a respiratory Coronavirus pandemic precisely because such a thing has been on the cards for the last two or three decades now, as respiratory Coronaviruses have gotten more widespread, become wider-spreading pandemics faster.
What’s the cycle of pandemic? It’s not a seasonal cycle, like flood or fire. It’s something more like — at least if take SARS and MERS as pointers — something more like a decadal cycle: every decade or so, a new respiratory virus has emerged. A decade or so from now, it’s probably likely we’ll be hit by another pandemic. Will it be worse than this one? If recent history’s any indication, yes.
His lasting point is strong and draws lot for us to think/reflect on.
Our World War, our moonshot? It’s saving human civilization.
And the problem is that while your gut knows exactly what I’m talking about, your brain’s still disputing it, because all this is outside the current range of human experience. And yet the megafires burn, while the megafloods pour, while the pandemic rages, while the planet burns, the ice melts, the animals die off, while the lungs and limbs of life itself choke and grow feeble — and all that is only going to get worse, year by year, decade upon decade.
This is not a drill, my friends. It’s time to stop acting like it is, burying our pretty vacant little heads in Netflix-and-chill and Instagram envy and the latest gender pronoun and Fakebook friends. That’s all, history will rightly say, garbage for the human mind and spirit. This is it. We’re not going to get another chance.
Its extremely sobering to read and worth it even if it doesn’t offer any strong solutions