Skip to main content

The Lent Guide to Climate Revolution

Is it me, or is Lent a very stealthy season of the year?  I always think I have weeks to work out what I'm going to do, and then it sneaks up on me and bam! there I am cooking pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and wondering if I actually am going to give anything up, and if so, what, when, how and why.

This year, I felt like something to help the environment would be appropriate.  The Tenants of the King Bible study that I'd done back in the autumn had increased my conviction that this was important, but there were a lot of things that I knew I could do and hadn't quite got around to yet.

I'd seen a link to Living Lent, which suggested six challenges.  All of them sounded slightly unachievable.  I didn't want to commit to something that I didn't actually think I could do.

Then, right on Ash Wednesday, The Parents' Guide to Climate Revolution thumped onto my doormat.  A plan started to form.  With some of the ideas from this book, plus some of the things I'd been meaning to do for a while, I would find 40 ways to help make our family more environmentally friendly.  And, of course, blog about it.

The first step was to read the book.

Day 1 and 2

Get and read (quite a lot of) The Parents' Guide to Climate Revolution by Mary DeMocker.  This book definitely met my expectations.  The author clearly cares deeply about what kind of world her kids are inheriting, and has devoted her own and her family's life to making it a better one.  But she also manages to keep a sense of humour and fun, not to mention a fair dose of common sense.  The result is a mix of some obvious ways to make your family green (Plant Trees, Used is Cool) combined with ways to inspire your children (Bring On the Awe, Amplify Kids' Voices) and some things which you wouldn't think were related to climate at all (Bury Your Neighbor's Chicken, and my favourite: Chainsaw the Fence).  On this last one: yes, real saw; yes, real fence; and yes, we are not the only people in the world to make a hole in the fence so that our kids can share their trampoline!




Also Day 2

Make a cape for Theo's World Book Day costume out of an old T-shirt.  In the interests of full disclosure, I did go shopping for yellow material, but couldn't find any.  So Graham kindly let me cut up an old yellow T-shirt, and I got to score at least some brownie points for homemade upcycling.  It's dead easy; there are instructions here, for example.



Day 3

Sign and share a Greenpeace petition to encourage the UK government to pass a strong Environment Bill.  There are always loads of these petitions floating around, and whether the government pays much attention to them, I don't know.  But it takes about 20 seconds, and it might help.  Probably a direct letter helps more, but that's also on my list for another day.

Adjust the heating programme.  It's not super-warm out there any more, but it is generally milder, and I knew we probably didn't need the heating on quite so much.  Just hadn't done anything about it yet.  So this was a good prompt to do it, and save some gas.



Day 4

Start a plastic audit.  I've recruited the rest of the family for this one.  We're putting all of the plastic that we'd normally throw away in a separate bin this week.  Next weekend, we'll look through and see where most of our plastic waste comes from, and whether we can reduce it.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Limestone Way - the end! (for now...)

Bonsall is a pretty little village just up the road from Cromford. It was the centre point for my final Limestone Way walk. First I walked one way, back towards Ible, then I walked the other way to Matlock. I started at the fountain and climbed up to a tree in which a mistle thrush was singing loudly (helpfully identified by the Merlin app). A few fields took me across to the hamlet of Slaley. Then there was a pleasant walk through the woods, which dropped steeply to my left down to the Via Gellia. At Dunsley Springs the stream went right over the edge.  I made my way down more gradually, and then was faced with the long climb up again to the point near Leys Farm where I was rejoining the Limestone Way. Tree down! Rejoining the Limestone Way Once I'd reached the top, it was a very pleasant walk across dry grassy fields. There were signs of old mining activity, which suddenly made the ground feel less solid under my feet - how many holes were hiding under the turf? Back at Bonsall, ...

Limestone Way: Grangemill and Ible

It was getting mistier and mistier. As I drove past Carsington Water, the world around grew dimmer, and when I parked near Brassington, the nearby trees were hazy shadows in the murk. I was glad I was wearing a red coat as I started off along Manystones Lane. At least I had some chance of being visible. Fortunately it was a short road section. I navigated my way across a series of small fields, from one dry stone wall to the next, and crossed the old railway line which is now the High Peak Trail. I could just imagine a steam train emerging out of the fog. The next fields were larger. It was as if the landscape was being sketched around me as I walked across it. A tree or an electricity pylon would appear as a few faint lines, increasing in detail when I got closer, and fading away behind. Up ahead, the land dropped into a huge hole - Longcliffe Quarries. I couldn't see much, but the noise from the machinery dominated the next section of the walk.  I skirted the edge of the quarry a...

Baby Language

For some reason baby equipment is an area in which American English differs markedly from British English. As well as learning how to care for a baby, we had to learn a whole new vocabulary! Fortunately we are now fluently bilingual, and I have compiled a handy US-UK baby dictionary for you. Diaper n. Nappy Mom says if you can read this change my diaper. The first time you change one of these you will be all thumbs and stick the little adhesive tabs to yourself, the baby and probably the changing mat before you get them where they ought to go. A few years later you will be able to lasso a running toddler and change them before they even know what's happened (yes, I have seen it done). You will also get through more diapers than you ever thought possible, creating scary amounts of expense and waste. Hence we are now mostly using: Cloth diaper n. Reusable nappy Cool baby. No longer those terry squares, the main drawback is that there are now so many types it can be qu...