Seeds for Thought: an Ecopsychology Blog

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I've been trying to write this since I came back from Vancouver two months ago. 
Where is home? At the Islands folk festival with good once virtual and now real friends, listening to Todd Butler sing about leaving Vancouver to go home to the prairies and then finding that he was drawn back to his new home by the ocean?

I read an interesting article on Love Miles by a Pakistani woman living in Britain, moved here by her family as a child. I'm trying hard to be eco-friendly. But please don't ask me to give up flying to visit my family, she says, and I echo.

And here's another talking about the helplessness of not being able to support in family crises.

Meanwhile in my "home" country

Climate change activist stopped from travelling to Copenhagen
 Chris Kitchen held under anti-terrorist legislation (he's really dangerous, glued himself to a statue apparently)

BBC to vet BNP Question Time audience for anti-fascists (but not for BNP supporters, it seems) Although the BNP leadership include convicted violent criminals.

Really stupid award  and as we agonise the guardian ran a competition to describe your eco holiday The winner got  three nights' B&B at Kasbah du Toubkal in Morocco and flights with Royal Air Maroc Eco holidays: Pass me that machete it's titled. Apt?

age of really stupid

Newsnight (BBC) had a good program last week about Copenhagen climate change generally, with positive coverage of Climate camp and Age of Stupid, with some good clips.

It talks about the need for the rich countries to contribute much more than they seem willing to at present, but there's a bit in the middle (about 7 minutes in if you want to find it) that stopped me in my tracks.

The presenter says:
"... and it may take an effort on the same scale as that used to rescue the financial system to rescue the planet.
"

what???
At first this made me despair than anyone can say this with a straight face.

But I hear a lot about how the "electorate" will not stand for money spent on the environment. Did they like bailing out the banks? The car industry? Did anyone ask them?

I thought I was part of the electorate and certainly no one asked me, just like when they went to war with Iraq.

Could "the electorate" just be code for the rich and powerful military industrial oligarchy?

science friction

I found this old post I never published, so here it is.  To be anti science is to be pro ignorance, and I get upset by how many women are proud of it.
..........

I was annoyed a little while ago by a newspaper article scorning a cult based on some obscure science fiction books about Gor, where women were submissive and wore collars and the usual BDSM stuff.

Not because I am in favour (though they were all consenting adults) but because they were scorned not for being sexist but for being sci fi fans and therefore
male
sad
incapable of getting a girlfriend
and so on

er well actually lots of women read sci fi. Lots of women write it. Lots of men and women use it to explore alternative societies with differerent sexual and social customs.

Marge Piercy Joanna  Russ Theodore Sturgeon Samuel Delaney to just get started.

Yes I am pro science, in the sense of "knowing". The reviewer labelled the Gor books as "Politically Incorrect". My most despised phrase, used by people who either can't be bothered to think, or have an easy way to slag off all lefties/liberals. That's us scientists, we like accurate language.

No they are not "Politically Incorrect". They are Sexist, ie they share a coherent worldview that women are different and inferior. This is not the same as Misogyny, sadly lots of theoretically anti sexist men end up distrusting and resenting women because of being sneered at for not being beautiful and macho. 

dreaming and the age of stupid #2

to my daughter  

#1 the night after I saw age of stupid I dreamed I was talking to you
about flying to canada and how bad it was and crying, you were saying
well it isn't forever he will retire in 5 years. (not that that
necessarily helps) short dream, and it sounds sad but I woke as
refreshed as after a cool swim on a hot day.

#2 about a week later I dreamed we were in UK, and watching age of
stupid together. There are interlinked stories of people in different
countries, and one became Vancouver (which isn't), and then we were
there, walking beside an amazing indigo sea. You said "my friend lives
near here, shall we go and visit?" I said we'd better get back, we are
really in england watching this ...  we are really dreaming this, well
actually I'm really dreaming this" and woke up

I do have lovely dreams about you all sometimes.

dreaming and the Age of Stupid

I went to see Age of Stupid and wish everybody would go, well UK anyway so far.

People who've seen it mostly think it's great, and I've been puzzled by fellow environmentalists who don't want to. Preaching to the converted they say, as if there was a divide. 

But it's a continuum. At one end Clarkson and the guy from AoS setting up a cheap airline in India who wants everybody to be able to fly. At the other maybe some perfect person chained to a power station and living on leaves. But most of us in the middle somewhere. The woman in AoS celebrating defeating a windfarm proposal, who asked if she is worried about climate change says Yes of course we are, nervous smile, becoming uncertain. You. Me.

get Clarkson

Environmentalists are often stereotyped as negative, against, angry.  Is this fair? Do we look up at the stars or down at the mud? (And anyway I like mud)

MIke Cohen's methods are wonderful for reconnecting us with nature, making us feel good again. But should we? Or should we be despairing with Joanna Macy?

Dog crap when I'm out walking  makes me doubly cross, because it is disgusting and irresponsible, but also because it forces me to notice it if I don't want to step in it. I try to avoid that which just makes me pointlessly angry. 

For example Top Gear. Yet I can't believe that mainstream television gets away with actively encouraging law breaking, hate speech. Where are the thousands of protests that rock the BBC over many less obnoxious and pernicious broadcasts? 

Nowhere. Because I'm certainly not going to watch it in order to complain. Mary Whitehouse and successors are happy to wallow in what they ostensibly hate just to get rid of it. But clearly we environmentalists are not so negative. 

Campaigning will necessarily involve us in going where we don't want to be, the boredom of economics, meetings, leafletting shopping centres and roadsides. It's important to remember what we are fighting for too, what we love. Please try Mike Cohen's reconnecting with nature I mean really, get out and do it, don't just read about it. 

what do you mean "we"?

I've been thinking how to talk about disagreeing. Arguing. Criticising. Guilt tripping. 

Someone asked a while back "why environmentalists don't talk about population" and many of us responded "which environmentalists? I do"

Our language is clumsy with its single YOU, though we could bring back THOU. But English never had different WEs for
1) you and I (sorry thou and I) and
2) Us lot (unspecified probably) 

So it's easy to manipulate our feelings and polarise us between US and THEM.

So as this is the personal is ecopsychological - do I talk about population? 

Would I try and dissuade someone considering a third baby? Difficult. But so is questioning friends who fly several times a year. Challenging allies who drive their dog to the riverside in their SUV for its walk. 

I'm trying to do it though, just by raising the issues and then trying to listen, being less attacking.

And do "WE" support coercive measures to limit population? Well we aren't coercing flyers and drivers and general overconsumers are "WE"

The way to curb population growth is by empowering women, educating girls. And free access to safe appropriate contraception and abortion of course. 

So lets practice constructive disagreement.

This is getting a bit incoherent, probably it's two posts scrambled together. I'll stop now. And hope somebody argues with me :-) Please.

housekeeping - things to make and do

ecological auditing for myself / my household

I've started writing down gas, electric and car miles per month 

I got fed up with urecyclable plastic containers from otherwise exemplary suppliers Yeo Valley yoghurt. So I've started making my own, it's easy. All the google hits make it complcated and require equipment, I just use a thormos

boil milk
cool to just above blood heat

put in thermos with 4 tablespoons of live yoghurt wholemilk is best

leave 8 - 10 hours and decant

I use a litre of wholemilk for this. Very easy apart from the timings, don't forget to decant after the 8-10 hours or it will curdle

I made hummus too and have lost the link, and the envelope I ascribbled the recipe on, something like:

125 grams tinned chick peas drained and washed (that was half a tin. rest in freezer)

2 tbsps tahini

juice and zest of 1 lemon

2 cloves garlic

4 tbsp olive oil (maybe I have this wrong -  I put a lot less than this)

pinch of salt, and pinch of baking soda

grind together I used a blender, very quick

I thought this was delicious but I have a cold this week, it's VERY garlic :-)

They both probably save money depending on the ingredient mix, the hummus is much better than bought.

I mend things, wish I could sew them from scratch.

Negatives

I have a cold and have had the heating on during the day 

I have acquired an abandoned cat. Here I am  cutting down on meat and feeding tinfuls of it to this little carnivore. This is a real issue. You know I've filled in a few carbon footprints and not seen a mention of pets....

next week is recharge the media week in the UK ring that chat show, write to your local paper. for instance what do you think of the budget's downplay of the environment? And of course how to save money the green way :-)

breathing again

ah pre election stress disorder. I have been fighting the urge to hide under my duvet, avoiding newspapers tv and radio. remembering all the tory election victories I stayed up to watch - I'm the only person I know who didn't watch the 1997 labour landslide because I was so sick of being disappointed.

I remember the day after it though, bright sunshine and smiling faces on the train. Not feeling an outsider for a change.

(and yes, slow disappointment and disillusion is better than the kick in the teeth that was thatcher 3 times and bush twice)

We need our turn to be catching the wave instead of choking under it. But it isn't a time to relax and just enjoy going with the tide for a change (well not for too long anyway).

We are labouring to give birth to the future, it's time to push when the wave comes.

a huge thank you to all those Americans who saw past the trivia of skin colour and fancying sara palin.

And in case you missed Samantha Bee on McCain and his air quotes:

I thought it was hilarious and never even saw the original

small groups

Groups of people seem to develop a dynamic that is independent of the will of their members. How? Do they become systems is their own right? There is something quasi organic in the way they grow, die off, change, reproduce even.

Self organising groups that get tired and elect paid workers to lead them. Groups that try and remain democratic and equal and struggle with power relations. Groups that astonishingly do remain stable against the odds.

The first time I was puzzled by this was when a women's health group started to do free pregnancy testing (it was not easily available then). After a time most of us complained that organising this was taking up all our meeting time and we never got to discuss interesting topics any more. The group split into two, and the interesting one we said we wanted almost immediately folded.