Welcome to the first entry in the Bloody Environmentalist blog. Thanks for joining me.
I’m going to set out some of my own reasoning behind creating this blog and answer why I am adding yet another voice to those talking about the environment and climate change.
First, some assumptions.
I’m going to take it as established scientific fact that the following are the case:
- Climate change is real
- It is happening now
- It is significantly affected, if not completely caused by human activity.
Yes, I know that there are still many people who vocally refute some or all of that. I’ll discuss these points in a future post but for now, let’s just accept that a consensus of something like 97% of climate scientists agree with the above statements. It may not be convenient to your own agenda or world view, but that doesn’t alter the facts.
What is the Bloody Environmentalist Blog?
“Bloody environmentalists!”
This is a sentiment that we seem to be hearing more and more of these days. Our news feeds are increasingly filled with environmental stories warning us of dire consequences unless (as is sometimes perceived) we abandon our wasteful modern habits and return to some sort of pre-industrial lifestyle where we will all ride bamboo-framed bicycles and live on dried berries and oatmeal.
That the environmentalists are just the messengers, calling out causes of issues which ultimately effect us all is often lost.
We are risking turning people against action for climate change because the perception is that the changes required are too big and too radical for many people to contemplate.
Through this blog, I intend to explore what can be done to help the environment in ways which are more manageable for many people within their current lifestyles. I want to encourage people to keep doing the things that are important to them but with smaller adjustments now, to save the bigger changes being forced on us all in future, should the majority do nothing at all.
I would rather get people on board with climate action in smaller steps than risk turning them against the idea completely.
What’s the point of that?
I know many environmental activists would argue that small changes don’t go far enough. All they do is make people feel better about themselves without making any significant difference.
On one level, they are right.
However to make changes of the scale really needed, we need our governments and industry to take the lead. Better industrial practices, bold legislation, difficult decisions.
How can we encourage that change to happen?
We can by bringing everyone along, turning everyone into an environmentalist because we aren’t excluding huge sections of the population by making them feel guilty about every aspect of the lifestyles they have chosen to live. Governments adapt to the majority will of their electorate and industry adapts to the buying choices of their customers. When we have passed a critical mass of voters and customers who have made small changes themselves and want to extend that to other parts of their lives and communities, governments and industry will have no choice but to follow.
Bloody Environmentalist! 