🌿PEAT July Newsletter 'The stories we tell ourselves’
🌿 Sunday 30th June. Since the last newsletter the longest day has passed for 2024, and yet it feels like only a blink of the eye since the spring solstice. By the time you receive this we will be a few days away from the result of the general election. Having attended a couple of local hustings events it’s clear more than ever that the climate, and ecological crises figure heavily in the concerns of the people attending. Yet the prevailing narrative remains that progress equals growth, and growth is still the major solution. As pervasive at the moment is the belief that the human species is inherently destructive to the environment and the planet, and there’s very little that can be done to alter this. Whilst there’s much evidence to support this view, there’s also every reason to believe that we can be a force for good, and that we can belong to a place, enrich it, and not degrade it. So what if we believed a different story?
There’s a great post on our FB page from one of our members 'From Ego to Eco'. If a picture paints a thousand words, this one does, depicting that we aren’t above the ecosystem but part of it, in other words it’s not ours to dominate and take at will. https://m.facebook.com/groups/peatsouthlakes/permalink/1458493174807980/?
In Breaking Together, Jem Bendall speaks about how we have been persuaded that it is in our nature to be destructive, and not only this but we have become immune to our part in this. He argues that by recognising this we can choose to act differently. https://schumacherinstitute.org.uk/product/jem-bendell-book/
The New Citizenship Project founder Jon Alexander talks about how we make sense of the world through stories, and that right now we are living in the ‘Consumer Era’. How easy and simple has this been made with just one click! We are led to believe that we are inherently self interested and competitive, whereas he encourages a move to the Citizen Story, where individuals and organisations come together to support each other to shape civil society and their world. https://www.jonalexander.net/
The invitation in our Great Big Green Week was Let’s Swap Together For Good’. How do we think about our behaviours and live in a more sustainable way? We had some brilliant conversations in Grange on the Saturday, a litter pick on the Sunday with different organisations and families helping, and many visited our display in the library, proving that people are wanting to play their part in creating a greener, fairer, future together. There are so many examples locally of folk doing just that, from the Save Windermere campaign, to the Morecambe Bay Partnership, to planting a wildflower meadow in Grange community community orchard. Let’s keep that story going.
We are beginning to think about our programme for next year so if you have any contacts or good ideas please get in touch. At the moment there is some preliminary thinking about a climate circle, so watch this space for further details.
Warm wishes Annette ( Chair)