🌿PEAT September Newsletter
🌿 PEAT September 1st - Are toad signs the ‘new normal’?
The ‘new normal’, what does it mean? One interpretation is ‘a current situation, social custom, etc., that is different from what has been experienced or done before, but is expected to become usual or typical’. It was a term used in COVID to describe restrictions on our behaviour, the wearing of masks, limited group gatherings, and only being able to meet outside. Hard to remember that our lives were like that. Post COVID many of us thought slowing down, staying local, exercising more would become our ‘new normal’, sad to say on my part it was quickly forgotten.
It made me ponder on the ‘new normal’. At a recent meeting there was much talk about how special the Cartmel Peninsula is, how lucky we are to live in such a peaceful, beautiful place, and that we need to protect and preserve as much as possible, before it is lost. A universally accepted good idea. I was told for example in a couple of places locally there are ‘Beware of Toads Crossing’ signs, on roads I regularly travel, not only had I not seen any toads crossing but I had never even noticed the signs, too wrapped up in my own world! What a metaphor for what’s happening around us.
It’s now become a much more dynamic active process, - normalising. We are normalising for example terrible wildfires and all that means for people, animals, the ecology, we are normalising entire species disappearing, normalising extreme weather conditions, normalising glaciers melting, normalising rising sea levels, routine flooding here and elsewhere in the globe. More often than not with the most vulnerable paying the highest price, and it’s become normal to see very little reporting, and even more normal to see less reporting about the underlying causes and challenges we are facing. Not only are we not noticing, we are being encouraged not to notice. What if we chose a different new normal?
Many of us are struggling with how to think, and act when faced with the lack of a meaningful co ordinated response to the climate and ecological crises, and what we might do an individuals. Here’s some thoughts,
🌿 In the last chapter of Mike Berners Lee book ‘There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years’, he writes about three values being the new cultural norms essential for these times,
As he says simple but hard to do, and I’m no better at them than anyone else, but a bit like the end of every school year report ‘I could do better’.
🌿 Make every decision on the basis of seven generations ahead - what impact do I want to have for my children and great, great grandchildren ?
🌿 There’s a talk by Rupert Read at Swarthmoor Hall the Quaker Meeting House on October 19th ‘The Climate Majority Project’, which encourages as broad a collective as possible of all citizens to come together and take action. More details will follow.
🌿 On the basis of do what you can, where you are, with what you have, join us the Peninsula Environmental Action Together. We are always stronger together, and we welcome new members and new ideas, just get in touch at peatmessages@gmail.com
Perhaps we need a new road sign on every corner that says protect our toads and our planet! ✋ 🐸 🌎
Warm wishes Annette ( Chair)