🌿 PEAT December Newsletter - ‘The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything ...'
🌿The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything, and everything we can save is worth saving.’ Rebecca Solnit
November 6th 2024, the day that America went to the election, a day that most of us thought we would never see, when Trump was re elected to the White House. Many of us woke up with a sense of dread about what that would mean for the environment, world stability and much more besides. The recent floods in Spain, hurricanes in the US, storms and flooding here bringing that even more to the fore. How might we keep going in the face of this? What do we do with all these stirred feelings and how do we put our restless energy to good use? In the darkest time of the year and the season of the most intensive consumer pressure, where might we find resilience ? All of these thoughts and more come to mind.
Whilst we do not know what might happen, we can think about who we want to be in the face of this climate, environmental and political turmoil. Just knowing your own ‘enough is enough’ point can bring a change in mindset and perspective. We have all had experience of uncomfortable or difficult circumstances in our personal and working lives, and generally this is what drives us to change, adapt, and go forward. The times we find the hardest can bring surprising clarity, about what’s important, who is important, and how we want to live our lives. For example during the period of COVID we saw extraordinary acts of kindness and community working together as a result of adversity. Even small acts and changes can ripple out and lead to significant transformations. All of us have a part to play.
As Julian Aguon says - an Indigenous human rights lawyer and writer from Guam. from Guam. He is a lover o
‘No offering is too small. No stone unneeded … All of us, without exception, are qualified to participate in the rescue of the world’ *
What’s mine, yours, ours to do? Some thoughts to ponder on how we can shape tomorrow.
🌿 Joanna Macy an environmental activist talks about active hope, as a discipline and a way of being active participants in bringing about what we hope for. In other words we confront the difficult truths and realities about the world. Instead of ignoring challenges, we acknowledge them fully and choose to act toward positive change. https://youtu.be/VEXAbX1f3Nc?si=VNoosCg-_NveLvAc
🌿 Imagine the world you want for the generations to come, the Transition Movement encourages communities to come together to solve local issues and build sustainable communities that can thrive in the face of challenges ahead. Can we start to create the move to the future we want? https://transitionnetwork.org/
- Take a few moments to think about a sustainable Cartmel Peninsula
- What would your home be like?
- What is the community like?
- How is energy, water and food managed?
- Who lives there and how do you interact?
- What kind of work do you do?
- How does transport work?
- How do communities sustain themselves and resolve conflicts?
- How is nature treated?
🌿 Begin to think how we can start to adapt now for a future facing significant disruption. Rupert Read of the Climate Majority Project speaks about how we prepare ourselves, how we change the way we live, how we strengthen our communities, and how we influence strategy and systems. https://climatemajorityproject.com/take-action/#finding This is an area that we will be giving priority to next year.
🌿 This is a great visual - if a picture paints a thousand words this one says it all !
🌿 Locally we have some great diverse examples of how we can commit to action to start to build an alternative vision for the future. Just this week we heard from Matt Staniek doing courageous work shining a light on the pollution in Windermere. Standing up to the might of United Utilities for example illegally dumping 140 million litres of untreated sewage in the lake in the last three years. The equivalent of 30 Big Bens!
https://www.savewindermere.com/
🌿 Fell Brewery building a successful ‘green’ driven business on the Cartmel Peninsula, to create the most sustainable brewery in the country by working with Small World Consultancy.* We hope next year that Tim Bloomer, Director of Sustainability and our local councillor will speak at a PEAT event.
https://fellbrewery.co.uk/sustainability/
🌿 ACT working with Cumbria Youth Alliance have produced visual representations on their views of the Lake District National Park, each very different, West Cumbria Rivers Trust, Cumbria Young Farmers, Forever and For Everyone. https://www.cumbriaaction.org.uk/what-we-do/community-voice
🌿 Some suggestions for eco Christmas presents
https://www.cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk/actions/how-have-eco-christmas
https://cafs.org.uk/get-involved/donate/christmas-2024/
https://www.cumbriafoundation.org/give-now/
🌿 Find us at PEAT join up, join in, play a part in shaping the future we want. Next year we will building our programme around much of the above thinking. We will be starting our new membership year in January, get in touch at peatmeaages@gmail.com
