Change the World Wednesday – 10 Sep

White guava

Here we go again. I woke this morning to find two big goiaba branca just waiting to be plucked.

And plucked they were, then eaten for breakfast.

Delicious they were.

And all this before coffee…

I surprise myself sometimes.

I am pleased to report that the coffee situation has been rectified. Coffee is not merely a beverage, it is a cup of liquid sanity.

Last week I extended my foray to the dumping ground and dragged home another lovely piece of wood.

Grotty yard table standing to the side

My orignial yard table was a grotty old thing.

It is now the wind break for my latest addition.

My yard now sports a respectable table – the lighting was terrible for the photo this morning.

My new BBQ corner, still supported by one of the grotty old stoves that I replaced. But it’s a great place to store charcoal.

By collecting other people’s throw-outs, my lot improves; little by little.

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Remember my celery butt? Now planted in a pot of its own and thriving.

My celery butt

Okay, it’s time for this week’s CTWW.

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The week we are looking at spreading the good word. Bringing other people into the ‘green’ fold.

All of the green-living activities which we, as Eco-conscious people, adopt help control climate change. But we need more people to climb on board. So, this week, encourage others to take action against climate change. Need some ideas? Write a post about the situation and ask your readers to take on an Eco-friendly activity. Open a conversation with friends and family. Write to officials with your concerns and suggest actions which they can take. The idea, this week, is to get other people thinking about climate change and acting against this threat.

 

Various shades of green

A great idea. But just a post here, is preaching to the converted. Let’s face it, most of the people are here becasue they are already various shades of green.

So I propose to add an intro on some of my other blogs inviting readers to come and look at this CTWW. It doesn’t sound like a great deal, but some of my blogs have 1,000+ followers, if I can generate the slightest impetus for a few of them to come and at least look at CTWW, then I win.

I agree with the sentiment of writing to officials. But sometimes I feel that we are banging our heads against the proverbial brick wall.

Proverbial brick wall

And it hurts.

To really make a change, we have to tackle the governments. Once we have tackled the governments, we have to get them to tackle the capitalists. And only then will we see some meaningful changes to the status quo. We have to use our collective votes to ban this ‘two-party’ system; where one is just as bad as the other.

Meanwhile we still have our brick wall.

Here in Brazil we will have elections in October. There were three serious contenders for president. Dilma Rousseff, the incumbent; Aércio Neves, great on economics and infrastructure; and Eduardo Campos, who died a couple of weeks ago in a plane crash. Now on an average, Dilma was polling high, then came Aércio who was catching her up. Eduardo was struggling to get into double figures. His running mate, Marina da Silva has stepped into his shoes. This has changed the game. Dilma and Marina are neck and neck, with Aércio trailing a third.

Brazil could become the greenest country

Sorry to bore you with all this political background, but you are about to see why.

If Marina da Silva becomes presidenta, Brazil could become the greenest country on the planet.

Marina, a former minister for the environment, is probably the most conscious politician ever in matters of the environment.

The capitalist agriculture sector is quivering in it’s collective boots; because she will reform, boy how she will reform.

Deforestation in the Amazon could stop overnight.

Ecological and social disasters like the Belo Monte hydro power scheme could have the plug pulled.

When questioned on this, she is keeping mum; a sure indication that she is thinking.

She will aim at showing the world that green is achieveable.

There is a drawback with Marina, she is an evangelical and could take the country backwards in contentious social issues like same sex marriage.

But there is hope.

 

Monday Moaning

We have become too bloody lazy!

Yes, laziness has become epidemic.

The vast majority of people just couldn’t get off their fat acre to save themselves.

Gadgets, are the bane of modern living and our lives are full of them, a great number of them totally useless, unneeded and a waste of the earth’s precious resources in the making.

Look at this…

Pathetic!

What ever happened to lift, tip and pour?

“Oh, but that requires energy.”

It’s bad enough that you buy processed juice at the supermarket, but to stoop to this level is beyond comprehension.

Why not BUY oranges and get fresh juice?

“But I do! I have one of these.”

Another bloody gadget!

Whatever happened to these?

It’s bad enough that it’s made from plastic, but it’s far more ecologically correct than any motorised gadget.

We go further into this laziness thing.

Celery

Here’s an example.

You buy your celery at the supermarket, and usually a bunch of celery is far more than you want; so some, if not most, finishes up in the trash or compost.

Celery off-cut

Celery, like many vegetables can be grown easily from off-cuts, no need for a garden or seeds or even getting your hands dirty.

Next time you buy celery, could be the last time you’ll ever need to do that again.

Trimming your celery, you have the root end as an off-cut.

Stand it up in a saucer of water, and watch what happens. Once you have green shoots growing from the centre, put it in a planter with potting mix or home compost so that just the green is above dirt level.

You want to see the results? Visit 17 Apart

Next time you need one stick of celery, just break one off, no need to buy a whole bunch.

Maybe you didn’t know you could do this. That’s because supermarkets have made you lazy! They’re just too damned convenient.

What could be more convenient than having your celery or other herbs on the kitchen window sill at your beck and call?

We have got ourselves into a rut, and we can’t see how to get ourselves out.

But we can, we just have to turn the clock back, back to grandma’s day.

Because, if we don’t, we are doomed to be getting fatter, lazier and more reliant on resource wasting gadgets.

*Jumps down off soap box*