January 2020

I rarely see someone in their 50’s and 60’s “needing” bottled water for everything. (And you do realize that bottled “mineral water” you’re carting around in your plastic bottle is… very expensive tap water, right?)
Then there is this cleaning obsession.
What’s up with that? Everything has to be sterile, bleached to death, because otherwise you’ll get sick.
No. You get sick because you clean everything to the point of being sterile. Your body doesn’t have a chance to build up an immunity to bacteria if you keep eliminating that bacteria. I mean, wash your hands, definitely. But do you really need every surface more sterile than a hospital operating table?
Let your kids play in the dirt, for God’s sake. It’ll do them good.
Kids need to get into scrapes. They need to have the odd scraped knee, a bruise, the sniffles. They need to jump into puddles, eat a worm, stuff like that. Otherwise, how will they ever build up a resistance? (Or an aversion to eating them, in the case of worms lol) Keeping them away from everything is probably one of the reasons why so many kids are sick and allergic now.
And for fuck’s sake, VACCINATE the little darlings!! Maybe you don’t care if your kid dies of measles or the flu, but I assure you, most other people care if their kid dies from it because you think beetroot juice is good enough.
To go from 0 cases of measles in the US in 2000, to almost 1300 in the first six months of 2019 is absolutely appalling! 
I’m not saying herbal remedies and homeopathy are quackery. Far from it. But neither will I take chances with my life, or the life of others, because I’m too brainwashed to see that the benefit of vaccinations far outweighs the possible complications. Yes, there are complications in some cases. No drug is ever 100% side effect free, but that’s a chance you take with any medicine. Even herbal.
Autism has nothing to do with vaccinations. If it did, there would be millions of autistic people walking around. It’s genetic. 
We really don’t want Polio, Smallpox, Measles, or — God forbid — the Plague back. I think we have enough to deal with, without adding a pandemic into the mix. 

The thing is, we all do as much as we can to save the world around us. Some of us are able to do more than others in that respect, but that doesn’t mean anyone doing less is to blame for what’s happening. They don’t deserve to be yelled at, or blamed, because I don’t think there is anyone in the West who isn’t at least trying to do a little bit.

There is a lot we could do that would require very little effort. Supermarket own brands of non-perishable goods — shampoo, detergent, flour, sugar, rice, pasta etc — could be made available in big dispensers where people can fill their own receptacles. They could take as much, or as little, as they need. Get a ticket to pay for the contents, but bring your own container. Can you imagine how much plastic we could save, just by implementing that?
Germany has bottle crushers in every supermarket. There is a 25¢ deposit on every bottle, which you get back from the machine. Simple, convenient, and effective. Why aren’t they everywhere?
You can also get your lemonade, beer and other drinks from a drinks merchant by the crate. You pay a deposit for the crate and the glass bottles, which you get back when you return them. The bottles are returned to the manufacturer of the drink, washed, sterilized, and refilled. Again, why is this not available everywhere? It used to be. Why was this ever changed? 
I’m guilty of buying the odd bottle of carbonated water. That’s because I like a bit of fizz in my orange or apple juice, and a Sodastream isn’t worth it for the little I drink of it.
But still water? Hell no.
I wonder if Greta insists on tap water at her podiums, or if that water comes in plastic bottles…
But God help you if you dare voice any negative, or dismissive comment against her.

I drive a diesel. (Boo-hiss!)
I have nothing against electric cars (EV) — except that we don’t have the infrastructure to support everyone switching to EV’s, nor do they have the range of regular cars, nor do they have the “oomph” of regular vehicles.
Have you seen the machinery used in agriculture? How do you propose to run a combine harvester on electric?
That thing would run out of juice in an hour flat — and then need to recharge for 12. It’s not sustainable. We’d starve to death, because harvests tend to be time critical. Agriculture is hard enough as it is, if you then screw around with the machinery used… you’ll open a whole new can of worms.
My diesel is used maybe twice a week. It pollutes less than your EV’s, because it just doesn’t get driven that much. But if I switched to an EV — never mind the cost — it wouldn’t be better for the environment. I’d have to keep that thing charged, especially when it’s cold and the battery would lose power. I fill up the diesel and forget about it. 
So no, I won’t be switching to an EV any time soon. Plus, my diesel is a 4×4 that can tow a horse trailer if need be.
Something tells me an EV will struggle with this.
And in most countries the energy required to charge those EV’s is generated by fossil fuel plants. How is that any better? Let’s not even go into what happens when your battery is dead in 8-10 years, and it will cost more to replace the battery than the car is worth, and never mind that we have no way of recycling those batteries yet. Or those 8 year old kids mining the cobalt and lithium needed for those batteries.
I honestly don’t see how a car can be deemed “Green”, when it relies on the destruction of the environment by mining the minerals needed to keep it going. And we’re going to run out of those at some point, just as we’ll run out of fuel at some point — then what? Horse and cart?
Oh…wait…

Livestock is bad. 
As any rabid vegan will tell you, meat farming is completely to blame for greenhouse gases. Worse than anything else. Add to this the cruelty of slaughter, and you have the perfect storm.
I eat meat. There, I said the dirty word. I’m to blame for all of the world’s evils. I’m a cruel person, an animal abuser by proxy, the lowest scum of the universe.
Except… that livestock you’re so fond of blaming for everything?
Well. What are you going to fertilize your veggies with? Do you know what happens to soil when animal dung – aka fertilizer — is absent? When those hooves don’t revitalize the ground they stomp on? 
I don’t agree with factory farming, whether it’s pigs, poultry or cattle. But a lot of them are not factory farmed. I go for free range eggs when I can, I have 4 chickens who are currently not laying (because they need more daylight) in winter, so I need to get eggs. All of them are rescues, taken in not for the eggs, or to eat them — but for pest control. I prefer the chickens to eat the bugs, to the bugs eating my salads and veggies. I got my Janzè hens because they go after asian hornets. No other reason. Well. I needed at least one extra chicken, because I pulled a little dwarf hen out of the cage she was in, and didn’t want her to be alone. So I got Thelma & Louise, and later added another Dutch Crested rescue so Lady Gaga has a friend her own size.
Along comes a friend, desperate to rehome a donkey standing in the butcher’s lot, with an expiry date on his head. So I took that one in, too.
Friends of mine are currently getting muck by the trailer load for their veggie plot, and are very happy that mine is chemical free. Can’t get more organic than that. I do fecal worm counts so I know what, if anything, I need to worm for. They didn’t need anything last year, but with the donkey arriving, they might this year. Still, I warned my friends that if I need to worm, it’ll be around mid February, and that the muck would then contain traces of wormer which they won’t want on their veggies.
While they were here yesterday, they took away 10 yellow plum saplings as well, which have sprung up all over the place. Rather than pull them out and burn or shred them — I just rehome the tree. If it grows, great. If not, it can still be disposed of then. I’ve rehomed around 50-60 saplings in the past 4 months, and planted another 12 around my own property where they’ll be of use.
Maybe the horse and cart is an option after all. How about an oxen? 😛

The thing is, people do a lot more than they are being given credit for.
I’m pretty sure Greta is set for life. There will be plenty of people who would take care of her no questions asked.

But the tears and trembling lips and accusations don’t do it for me. When that starts, all I see is an attention seeking brat who is resorting to putting guilt trips on the adults. Much like a toddler in a supermarket.

I don’t buy it. 
And my not buying it, is obviously an affront to people. 
Often the very same people who seem to delight in voting for someone who single-handedly dismantles much of the climate change improvements made in the past, deregulates polluting industries and who claims climate change isn’t real, despite the evidence pointing in the opposite direction.
Think, before you cast your ballot. If you keep voting in people who don’t give a shit for anything but their own gain, then why are you so surprised that the world is going to hell?

Australia burns, while Europe floods. Snow in Spain and Southern France. Record breaking storms. Temperatures soaring so high, they are starting to be dangerous. Water shortages all over the place. Cape Town skirted past Day Zero by the skin of their teeth.

I’m nowhere near perfect. I make as many mistakes as the next person. I try to do as much as I can, with the resources available to me. Every little bit helps. 
Even if we’re all wrong, and climate change is not caused by anything we’re doing — it can’t hurt to clean up our act, right?

But what I don’t need, is Saint Greta putting the blame on older generations.
Hell, we could do the same thing, and say “I blame the Victorians and their Industrial Revolution” if they’d cleaned up their act…
They didn’t know. We didn’t know either. The whole thing kind of started back in the 80’s, when the first warnings were made. There wasn’t enough scientific study at this point to implement anything, and the technology to reverse some of the things we did learn about — didn’t exist. And still doesn’t. 
We learned about the ozone layer in 1985. The effects of climate change the century had were only really made public in 1988. That’s not that long ago, and it’s not like nothing was done. But it takes time, new technology has to be developed, tested and implemented.
Solar panels were really only an option from the 90’s onward. Before that they were too expensive, and difficult to store the energy. Even now, storing solar, hydro and wind power is extremely difficult, and often wind turbines need to be turned off because there is nowhere for the energy to go, or be stored. The technology just isn’t there yet.
Just because we have eco warriors galore, doesn’t mean we have the answers, or means, to solve the problem.
And it’s not for lack of trying, like Greta implies.

There, more than anyone will ever read. That’s my personal opinion, and I try to stay informed.