government | The Last Krystallos

What will it take to save the planet?
Change.
Change in the narrative, change in the blame, and change in our actions.

I’ve watched the News over the last few weeks, reporting on COP26 (Conference of the Parties for those countries who signed up to the 1994 treaty UNFCCC – United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and their discussion on Climate Change. I’ve heard them say they’ll stop cutting down the rainforest in a decade, they’ll introduce some more electric cars, oh, yes, they’ll try to stop cows from farting, ie, reduce methane. I also heard they might try and get rid of coal, but I’m pretty sure we’re opening a new coal field in Cumbria soon, so that’ll go well. We’re still waiting to see if our Leaders can come up with big agreements and remain accountable, but forgive us our scepticism. Most steps our governments make are small, and it’s almost always the public who are expected to change rather than the government or industry.

It’s the big things that matter. We’re already doing the small things. We can all do our bit – walk more, buy local, put out blue bags, and recycle. We hope our local council is actually recycling it. It’s been shocking to discover many Local Authorities pack up their recycled plastic, and send it to third world countries for processing, except that those countries lack the infrastructure to cope, and it just creates massive, problematic, mountains of waste in another part of the world.

Local Authorities, governments, and industry need to take big steps and take accountability. Money needs to be taken out of fossil fuels and plastic and put into solar, water, and wind. I mean, fossil fuels are literally running out, and we have more sun, ocean, and wind on our literal doorstep. But the general public can’t do this. It has to come from government and big business. Industry and Law has to change. We can recycle our plastic drinks bottle, but maybe the drinks company should be producing a more ecological bottle or packaging. We can try to buy food without plastic, but if our supermarkets and their suppliers don’t stop over using it, we have much less choice. We can only work with what they give us.

We, and governments etc, need to listen to activists and scientists. Activists will keep Climate Change on our radar, they will keep us aware, and scientists will move us forward with statistics, information, time scales, and directions on what we need to do to protect the planet. The older generation seems to listen to Sir David Attenborough, and he is God tier – to be protected at all costs, but they don’t like being told what to do by the younger generation. Greta Thunberg, Patience Nabukala, Brianna Fruean, and others repeat the words of warning at COP26 for climate change, and are fully backed up by Attenborough. A NASA article explains that 97% of scientists agree on the validity of Climate Change. United Nations, NASA, many organisations, and our governments all utilise scientists and their predictions, and we need to listen to them.

It appears the older, richer, and more powerful people aren’t listening, or maybe they just don’t care. An Oxfam report noted that ‘The world’s richest “appear to have a free pass to pollute,”’ Their report found that the richest 1% will have a carbon footprint 30 times higher in 2030 than what is needed to meet the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. According to the report the carbon footprint of the rich will always be much more than the poorest 50% who are on course to produce fewer emissions to align with the 1.5°C target. Think billionaires, millionaires, and those in the top 10% of global earning – anyone earning over $158K (£117K) – these are the people that need to change, to reinvest in ecological practices, to change the narrative, to save the planet.

The young, the rising generations, know what they’re talking about, and how dare anyone say they don’t. Back in the eighties when I was a teen Climate Change was taught to us. It was mainly about greenhouse gasses and the declining ozone layer, but we began to learn what we were doing to the planet and we began to want to change. We got rid of CFC’s and the ozone layer repaired itself. But it wasn’t just about CFC’s. And now, forty years later, we’re still fighting for change and the planet has declined even further.

The young today are taught from primary school. They know more about climate change, declining populations of animals, and about our earth from children’s books on the environment, than, it seems, our actual politicians do. They want to change. They want to save their planet. They are willing to do what it takes.

A friend of mine took her daughter, who must be a young teen, to the recent Glasgow COP26 protests, and I would put money on that young woman understanding more about the environment and climate change than our own Prime Minister.

I saw a meme the other day on Facebook, a meme that is oft repeated, but it makes me so angry.

It exonerated older generations, the Silent and Boomer generations, from taking the blame for plastic. It explained that they ‘courageously’ walked everywhere, recycled their glass pop and milk bottles, used cotton shopping bags, didn’t have plastic toys, or McDonald’s or Burger King. They had no polystyrene, wrapped their food in newspapers, and didn’t go on foreign holidays. It then went on to blame the younger generations, Millennial and Gen Z, for their culture of waste and called them ‘little shits’ for preaching to them about climate change.

It failed, in a huge way, to point out that if our children had been born back then they would have done the same – because plastic hadn’t been invented and wasn’t flooding the planet like it is now.

And guess who brought us plastic? It was the older generation, who fully embraced its convenience. We probably all would have done. But the fault doesn’t lie with a generation, not old or young, it lies with those who, once we knew of the dangers of plastic, continue to saturate the market, and the world, with it.

Plastic has become part of our world, and if it was easy to get rid of it, we would. But while those in power, both in government and industry, continue to pump money into it, plastic will not die.

The irony being that plastic, point blank, will not die. It won’t degrade and will continue to pollute for hundreds or thousands of years.

Plastic is a literal part of our world, and that is what needs to change. So, let’s listen intently to the young and the scientists who want to change the world, to save our planet, and let’s lobby parliament and industry to change. Vote for those who will take the money out of fossil fuels and plastic and put it into renewable resources. We’ve tried to change through recycling, switching to eco-friendly products, but it’s a world for the rich, and while they continue to flood the market with plastic, non-environmental products, and electric cars and heating pumps that are too expensive for most of us to buy, we can’t win. We have to vote, to be part of politics, to lobby for change before we run out of time.

We have to save the planet for those future generations
– our children, our grandchildren –
and those that want to live in a thriving world, long after we’re gone.

Last week I discovered #InShadowSelfie thought up by Louise Gornall.
Go take a shadow selfie and help promote Mental Illness Awareness…

It was about the same time the DWP updated their list of health issues that come without physical impairment intimating that sufferers of mental illness are quite able to work and should not be allowed benefits. Last week figures were also released from the government giving numbers of those who’d died within six weeks after being refused benefits. (These figures are subjective, but in my opinion still damning – you can see the reality here.) This is so serious though, that the UN (United Nations) are sending a team to investigate Iain Duncan Smith’s reforms.

This is important to me for many reasons as I know many people who suffer from mental health related illnesses. I have a history of severe anxiety, panic disorder, and clinical depression. In my early twenties I was signed off work due to these factors and the then little known ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis – better known as Post Viral Fatigue or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). I left work and received Invalidity Benefit for a couple of years before John Major’s Tory government saw me fit to work. I suffered huge panic attacks amid years of debilitating depression, combined with self-harm and a variety of other symptoms, plus, I was raising my first child, but I was obviously fit to work as there were no physical symptoms. I vividly remember the government doctor telling me that I had no physical symptoms whilst my heart thumped and cramped so much I thought I was having a heart attack, and my legs became pure jelly. I could barely make it out of the examining room without collapsing. I was shattered, exhausted and lost, and spent the next few days at home a mess of tears, shivering loss and quite unable to think straight due to my antidepressants. Hubby worked part time and helped with my daughter as much as he could but I was a mess for those years.

That was back in the early nineties. Have things changed much for mental health awareness since then. Yes, and no. Public perception is marginally better, but government compassion? No.

So, when I saw my friend, Emmie, post on Instagram her #InShadowSelfie last week, I knew it was something I wanted to do too, particularly as I am right now in the middle of a bout of clinical depression.

I found Louise’s blog and checked out her posts about the hashtag, which you can find here and here.

Anyway, I wanted to let Louise explain her hashtag…and I want you to go and support it! Find your shadow, take a selfie and post it on your social media! You don’t have to suffer from mental health issues to take part and every picture posted will help to build awareness!

Louise, what prompted your idea to raise awareness to invisible mental illness with the hashtag and what made it personal to you?

Hi Lisa. Thank you so much for helping me highlight this project. So, I read this article in Welfare Weekly. Beyond the money part, I was really upset by the list of mental health conditions the DWP say come without physical impairment… On what planet is this? At first I assumed they’d made a mistake because I’m a chick with a laundry list of mental health issues, four of which appear on this list, and most days I can’t get beyond my driveway without passing out. Alas, there’s no mistake. It would seem that because you can’t see bruising or bleeding, I’m not considered physically impaired by my petrified brain. I shudder to think how I’d survive without my family taking care of me. Some days, even the smallest task sends me into a spin.

What’s your biggest frustration with insensitive attitudes to mental health conditions?

I have two. Well, I have about fifty, but these are two I keep seeing a lot of lately. It irks me that people measure suffering. Or weigh suffering against suffering. Phrases like, “Get some perspective…” or “It could be worse…” I’m not a violent person, but this stuff sends me into a table-flipping rage. For starters, if it were that easy to get some perspective, I would have bought it by the bucket-load already. And secondly, I’m not about to tell anyone they don’t know real suffering while they’re shedding tears over a deceased family pet. I don’t assume to know that relationship, or how it worked, or what it meant. If the loss of a pet tears you in two, my only job, as a human being, is to be sympathetic. There are awful things going on in the world, but the strength of suffering will always be measured most by the person affected.

And one more, the idea that people use mental health as some sort of “get out of work free” card drives me up the effin wall. Sure, I can’t go out to work… but then, what about the rest of my life that’s also on hold? People are very ready and willing to shout about me using my disability to get out of a day’s graft, but they don’t mention that it’s also the thing stopping me from being a bridesmaid at my best friend’s wedding in Cyprus. Or that it’s the reason I had to give up my horse. They don’t mention that I haven’t seen a film at the cinema in almost two years, that I have no love life, can’t pop to the shop for a bar of chocolate, go out with my friends at the weekend, go and visit my granddad in the hospital before he died. I just wish people would look beyond the little they know about mental illness. I wish they’d worry as much about mental health as they do about money.

What do you hope the #InShadowSelfie will achieve as it grows?

I want people to talk. I want people to feel like they’re not alone. I don’t want suicide to be a person’s only option. I want this thing to grow so big people see it, ask why, and what it’s all about. I don’t want people to feel afraid or isolated. I want mental health to be seen as suffering. I want accusing a self-harmer of attention seeking to become a thing of the past. I want people to stop saying anorexia is all about vanity. I want people to stop telling folks that are being crippled by depression to buck up. I want to join the fight to stamp out stigma.

Thank you for explaining your hashtag to us, Louise, I truly hope it grows and people take it to their hearts.

mental illness visibility quote, lisa shambrook,

In my opinion, the government need to think twice before condemning so many people and before telling them they have no physical symptoms and are therefore fit to work.

Does an illness always need to be physical before it’s debilitating? No. Mental illnesses can be both visible and invisible, and both are debilitating.

Common physical symptoms of mental illness: heart palpitations, chest pain, rapid heartbeat, flushing, hyperventilation, shortness of breath, dizziness, headache, sweating, tingling and numbness, choking, dry mouth, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, muscle aches, restlessness, tremors/shaking. These can be both minor and major, but should never be dismissed. As always some people can work with these conditions, some cannot and should not, remember the extreme case of the pilot who brought down the Germanwings flight? Each case should be looked at individually, but with understanding, knowledge and most of all compassion.

So, please share your #InShadowSelfie and show your support and help awareness of mental illness. Let’s spread our shadows across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and show that we are not invisible!