Single-use plastic pollution is ubiquitous and tangible – we can see it on our beaches, roadsides and waterways, and it’s even in the seafood we eat and the tap water we drink.

Today, there are endless creative initiatives to help limit plastic pollution, from grassroots beach cleans to campaigns for plastic-free supermarket aisles. The momentum sky-rocketed when the final episode of BBC One’s Blue Planet II, which highlighted global plastic pollution for just six minutes, was watched by 11.91 million people – the highest ever recorded ratings for any Nature programme.

The latest issue of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine is out now!

In 2018, ‘single-use’ was named Word of the Year by Collins Dictionary while ‘plastic’ was Oxford Dictionaries’ Children’s Word of the Year.

Bigger picture

Once hailed as a wonder material, plastic is the biggest threat to our planet – or so some press coverage would like us to believe. As a result, it is arguably the most engaging environmental catastrophe of our time. But are people seeing the bigger picture?

The current wave of interest in plastic pollution shares many factors with the alarming discovery of the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica in the mid-1980s and the subsequent successful engagement of industry, governments and consumers.

This protective layer has significantly recovered since the phase-out of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) 30 years ago, after the groundbreaking Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was agreed by leading industrial nations in 1987.

George Marshall, founder of Climate Outreach and author of Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, said: “There was an obvious cause and effect – it was possible to reduce our usage of CFCs found in aerosols and refrigerants, and manufacturers could stop producing these nasty chemicals in the first place.”

Marshall studies how people engage psychologically with climate change. He explains: “That was a very well-constructed problem for us to deal with – it was still complex to understand but more manageable than climate change and similar to single-use plastics in that people could visualise and make sense of it.

 “[Climate change is] really an economic and social problem with moral and political complexities – it’s about human rights and armed conflict and so many things. Plastic is in that environmental category, and more deservedly so, but the danger is that people feel they have ticked that environmental box by redu­cing plastic pollution.”

Immediate impact 

All the things that make the plastics issue strong make garnering action against climate change weak, according to Marshall.

Plastic is something that we hold in our hands, it’s here and now, the impact is immediate, and we can all make direct behavioural changes to reduce that.

Marshall argues: “With climate change, there is no direct immediate connection. The notion that something you do now will affect something else in some complex way in the future is vague and that’s the big problem.”

The plastic backlash has worked well because it has a really good line-up of the qualities that motivate people: “We have got a trusted communicator, Sir David Attenborough, who played a key role in kicking this off, it’s tangible, you can mobilise your own community to help pick up plastic and reduce waste, and it feels like you can do good.”

Internal justifications 

Marshall explains that there are three fundamental reasons why it is hard to get people’s attention on climate change: “Firstly, people have a very limited ‘pool of worry’, so if a problem captures our attention, that displaces something else because we only have a certain mental capacity to worry about issues.

“Secondly, we display ‘single-action bias’ – this is the tendency to take on one single activity with the belief that we have resolved something bigger.” Psychologists hypothesise that this has evolved so that that we don’t worry too much, but face up to problems, solve them, and then move on.

The third and final danger is ‘moral licence’: “In order to maintain your sense of being a good person, you adopt an activity that you consider to be good and then use that as an internal justification for something that is not good. This subconscious offsetting is very common, and recycling behaviour is a classic example.”

We need to tip the balance of public awareness in issues like palm oil and ocean acidification and be smart in the way we tell the story so that people can relate to it, says Nick Clark, environment correspondent and anchor for Al Jazeera: “The question is how we set about covering this story to engage a public fatigued and confused by the climate change ‘debate’ that’s been drummed up by those who want to obfuscate the story.”

Rapid revolution

Clark continues: “It’s essential we cover the first world too, not only Bangladesh and the Pacific islands. Just look at the California wildfires, Florida floods and coastal erosion, the hurricanes blowing in. How will that affect us all?”

Guy Singh-Watson, founder of Riverford Organic Farmers, said: “We are on the brink of environmental catastrophe, and the most important thing is that nothing distract us from climate change – plastic in the oceans is a tragedy, but not on the same scale as climate change. 

“People might feel they have done their bit by reducing plastic, and we are intrinsically lazy, so the changes we are prepared to make must really matter.”

But that’s not to say Singh-Watson has lost all hope. “We keep using stuff and throwing it away – that’s the mentality we need to fundamentally change, and now there seems to be significant im­petus behind it.”

He believes that change can be fast, especially when big business gets behind it. “Just as the transition from horses to cars took just 10 years in 1900s America, today there’s a rapid revolution happening with electric cars because the car industry has got behind it.”

Plastic pollution has a powerful narrative that has the potential to open the gateway to real public understanding of fossil fuels and encourage us to switch from the ‘take-make-dispose’ linear model to a more sustainable, circular economy that inspires us to consider our overall carbon footprint and look at the bigger, global picture.

This Author 

Anna Turns is a freelance journalist and founder of Plastic Clever Salcombe, a Kids Against Plastic campaign. This article first appeared in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.

Wood fuel seems to be having a hard time of it lately. The arguments used to be so simple – wood is a green, sustainable product, right?  Well, maybe.  

The discussions around carbon and particulates suddenly make this debate so much more complicated, and are in danger of turning us off wood for good.

Take the news that 47 UK towns and cities are at or exceeding WHO standards for air pollution.  This has catapulted air quality up the political agenda, and stimulated a Government Clean Air Strategy published in January that has singled out wood fuel as one of the main contributors to particulate pollution.  Or Sadiq Khan’s suggestions that wood burning stoves should be banned altogether, causing uproar amongst those with a newly installed burner.    

Air pollution

So is wood fuel really the enemy?  It’s enough to induce a guilty conscience as you slip another log on the burner this winter or, worse still, to abandon your stove and crank up the central heating instead.  

Now, I’m not suggesting that air pollution isn’t important – it’s the UK’s top environmental risk to human health – nor am I saying that burning solid fuels isn’t part of the problem, but I think it’s time we re-claimed the case for burning wood.

Part of the problem with the recent reports is that they lump together all domestic solid fuels and all types of appliances, showing how they cause around 38 percent of emissions – higher even than industry and transport.  

But amongst all the headlines, I think we’ve lost sight of two simple messages – firstly, that all wood is not the same, and secondly, that the way that you burn it can make all the difference.  So much so that I believe if we burn the right wood in the right way we can actually improve both our carbon footprint and our air quality.    

Unlike solid fossil fuels, wood fuel should be a carbon neutral resource; the C02 released on burning is matched by the amount absorbed when it is growing.  But carbon can also be emitted through processing and transport of wood fuel, clocking up wood miles just like food miles.  

Renewable sources

Wood fuel should also be renewable, but if there isn’t a cycle of tree re-planting or natural regeneration, or if woodlands are not thinned sustainably, that simply won’t be the case.  

Well-managed woodlands will ensure that healthy trees remain long into the future, with carbon locked up in the mature trees, soils and vegetation, and further C02 taken up as young trees grow. This means that the woodland cycle is not just renewable and carbon neutral, but can result in a net carbon benefit.  

That brings us on to burning.  The reports have highlighted that burning green or ‘wet’ wood can emit twice as much particulate matter as seasoned or ‘dry’ wood.  Drying in a kiln or seasoning wood to air dry naturally reduces the moisture content to less than 20 percent, meaning that wood will burn more efficiently and can be classed as ‘ready to burn’.

Wood should also be kept in a well-covered, ventilated store to make sure that it doesn’t re-absorb moisture.  

And then there’s the wood burning appliances themselves.  Open fires can emit nearly ten times as much pollution as the latest range of ‘eco-design ready’ wood burning stoves, so called because they already meet the stringent air quality regulations due to come into force in 2022. Promoting the shift to wood burners and increasing efficiency can drive new, clean technology and the growth of a responsible wood fuel industry.   

Local communities

These discussions are being played out in the National Forest, where we are supporting the expansion of community wood fuel groups.  

Volunteers are out managing woodlands across the autumn and winter season, and at the same time enhancing their own health and wellbeing, increasing their skills and having fun.  At the end of the sessions they take a boot full of logs home to season and burn.  

It’s now got to the stage where they’re even sharing images of wood burners on Facebook.  This is about as local as you can get and highlights the multiple benefits of wood fuel and well-managed woodlands on your doorstep – and that’s before you consider the other things they’re providing, like access for people to enjoy woodland, improved habitats for wildlife or management of water flows.  

This is a success story whichever way you look at it, and surely the sort of thing we should be promoting.  

So, come on, let’s fall in love again with burning wood.  A simple shift from fossil fuels to wood fuel, and open fires to wood burners means that we can also make a huge improvement in air quality. With just five easy steps, we can all breathe more easily and ensure that wood fuel is still part of our energy future.

Five steps

1. Use locally grown wood fuel to reduce CO2 in the distribution and processing
2. Ensure your wood fuel is sustainably harvested so that woodland is maintained as a carbon store and renewable resource – better still, join a volunteer group and harvest it yourself  
3. Dry, season and store your wood properly or buy seasoned timber that is ‘ready to burn’ to halve emissions of particulates during burning
4. Use an efficient wood burner, ideally one that is eco-design ready.  These have increased efficiency and are permitted for use in smoke control areas
5. Service and clean your flue and burner regularly to maintain efficiency 

This Author 

John Everitt is chief executive of the National Forest Company, which is responsible for coordinating the creation and management of the 200 square mile National Forest spanning parts of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire.

Chancellor Philip Hammond announced in his Spring Statement this week that the government will launch a global and national review into the link between biodiversity and economic growth. This is welcome news.

We urgently need to take action to halt the UK’s biodiversity crash and it is essential that the government incentivises nature-friendly food and farming practices to achieve that.

Recent reports have shown massive declines in wildlife globally with humanity displacing 60 percent of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970 and a steep decline in global insect populations linked to pesticide use threatening all our ecosystems.

Agroecological farming

Despite this, the UK is currently failing on 14 out of 19 global targets on biodiversity and a report by the Natural Capital Committee concluded that only half of our habitats meet minimum quality targets set by Natural England, with bees, butterflies, and farmland birds and bats either continuing to decline or stagnating in numbers.

Many farmers are working hard to support biodiversity, but more robust incentives from Government are needed.

The review Hammond announced is set to determine the most cost-effective and environmentally sustainable interventions that could be taken to protect nature – and agroecological techniques, such as organic and agroforestry, must form part of the solution.

It’s never been clearer that the government should to support this sort of farming, with 50 percent more wildlife on organic farms, while the recent ‘Ten Years for Agroecology’ study showed that agroecological farming can produce enough healthy food for Europe’s growing population, while phasing out pesticides and radically reducing greenhouse gases.

This renewed focus on biodiversity should prompt the Government to ask whether the Agriculture Bill and Environment Bills are up to the task. We’re concerned that there is no explicit support for agroecology within the Agriculture Bill and that soil health and pesticide reduction have not been included in the metrics underpinning the Environment Bill. These must both be remedied.

The environmental issues we face are complex. They cannot simply be reduced to working out the financial value of boosting wildlife. The review into the link between biodiversity and economic growth will be an important contribution if it stimulates government support for nature-friendly farming systems. The cost of doing nothing will be far greater.

The Author

Rob Percival is head of policy (food and health) at the Soil Association.

We face a tsunami of information that fills our news feeds everyday, mostly unfiltered. Facts and fake news are all mixed up on our smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Sometimes this fake news can look very convincing, which can make it difficult to recognise. In our fast-paced world my printed infographic books feed the need for sustainable information.

They are based on scientific papers and reviewed by scientists from all over the world, and are guaranteed to be trustworthy while narrowing down the environmental problems to their very core.

Visualising information 

Infographic books are easy to understand, even without any prior knowledge on the topic. Most of all they are not opinionated, but rather neutral tools for gaining more knowledge and a deeper understanding of the complexity of a chosen topic, for example the state of the oceans. 

My new book The Ocean Book explores the diverse problems our seas are facing today: climate change, loss of biodiversity, overfishing, industrialization and pollution. The information builds one page after the other, creating a complex picture of interactions and a broad overview of the current threads the oceans are facing.

Scientific papers are not on the reading list of most people, they are not written in a way the general public can immerse themselves in. They are the outcome of one or two years of hard data based work and every word, every phrase has a very precise meaning. 

The problem with these kind of papers is that only scientists understand them. That’s a big issue, because a lot of scientific papers actually want to create change and send a message to the general public, for example on the state of our planet, on the climate breakdown or on the threads to ocean wildlife.

That is where infographics come in handy, they have the power to visualize the essence of a scientific paper. No matter how complex it at first seems, a graphic can be eye-opening and easy to understand for everybody.

Knowledge building

One of the most important principles is that less is more. Finding the balance between aesthetics, interpretation and visualization of the data in critical. The selection of data and the creation of easy-to-read icons is a challenge I face every day. 

Modern computer-generated infographics tend to do the opposite: instead of opening your eyes and making a topic simpler to understand, they visualise complexity in an obvious and aesthetic way,  without leaving you with further understanding or revelation. 

I try to go in a different direction with my infographic book series.  I prioritise the selection of topics that suit the flow of information and knowledge-building over aesthetics. Showing the broader picture, zooming in, connecting the dots that lead slowly page after page to a complex picture of the problem. 

My books are simple in every way. They feature one colour plus black, distinctive and repetitive icons and a clear and easy to understand language – anyone can further their understanding and learn something new.

In the best case, these books make people curious to learn more, encourage them to do further research and reading on the topic, or to start putting thoughts into action and caring even more for our planet. 

Starting small 

We all know that everybody has the power to make a bigger change in the world. There are many examples of great people throughout history who have stood up for their beliefs and created grassroots movements. Every little action counts and many small actions will eventually lead to a bigger change.

We can all save the world, the oceans, and the climate by starting to change and simplify our lifestyle. Little by little, day by day – there are many possibilities and ways to become more earth friendly.

Incorporating new habits into daily life can be easy, so long as we don’t lose sight of the overwhelming size of the global problems. Starting small and keeping going, we will inspire others to do the same. 

A really small start can just be having a closer look at an infographic. You never know what that might trigger in your brain and what actions and change you might bring to the world.

This Author

Esther Gonstalla is a German freelance infographic designer and writer of three infographic books: The Atomic Book, The Climate Book and most recently The Ocean Book (Green Books, Cambridge). 

Image: Greg McFall, Wikimedia. 

Vale is the company behind a recent massive mining incident in Brazil. The failure of their Brumadinho tailings dam killed at least 300 people, many of them the company’s own employees and caused enormous environmental damage that has destroyed the river and will affect people in the area for many years.

The international day of action for rivers aims to “celebrate our life-giving waters, and honor all those who have worked hard to ensure that our rivers continue flowing“.

The Vale Ma’ shows that this was anything other than an isolated case. As the Brazilian lead researcher in the project Beatriz Saes said: “Many people in Brazil are saying that it was not an accident. It was a crime.”

Impacts

The ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team at the UAB’s Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) called their map “¡Esto no Vale! Isso não Vale! Vale S.A. operations and socio-environmental conflicts”.

The map currently details 27 socio-environmental conflicts in the world related to Vale S.A.’s mining and infrastructure projects.

The conflicts include mining exploitation and tailings dams, such as those that broke in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019) leaving behind hundreds of deaths and irreversibly contaminating rivers and lands.

The map shows that the mining company is responsible for a large array of socio-environmental impacts all over the globe.

Activist scholars

To mark the rivers protection day, the research team wanted to contribute to the global efforts of environmental justice groups to reclaim justice and to stop corporate impunity.

They have urged users to reflect on the wider problems generated by the resource extraction of large mining companies and their political allies.

The map is produced by the EJAtlas research group at the UAB together with Yannick Deniau of the Geocomunes collective (Mexico) and Beatriz Saes (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil).

The data was gathered by activist scholars, independent researchers and local activists and is part of an ongoing mapping process, which documents and publishes new cases of environmental conflict.

This Article

This article was authored by Beatriz Saes, Daniela Del Bene, Sara Mingorría, Yannick Deniau, Raquel Neyra, Max Stoisser, Lucrecia Wagner, Grettel Navas and Nick Meynen and submitted by the ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team.

Vale is the company behind a recent massive mining incident in Brazil. The failure of their Brumadinho tailings dam killed at least 300 people, many of them the company’s own employees and caused enormous environmental damage that has destroyed the river and will affect people in the area for many years.

The international day of action for rivers aims to “celebrate our life-giving waters, and honor all those who have worked hard to ensure that our rivers continue flowing“.

The Vale Ma’ shows that this was anything other than an isolated case. As the Brazilian lead researcher in the project Beatriz Saes said: “Many people in Brazil are saying that it was not an accident. It was a crime.”

Impacts

The ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team at the UAB’s Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) called their map “¡Esto no Vale! Isso não Vale! Vale S.A. operations and socio-environmental conflicts”.

The map currently details 27 socio-environmental conflicts in the world related to Vale S.A.’s mining and infrastructure projects.

The conflicts include mining exploitation and tailings dams, such as those that broke in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019) leaving behind hundreds of deaths and irreversibly contaminating rivers and lands.

The map shows that the mining company is responsible for a large array of socio-environmental impacts all over the globe.

Activist scholars

To mark the rivers protection day, the research team wanted to contribute to the global efforts of environmental justice groups to reclaim justice and to stop corporate impunity.

They have urged users to reflect on the wider problems generated by the resource extraction of large mining companies and their political allies.

The map is produced by the EJAtlas research group at the UAB together with Yannick Deniau of the Geocomunes collective (Mexico) and Beatriz Saes (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil).

The data was gathered by activist scholars, independent researchers and local activists and is part of an ongoing mapping process, which documents and publishes new cases of environmental conflict.

This Article

This article was authored by Beatriz Saes, Daniela Del Bene, Sara Mingorría, Yannick Deniau, Raquel Neyra, Max Stoisser, Lucrecia Wagner, Grettel Navas and Nick Meynen and submitted by the ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team.

Vale is the company behind a recent massive mining incident in Brazil. The failure of their Brumadinho tailings dam killed at least 300 people, many of them the company’s own employees and caused enormous environmental damage that has destroyed the river and will affect people in the area for many years.

The international day of action for rivers aims to “celebrate our life-giving waters, and honor all those who have worked hard to ensure that our rivers continue flowing“.

The Vale Ma’ shows that this was anything other than an isolated case. As the Brazilian lead researcher in the project Beatriz Saes said: “Many people in Brazil are saying that it was not an accident. It was a crime.”

Impacts

The ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team at the UAB’s Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) called their map “¡Esto no Vale! Isso não Vale! Vale S.A. operations and socio-environmental conflicts”.

The map currently details 27 socio-environmental conflicts in the world related to Vale S.A.’s mining and infrastructure projects.

The conflicts include mining exploitation and tailings dams, such as those that broke in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019) leaving behind hundreds of deaths and irreversibly contaminating rivers and lands.

The map shows that the mining company is responsible for a large array of socio-environmental impacts all over the globe.

Activist scholars

To mark the rivers protection day, the research team wanted to contribute to the global efforts of environmental justice groups to reclaim justice and to stop corporate impunity.

They have urged users to reflect on the wider problems generated by the resource extraction of large mining companies and their political allies.

The map is produced by the EJAtlas research group at the UAB together with Yannick Deniau of the Geocomunes collective (Mexico) and Beatriz Saes (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil).

The data was gathered by activist scholars, independent researchers and local activists and is part of an ongoing mapping process, which documents and publishes new cases of environmental conflict.

This Article

This article was authored by Beatriz Saes, Daniela Del Bene, Sara Mingorría, Yannick Deniau, Raquel Neyra, Max Stoisser, Lucrecia Wagner, Grettel Navas and Nick Meynen and submitted by the ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team.

Vale is the company behind a recent massive mining incident in Brazil. The failure of their Brumadinho tailings dam killed at least 300 people, many of them the company’s own employees and caused enormous environmental damage that has destroyed the river and will affect people in the area for many years.

The international day of action for rivers aims to “celebrate our life-giving waters, and honor all those who have worked hard to ensure that our rivers continue flowing“.

The Vale Ma’ shows that this was anything other than an isolated case. As the Brazilian lead researcher in the project Beatriz Saes said: “Many people in Brazil are saying that it was not an accident. It was a crime.”

Impacts

The ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team at the UAB’s Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) called their map “¡Esto no Vale! Isso não Vale! Vale S.A. operations and socio-environmental conflicts”.

The map currently details 27 socio-environmental conflicts in the world related to Vale S.A.’s mining and infrastructure projects.

The conflicts include mining exploitation and tailings dams, such as those that broke in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019) leaving behind hundreds of deaths and irreversibly contaminating rivers and lands.

The map shows that the mining company is responsible for a large array of socio-environmental impacts all over the globe.

Activist scholars

To mark the rivers protection day, the research team wanted to contribute to the global efforts of environmental justice groups to reclaim justice and to stop corporate impunity.

They have urged users to reflect on the wider problems generated by the resource extraction of large mining companies and their political allies.

The map is produced by the EJAtlas research group at the UAB together with Yannick Deniau of the Geocomunes collective (Mexico) and Beatriz Saes (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil).

The data was gathered by activist scholars, independent researchers and local activists and is part of an ongoing mapping process, which documents and publishes new cases of environmental conflict.

This Article

This article was authored by Beatriz Saes, Daniela Del Bene, Sara Mingorría, Yannick Deniau, Raquel Neyra, Max Stoisser, Lucrecia Wagner, Grettel Navas and Nick Meynen and submitted by the ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team.

We are living in ‘interesting times’. In this climate, laughter yoga has many potentially helpful practices, and laughing at one’s fears is one of them.

In order to laugh at one’s fears, it helps to practise laughing for the sake of it, and/or as a yoga. This makes it a progressively easier practice.

This extract was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

In this yogic way, you laugh intentionally in the same way as you breathe intentionally. You focus on the activity for its own sake, for the benefits that accrue from the act of laughter itself. Laughing at one’s fears also happens to be part of several trauma-release therapies, so there are many excellent reasons for developing this ability. 

Personal liberation

Happily, not only is it an enjoyable and effective practice: it also gets easier.

Paulo Coelho makes a typically insightful comment on fear and laughter in his book The Witch of Portobello: “Don’t be like those people who believe in ‘positive thinking’ and tell themselves that they’re loved and strong and capable. You don’t need to do that, because you know it already. And when you doubt it – which happens, I think, quite often at this stage of evolution – do as I suggested.

“Instead of trying to prove that you’re better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humour. It will be difficult at first, but you’ll gradually get used to it.” 

As Coelho says, this is a difficult practice at first. However, laughing at your worries, insecurities, anxieties and fears is a route back to sanity and inner calm.

It is a path to psychological freedom, emotional intelligence, professional effectiveness, and personal liberation. It helps you be more mindful and become more resilient. 

Pain and trauma

In laughter yoga you learn to laugh for the sake of laughing. You learn to laugh for the psychological, emotional, physical, whole-person benefits. With practice this becomes an effective technique for dealing with pressure and regaining your equilibrium. 

When you learn this practice and learn to overcome your fears, miracles happen. One retreat delegate said: “At the weekend I only touched on the pain and trauma I have been through in the last six years. Over that time I had completely forgotten how to laugh, lost my confidence and self-esteem along with trust in others – all the negatives.

“I think I had reached rock bottom – anti-depressants from the doctor, high blood pressure, IBS, all, I believe, caused by my ego dwelling on the past and going over things like a long-playing record. Thankfully a visit to the doctor made me realise I had to begin to take control.

“I needed to laugh and find the fun in my life and also live in the NOW, not the past. I read and researched… and wondered whether there were any clubs that actually taught you how to laugh…

“Obviously I realise it is early days, but I am sure with my inner strength and determination I will succeed. In fact my doctor, whom I saw today, has agreed to gently phase me off medication.” 

Her story is one of many.

So, when life seems a bit frightening – laugh at your fears.

This Article

This is an edited extract from Joe Hoare’s book Laughter Yoga and Happiness: 7 Insights from 15 Years of Laughter Yoga. It has been published by Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. Image courtesy of Hoare’s website.

Days spent knocking doors to fundraise for a large environmental organisation in the UK can often be a frustrating and disheartening experience. Hours spent shuffling along rainy streets to be repeatedly told that the politicians are handling it, or that the current state of the climate isn’t something of much concern, can sometimes feel wasted.

Living in the country which sparked the coal-fired, steam-powered engine that’s dragging the earth towards climate catastrophe, you can be left wondering how the general public can distance itself from the realities of our current situation to such an extent?

This question can be quickly and succinctly answered when your turn your head towards the empty benches of the house of commons. Seeing this disconnection and lack of urgency mirrored precisely in the abysmal turn out at the most recent parliamentary debate on climate change, with on only ten Tory MP’s in attendance at certain points of the debate.

Excitement and urgency

The question becomes, how could you expect the citizens of the UK to take the issues surrounding climate change to heart when so many of their elected representatives treat it with such callous indifference?

One afternoon following the first Youth Strike for Climate on the 15 February 2019, I happened to be working on streets around Brighton which saw one of the biggest turnouts in the UK.

As the day stretched on and more and more young people returned home from the strike, the atmosphere and reception behind so many of the doors which opened in front of me was markedly different.

Young people, sometimes in groups or with their siblings, came hurrying to the door with stories about the strike, with questions about campaigns and with a sense of excitement and urgency.

From their faces and reactions it was clear that this had been more than a day bunking-off school. They were excited to discuss the issues that so many people twenty years their senior shrug off in indifference.

Generational rupture

There was no doubt that the young people I was speaking to understood what exists beyond the threats of the climate crisis, the possibility for a fairer, more just world which could arise from reforming our social and political systems around mobilising to stabilise the climate.

After this experience it struck me that this was a running theme that crops up time and again. Parents talking about how their children pick them up on recycling and palm oil, primary school age children coming to the door to talk about their roles as eco-officers for their class, parents signing up in their children’s names.

The Prime Minister may see these strikes as a waste of class time, but these strikes are the manifestation of a generational rupture in which the children and young people of the UK are rising up to protect what should be being protected for them.

The stagnation of business as usual politics has infected much of the UK’s political mindset and left the job of ensuring our planet’s future to the youngest of us. On seeing the passion and dedication of their response, there is no doubt that they are the people for the job.

The rise of Youth Strike 4 Climate, UKYCC, Plan B, Extinction Rebellion and even to some extent Momentum, shows how the call for climate justice in this country has become a youth driven awakening of the political system.

These groups are the positive, alternative outlets for frustrated and disenfranchised social groups. Tory Brexit arose out of this same disenfranchisement to become the issue which has taken up the vast majority of public consciousness since June of 2016. Brexit has left so many young people feeling as though they’re watching their leaders rearranging their papers while the building burns.

Thunderous wave

The rising-up of a generation to stand peacefully against the acts of state and social violence which are systematically perpetrated against the planet, its animal inhabitants and the human citizens of the global south, is giving form to the academic discussion surrounding climate justice at an unprecedented scale.

Engaging with some of these young people and listening to their vision for a more just and equitable future has been one of the highlights of my time as a fundraiser.

Although some people may doubt it, sea levels are rising, the climate is being destroyed and we’re at the precipice of environmental collapse. There is a youth led, peaceful and thunderous wave rising in response.

There will be many who have their doubts about this too, but as the next day of striking approaches, with Extinction Rebellion’s week of international rebellion following shorty after, there’s a sense that our last and best chance to enact the necessary social and political revolution is playing out in front of us.

Let’s hope that as more and more doors open towards our uncertain future, that behind them are stood the fearless and hopeful young people who have ignited this movement for climate justice.

This Author

Phil O’Sullivan is an environmental fundraiser and writes about climate justice.