First off thanks Damo for your suggestion. I don’t actually drive (public transport all the way for me) but if I ever do pass my test and get a car, a plastic foldable crate will be my first investment.

Now to Lyndon…oh where to start! You kindly give me so much material to chew up and spit back at you!

“You begin talking about money”. Ok, let’s start there. In the past I have worked with hugely knowledgeable people, e.g. from government or Friends of the Earth, whose enviro-speak is so littered with doomsday predictions, percentages and lists of facts that their audience is alienated by the sheer weight of information coming at them. I don’t want to be a member of the great unheard.

Instead, I take inspiration from the Stern Report (2006), know of it? The former head of the World Bank concludes that by spending just 1% of government funds on tackling climate change now we could avoid environmental consequences that will otherwise cause the world’s economy to shrink by 20%. Despite decades of noble campaigning by the best enviroheads in the charitable world governments and leaders had kept their fingers stuck firmly in their years until Nicolas Stern translated climate change into economic terms.

Yes I talk about money, and wrinkles, and going out. No I am not trying to impress anyone; I am simply translating ‘the future of this planet’ into words people listen to.

(PS: don’t you think if I was trying to impress I would have crossed my fingers behind my back, moved to an eco-lodge and written lies about home-growing mung beans)

Secondly, you say I “attack the cash cow farmer”. A simple rereading of my blog will tell you that I am attacking the “cash cow farmer-squeezing coffee chain”. The state of modern farming is tragic (Google my name and “vital statistics” to find a short, interesting article I have written on the subject). In India 6 farmers a day commit suicide, in America and the UK dairy farms have halved in number over the past decade, worldwide the food supply chain is constructed by private companies’ economic greed – not consumers’ nutritional needs – and has led to a stunning loss of biodiversity that ignites agricultural diseases. If we didn’t get all virtually all our eggs and chicken from one breed, bird flu wouldn’t have been able to rear its head and cluck threateningly in our direction.

I admit it, I am mad- but only at the world’s limited regard for the environment. And I am using this energy to try and communicate to as wide an audience as possible how easy it is, and how fruitful it can be, to care about the world around us. Energy is wasted in attacking others (say, through, comment boxes…) when it could be spent thinking up solutions, like saying no to packaging.

Thank you Lyndon, I enjoyed that.

good work to those who can actually achieve things like this, if the world was full of people like you it would be a better place.
peace xoxo