In my view, the following article by George Monbiot shows he is up there with Turnburg, Attenborough, Packham and many others. He never tires of telling people the truth and working against Earth's collapse. It is for Friends of the Earth and all groups and individuals to rally in support if we are going to exit this tunnel.
Norman Pasley


One of the problems we face in persuading people to love and protect the living world is the language in which this love is expressed. Few of the terms we use vividly describe either the planet we are trying to defend or the threats it faces. Take “the environment”: a cold, abstract and distancing term that creates no pictures in the mind. Have you ever seen an “environment”? Or “climate change”, such a mild and neutral term to describe an existential catastrophe. It’s like calling an invading army “unexpected visitors”.

I’ve been pressing for more effective language for a long time, and I was delighted when, in 2019, the Guardian started changing the way it talks about our crisis, using terms such as “living planet” or “natural world” instead of “the environment”, replacing “climate change” with “climate breakdown”. I’m even happier to see how the Guardian’s shift has triggered a wider change.

But there is one term in particular that still niggles. It might seem an odd one to contest, because it’s pretty graphic: mass extinction.

It is used to describe the catastrophic events (there have so far been five since animals with hard body parts evolved) that wiped out many of the planet’s lifeforms. We are now in the midst of the sixth of these events. So what’s my problem?

Well, I think the term reflects what palaeontologists call “taphonomic bias”: a mistaken view of the past caused by what happens, or doesn’t happen, to be preserved. We call these events “mass extinctions” because it is easy to see the disappearance of large numbers of species from the fossil record. The rocks also reveal the deeper issue, but this is less immediately visible. Mass extinction, horrendous as it is, is one outcome of something even bigger: Earth systems collapse. This, I feel, is what we should call the thing we are facing. We are in the midst of the sixth Earth systems collapse.

In other words, human activities are not causing a biodiversity crisis, or a climate crisis, or a freshwater crisis, or a forests crisis, or a soils crisis, or an oceans crisis. We are creating an everything-crisis. While compartmentalising this omni-crisis helps us to study it and report on it, nature recognises no such boxes. All these systems are intimately connected and mutually dependent. There are no hard boundaries between them. If one fails, it threatens to bring down the rest. That is what happened in the previous five Earth systems collapses. We need, as much as we are able, to understand the whole.

Our omni-crisis is also a political and economic crisis. It is driven, above all, by a few immensely powerful oligarchs and corporations: the pollutocrats. It is a crisis of power: the power they wield over us and over Earth systems; their ability to block the progressive change we need; to ensure that business as usual, which has granted them their power, is sustained.

This is an existential crisis for them too. As the signs of gathering collapse become ever less deniable, their industries – fossil fuels, meat production, cars, roads, planes, mining, logging, fishing - are exposed to public scrutiny as never before. So they must fight harder than ever before.

They are pouring money into politics, funding and directing political parties, demanding ever more draconian laws against protesters, paying lobby groups (so-called thinktanks) to publish misleading claims, and funding troll farms to flood social media. The billionaire media, representing the same interests, crank out ever wilder misinformation about even the mildest policies (net zero, low emissions zones, 15-minute cities) which might help to arrest the slide towards destruction. Their strategies are omnicidal.

Our survival now depends on defending and expanding islands of resistance: places from which we can explain and debate the Earth systems crisis we face. The Guardian is one of these islands. By refusing to succumb to the pollutocrats’ full-spectrum assault on people and the planet, by investigating the strategies they use and the power they wield, by holding the governments they have captured to account, and by doggedly seeking to tell the truth about the crises we face, it develops some of the tools required to fight back.

Nothing here is easy. Time is short, the powers arrayed against us are great. But we know that, just as ecosystems have tipping points, so do social systems, and history shows that these often turn out to be much closer than we imagine. The quest now is to reach the social tipping points before the ecological ones.

George Monbiot
Guardian Columnist
The Guardian

Fairtrade Fortnight 2023’s theme focussed on how the climate crisis endangers the future of some of the planet’s most beloved food products (bananas, chocolate and coffee) and the livelihoods of the farmers and agricultural workers who grow them.  
Unseasonal and unpredictable weather, storms, floods, droughts and increased plant diseases are making it hard for farmers to continue farming. Many low-income farmers do not have the resources to invest in recovery and adaptation.  Many are leaving farming and their children are seeking alternatives.  
Fairtrade Certification offers farmers hope: a guaranteed minimum price allows them to earn a living income; an additional Premium Payment which they can choose to spend on improving their businesses, their communities and their environment. Training programmes which advise on sustainable farming methods, tree planting and soil improvement are resulting in higher and better-quality yields and healthy plants more resilient to diseases. Farmers can see a future with Fairtrade. ​

And in this one a coffee farmer in Kenya explains how climate change is affecting his vegetable crops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rR0YqhDmIw ​

​Of course, the most important way to reduce food waste is meal planning and portion control. When you make a recipe the first time, you might find its enough for 1.5 meals for your household - so make a note on the recipe - then you have some choices:

1. if its freeze-able you can make double quantity, eat one portion and put 2 portions in the freezer and look forward to 2 cooking free days soon
2. if its best eaten on the day - reduce the quantities (multiply all ingredients by 0.67) for next time you make it
3. if it will keep a few days in the fridge, make another oversized meal and keep both "extra bits" for a cooking free day.

... but what about all those little jars of sauce etc which must be "used within 4 days" - I found nearly all can be frozen in 2 teaspoon portions in an ice cube tray (scrape out the jar with a silicon spatula) and then decant the frozen cubes into a labelled tub or jar in the freezer. That's fewer jars cluttering up your fridge shelves and discovering fewer "furry jars" - where you need to decide: shall I scrape this out and wash it up (which I ought) or put it straight in the bin (which I want to)!
My newest trick, thanks Meg - see photo - is to help keep shop bought herbs for far longer in my fridge. I fill a glass with water, put the herb stalks in the water (as if they are cut flowers) and then store in one of the fridge-door shelves. They last so much longer. (FYI placing them on the top shelf of the fridge, near the light, brings a quick death to the herbs).
Much food comes with too much packaging - so consider buying ingredients from https://ecofreaksuk.com/?v=79cba1185463 in Lee on the Solent. Take along your empty jars + lids, they weight them, you refill and then they calculate the cost. 
Eco freak's sister shop is the trash cafe in Gosport - they make sure food from supermarkets, which would otherwise go to landfill - is eaten up. https://trashcafe.com/?page_id=1024 They also deliver hampers, much recommended by some GFFOE members. For Fareham residents there are https://www.fareham.gov.uk/leisure/community_pantries.aspx 

Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit reports that New Government statistics on UK energy trends in quarter 1 of 2022 show that the shortfall in gas generation is being filled by cheaper renewables, namely wind and solar, which have increased their share of electricity generation on the same quarter last year.

​Emissions from 13 dairy farms match the entire UK emissions...