'"Think globally, act locally." Yes, but we can also be aware of positive action that is being taken on a wider scale.' Photo: Leonard J Matthews / flickr CC.
Taking positive action
Judith Mason writes about protecting the planet
I have a chronic inability to see the wood for the trees or, more accurately perhaps, express the wood for the trees. I roll around in the waves and am grateful to those who stand on firm rocks and are able to express important issues with clarity. I’m not sure which way rightness lies, however, and I write this after the strongly worded pleas, from Laurie Michaelis and Lis Burch, at Meeting for Sufferings on 7 April, for the Britain Yearly Meeting Sustainability Group to continue (see ‘The Canterbury Commitment: where do Friends go now?’, 20 April). I am not advocating laying down the group.
When I was fairly newly married, in the early 1970s, I travelled on a train with two Birmingham University professors who were discussing their work on plastics and was able to pick their brains about recycling plastic. The plastics that they said were then not recyclable are probably used now to make fleeces and so on. This was not long after Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island and, as he wrote in The Long Walk to Freedom, a time when he saw no plastic. When he came out of prison twenty-five years later plastic was everywhere.
Some years ago we were fortunate to work in projects with Earthwatch, a charity which supplies volunteers to scientific ecological sustainability programmes around the world – scientific research which would not happen without the financial and time contributions of those volunteers. They also work to change the culture in major companies by, amongst other methods, encouraging them to send volunteers to Earthwatch projects. The volunteers go back transformed and promote change from within.
As part of our own experience, we saw the effects of drought in Kenya caused by deforestation. In Iquitos, Peru, we saw enormous piles of polythene bags filled with human excrement being burnt in the open. (In much of South America, as in other parts of the world, toilet paper is put in plastic bags rather than flushed down a sewer system that cannot cope). On Robben Island, where we helped to survey penguins for a fortnight, we spent three sessions filling huge refuse sacks with plastic debris from the shore. This made virtually no impression on the vast quantities there. That was nearly ten years ago, but only now (because David Attenborough has spoken?) has plastic pollution hit the public consciousness.
‘Think globally, act locally.’ Yes, but we can also be aware of positive action that is being taken on a wider scale. Do Friends know about the encouraging work that is being done beyond our local patch – for example, the work of Emily Penn and Boyan Slat. They are two inspiring young people. Instead of emphasising what is not being done, how about celebrating what is being done amongst Friends and more widely? How about getting to grips with the science (and making it available to those of us with less scientific knowledge) and starting initiatives on a larger scale. How about a Quaker recycling plant, for example?
Those who have been interested in bringing peace to the world have been working on this for more than 2,000 years. If our peace and simplicity testimonies had achieved their aims would we even be talking about sustainability now? Have they failed because our structures are wrong? It seems to me that the suggestion that efforts to bring Quakers to action on sustainability, individually and corporately, have foundered is not right. The picture shows a good deal of action. Is the idea of failure because, unlike the campaign to abolish slavery (which took at least eighty years) and the campaign for same-sex marriage, the avenues for possible action are so diverse there is no way to grasp the whole picture? What might success look like – a planet without human beings?
Further information:
www.emilypenn.co.uk
www.theoceancleanup.com
