Pester for the Planet!

Anna Shepard just wrote an article in The Times about teenage eco-nags:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3681607.ece

Apart from painting a rather endearing picture of her younger self wearing an unfashionable Elefriends jumper, it has one important quality - the teenagers interviewed are all happy to admit their mistakes. Let's face it. We're all making this up as we go along, that's politicians and Green experts as well as you and me. Does anyone have the 'right answer' to all our eco-woes? No. Can anyone predict the future? Of course not.

Ms Shepard rightly points out that children's greatest asset is their ability to pester, nag and generaly bug their Groans (Grown-ups).

Here's a snippet from the book:

You may have heard of Pester Power? It’s the reason companies put adverts between your favourite TV shows. They’re not expecting you to rush out and buy the latest Playstation game or DVD, they’re relying on you to bug your Groans until they buy the stuff for you. And it works, doesn’t it? Groans can’t resist it, because deep down they think that buying you stuff will make you happy.

Now imagine if every child in the country channelled their Pester Power in the service of the Glorious Green Future. Imagine if, instead of whining for DVDs, everyone griped and grumbled about organic carrots or environmentally friendly washing powder. You can change the way your parents shop, and that in turn will change the world. Pestering for the Planet! You read it here first.

Caps and Climate Change

Fear is a beastly thing, especially when you're a kid. I remember being about seven and losing my school cap. We were supposed to wear our caps at playtime for some weird reason, so for about a week I didn't go out. Nobody knew I was harbouring this secret terror of caplessness, but it was the centre of my existence for long enough that I remember it vividly.

I know it was just a cap, but thinking about it helps me imagine the kind of fears kids have about climate change. If I was eight or nine I know I'd be lying awake worrying about the weather, and a report last year suggested that lots of children are worriers like me. This same report said that when children got to talk about eco-troubles at school and started doing things to change THEIR environment they worried less.

That's sort of the point of this book. I don't want my kids or anyone else's losing sleep over global warming. Instead, let's talk about it and start making some little changes. Even as an adult I find myself thinking, OK the world is huge and out of control, but I get milk from the milkman now which means no more plastic bottles. and that's A Good Thing.

Toys-a-saurus Adventure

I'm not a great shopper. In fact I'm probably on some list of terrible non-shoppers, people who aren't doing their bit to keep our fabulous consumer economy going. The rest of the family shop slightly more than me, which is probably a good thing, but they prefer to leave me behind because I moan too much. Actually I do like some shops. There's a greengrocer's near our house where one of the staff calls out into the street, all day long, 'come and buy your strawberries, your lovely fresh strawberries' in this wonderful sing-songy voice. But anyway...

Today Fate took me to Toys-a-saurus, a store the size of a small planet - you know the one I mean. When we walked in it smelt of warm plastic, and though there were only one or two humans around there was a constant chirruppy hubbub. It was like a nesting colony of electronic birds. It was as though we were naturalists and had stumbled into a forest full of rare creatures, only these were all trapped behind screens or sealed up in plastic. A lot of the creatures were talking, saying chirpy little phrases over and over again in cheery little voices.

Somebody somewhere had designed all these things so they would move about or flash or chirp, and presumably they had designed them because they thought kids would like them. There were no kids there, though, no people at all apart from us and a couple of workers who looked a bit bewildered by it all. It crossed my mind that maybe all the kids were out playing in the park or in the woods. Maybe they were playing cricket or learning how to sew. Their mums and dads would be searching for them, shouting 'We're going to Toys-a-saurus! Right now!" and they'd be hiding, shushing the younger children, waiting for the grown-ups to go away.

Adam's Review from Life Goggles

How To Turn Your Parents Green is written by James Russell, illustrated by Øivind Hovland and was supplied to Life Goggles by Charlie at Green Books.

Aimed at kids ‘from 8-80′ How To Turn Your Parents Green is a book for a future generation of eco warriors. Presenting the challenge to be green as a battle of the Greens versus the Groans (ungreen adults) the book urging children to become green by fining their parents if they’re not environmentally-friendly.


But it’s more than that, it tries to put the pester power that kids have to good use - turn it away from sweets and candy to switching off the tap and buying local food. And it does this with the help of humorous phrases and great drawings by Øivind Hovland.

Although I make the ludicrous age range for this book, I’m admittedly quite a bit older than those it’s really aimed at. So at first the phrases ‘Ghastly Global Warming’, Hellish Halogens’ and other similarly alliterate and capital lettered ones got on my nerves. But after a while I got used to it and ‘Lazy Train to Chubville’ got me smiling.

While humorous, the book is also informative and it does this cleverly by asking questions but then often making up one of the answers just to make you smile. It nicely explained what a leachate is (rubbish sludge mixed with rainwater) and other facts are presented simply and in a way that a child could easily relate to a parent.

The explanations of subjects like importing fruit from abroad or having a standby button on the TV show how ridiculous they are and that the reader shouldn’t stand for such practices. Luckily it then tells you what you can do about them and gives examples of things done in the past - such as the boy who saved the Severn Beach railway line. Practical examples, goals and checklists make it almost an activity book and even inspired me to do more.

Apart from my initial problem of getting into the book, once you’re used to the style it makes an enjoyable and informative read for all ages. Aimed at kids changing their parents’ habits (fining them for using carrier bags etc), it also has useful tips for turning teachers green and also becoming a green citizen yourself.

Available at Green Books, How To Turn Your Parents Green costs £6.50, is 91 pages, is printed on Nine Lives recycled paper and published by Tangent Books.

Win a Copy of How to Turn Your Parents Green from Life Goggles

It's simple really. Follow this link, answer a question, fill in some info, and you could win one of six copies of How to Turn Your Parents Green:

http://www.lifegoggles.com/1292/win-a-copy-of-how-to-turn-your-parents-green

No, I'm not going to tell you the answer, but you'll find it around here somewhere! You've got until 21 March, so get those thinking caps on...

The Times: Let the Kids Set Green Taxes

Times blogger John-Paul Flintoff has an interesting take on the government's predictable failure to set a Green budget. Refering to How to Turn Your Parents Green, he suggests that kids take matters into their own hands by levying taxes at the household level:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/environment/2008/03/green-tax-payab.html

I was really thinking in terms of fines rather than taxes - 20p for throwing a can in the wheelie bin, stuff like that - but I'm not going to argue with a man from The Times!

The main point is, don't wait for the Government to go Green: we need to get on with it ourselves.

What Happens When Oil Isn't Cheap Anymore?

Yesterday I woke up. Well, I suppose I wake up most days, but this was different. This was like an alarm clock going off and waking me up EVEN THOUGH I WAS AWAKE ALREADY. Hmmm. Tricky concept. Anyway, what woke me up was a man called Rob Hopkins, a tall, mild-mannered sort of chap with sticky-out ears and a nice sense of humour. He was talking about something called Peak Oil - no, not oil pumped out of mountains, but something altogether different:

The moment at which the oil waiting quietly in the ground for us to pump out is less than the amount we've already sucked out and burned up.

My grandfather worked for an oil company and I always thought of oil as something that was THERE. When one lot was sucked up, you just went and found more. There had to be more, because in our Groanish world we can't imagine less. Things aren't supposed to run out or close or end in our world, so the oil had to keep flowing.

More recently I began to realise that oil would one day run out, but I imagined that we'd have found some other wonderful source of energy by then. Nuclear fusion or cosmic rays - I don't know. Until yesterday I didn't understand that oil is special. Oil is like having a whole room full of cash you can just pull out and spend. Oil is like pickled sunshine. It's like the richest chocolate brownie you can imagine, only instead of butter and sugar and chocolate it's full of energy.

Over the past 150 years this chocolate-brownie-sunshine energy has made the modern world what it is. Cheap oil is the difference between a modern Western city and a poor city in the developing world. Look around you. How many things that you see were either made or brought to you using oil?

But once oil starts to become scarce, it will be expensive, and expensive oil is an altogether different creature. Expensive oil is a luxury. Expensive oil means no more cheap plastic, or cheap computers or TVs or clothes. Expensive oil means that only rich people will be able to drive or fly. It means having to live WHERE YOU ARE and eat food that is grown nearby.

In fact expensive oil could make life a whole lot better. It will stop people rushing around, trying to be in seventy-two different places at once. It will stop people getting fat. It will force people to spend their time living instead of shopping or watching TV. Provided people are positive and make good decisions, expensive oil will make our lives healthier, Greener and less stressful.

What happens when oil isn't cheap anymore? That's up to us.