Category: Mother Nature

Eco-Anxiety: It’s A Thing

October 3, 2023

Environment, Landscape, Mother Nature, Planet Earth

Are you uptight about climate change? Are worries keeping you up at night, or invading your dreams? You are not alone. According to Statista.com 74% of Canadians are worried about global warming. A poll in April 2021 showed 80% of respondents considered climate change a present danger.

Wikipedia defines eco-anxiety as ‘chronic fear of environmental doom’. The term seems to have been coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2011, yes that far back. The attention to the problem increased around 2018 when Greta Thunberg discussed her own issues in the media. In 2018 the American Psychological Association issued its’ first report on the topic.

The symptoms can be many. Obsessive thoughts, existential dread, guilt, anger and frustration toward authorities, depression, anxiety, panic, sadness, trouble sleeping. Solastalgia is a yearning for the way your area, neighbourhood or country used to be. It’s a term that was first used, again by Glenn Albrecht, in articles in 2003 in the wake of ecological disasters such as mining accidents.

Research indicates Gen Z and Millenials are most affected. They are the people who have had the greatest access to the internet since a young age. The way the algorithms work on social media, if you stop to look at one disaster posting you will be shown more. Doomscrolling is a vicious cycle of seeing more and more bad ‘things’.

I don’t have a cure but I can offer an antidote. You need, in your inbox and on your social media sites, more good environmental news! Every day! There are many people out there in the world inventing new solutions, taking action, making a difference. You need to hear about it more.

Find Sam Bentley on almost any social media site or on his website. Nothing but good news for the environment and his British accent is lovely. On Tik Tok find @acorn_land-labs for sustainable solutions. As you may know, from this post here, I get a lift from watching groups getting out there to clean rivers and oceans. Find Sungai Watch, The Ocean Cleanup or 4ocean. A fellow that gets out and ‘tidies nature’ is Josh ‘Earthdrop’ Donaldson. Another lovely accent and beautiful music. I get a newsletter a couple of time a week from The Cool Down that is always full of interesting developments. And how about Re-Wilding Magazine; it comes into my inbox once every couple off weeks with stories about restoring Mother Nature.

There’s lots of great things happening; you just have to search out that news. Hopefully, it will make you feel better about what’s going on.

Peace to you!

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I Beg You, Don’t Clean Up Your Garden

September 13, 2023

Design, Environment, Landscape, Mother Nature, Plants

Photo by Laura Paredis on Pexels.com

September has arrived and here in Manitoba the temperatures have already slid downward. Monday evening the temperature went down to 2^o Celsius (35^o F.) Very glad I had taken my basil inside! It would not have appreciated that chill and it’s doing very well right now. There is lots more good eating to come from that plant. When I’m home it can go out for the day but pretty soon it will become a houseplant, under grow lights.

Many people are already looking forward to cleaning up the garden and largely not thinking about it until Spring. May I suggest an alternative? I think people should relax and enjoy the Fall. Sit in the sun, even if a down vest is required, enjoy a beverage, admire the changing leaves, watch the birds gather to migrate.

There are a number of good reasons to leave your garden. First, for those of us in cold climates, snow is our best blanket and insulator for roots and crowns. With the foliage up, plants will trap snow; it will shield the soil from temperature fluctuations right through until Spring. It also means that spring melt will offer extra moisture right where you need it: at your plants’ roots.

Second, from a design point of view, I find that the foliage of perennials and shrubs peeking from the snow to be far more interesting to the eye than a bland bank of snow. Of course trees are standing tall but something more at knee height offers easy views. The colourful twigs of dogwoods (Cornus), the persistent berries of chokeberry (Aronia) or the tan blooms of hydrangea (Hydrangea) are all interesting in a sea of whiteness.

Perhaps the most important reason to leave your garden: it will protect our pollinators and native insects. Many bugs over-winter in the foliage of plants, near the roots or just under the soil surface. They survive as eggs, larvae or pupae, as well as adults. Yes, some may be ‘bad’ bugs but most will be benign if not beneficial. Here’s an excellent article from the Manitoba Museum on plants and insects surviving our frigid winter. Another plus: many of these blooms and berries will provide food for birds through a cold winter, bringing life to the garden.

Can you do it? Can you leave your garden to Mother Nature’s care?

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I Thought We Knew Better

September 6, 2023

Environment, Mother Nature, Planet Earth

In the last six or eight weeks my various social media feeds have been filled with images of the aftermath of music festivals and other large gatherings. I follow a number of environmentally conscious creators. When I first saw these pictures I was appalled. Fields filled with garbage, abandoned tents, broken camp chairs and more. How can this still be happening in 2023?

It is fantastic to get out and enjoy Mother Nature. It’s a wonderful vibe to catch live music in a beautiful setting. But to leave the area despoiled? Who could possibly think that that is a good thing to do?

Media says Gen Z and Millennials are the most concerned about climate change. Check out this article from Pew Research or this from Forbes Magazine. Such young people would certainly be a large portion of the audience for such concerts. Were they there showing off their latest cool thrifted clothes? Where’s the disconnect? How can one be concerned about the environment but leave such a mess behind.

Not only the pollution and garbage astounded me. The waste! Thousands of dollars in perfectly good tents, sleeping bags and clothing that could have been donated to homeless people or those suffering from environmental disasters. These concert goers can’t be concerned with the cost of paying the mortgage or buying groceries. To be able to afford tickets, then purchase items to a simply abandon them? What about the three R’s of recyling: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle? Are these entitled people who just assume someone will just clean up after them?

The Reading Festival in Britain had over 100,000 attendees. It had a small group of 500 volunteer to do clean-up. They had a little over 24 hours to do what they could do collect, reuse, recycle; after that bulldozers would come in to simple push the garbage up and take it to the landfill. Kudos to those volunteers!

While doing research for this piece, inevitably Mount Everest came up. Since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first climbed it in 1953, to world attention, thousands of others have made the attempt. And left their garbage. So, people go to challenge themselves at one of the Earth’s most glorious locales, and despoil it. Read more about the attempts to clean it, and keep it clean, from this article in National Geographic. And music festivals are trying as well, here’s an article from Rolling Stone that looks at some of the solutions.

Ultimately, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. What will it take to make people more aware of their own part in the problem? I recall Canada doing some ad campaigns in the ’60’s and ’70’s bringing attention to the problem of littering. Is is time again?

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Category: Mother Nature

Eco-Anxiety: It’s A Thing

I Beg You, Don’t Clean Up Your Garden

I Thought We Knew Better