Even when you decide to live a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, perhaps you decided that nows the time to finally ditch the plastic, invest in an electric car or cut down on your meat consumption. As you throw away the last of the plastic ketchup bottles from your kitchen, cancel the phone upgrade to make the most of your 2 year old mobile, and replace the fairy liquid for a packaging-free soap bar, your pet brushes past your leg with a broken toy in its mouth, looking forlornly at its food bowl. Immediately, you jump in the car and buy a new plastic toy and a range of treats, snacks and foods for your pet, indiscriminately swathed with plastic packaging with questionable places of origin.

Regardless of our green dreams, pets tend to exist outside of the sustainable alternatives we adopt for ourselves. With hard-hitting marketing aimed straight for your responsibility of your furry baby whom you only communicate with through sounds and looks, pet care manufacturers know just how to get you to spend more, and your pets consume more. Tales of ‘human-grade’ food with essential nutrients to keep their coat glossy, mental stimuli in the form of injection moulded plastic pellets, and electronic innovations like a video-call treat dispenser can circumvent our eco sensibilities through our love of the furry ones that live in the house.

But with a rising human population on track to overtake the level of resources we have available, so too is the population of domesticated animals. Estimates say that over 60% of the world’s households have a pet, and like their owners, they have considerable environmental impact. Despite being human-kinds loyal companions for over 16’000 years in the case of dogs, human consumption levels are also increasing domestic pets consumption levels. Like us, pets consume energy and resources from a variety of sectors, from food, water, waste, consumption and power. Cats and dogs are estimated to consume up to a third of their human’s energy usage and are accountable for over a quarter of all environmental impacts from animals. Despite these overwhelming numbers, the pet care industry continues to thrive, rising by 3% each year since 2012.

As with human food, what we feed our pets is responsible for a vast number of environmentally damaging practices and consequences. Unlike the rigid standards we hold ourselves to, be it free-range, organic, or buying local, packaged pet foods are held to far lower quality by the manufacturers and us. The meat protein is often from far below standard humane procedures that are so stringent for foods for human consumption. Even without the meat, the amount of soy-based biscuits and gravy-pouches contributes to enormous amounts of deforestation. Despite a growing number of independent makers who boast ethical origins, the reliance of resources and fossil fuel energy for the packaging, transport, stocking, and distributing of the sacks and boxes of kibble has to be accounted for. After it’s been scoffed down by Rover and Felix, there is a considerable level of packaging waste, mainly from non-recyclable plastic pouches from treats and gelatinous foods that end up in a landfill.

As for where the food ends up; the little presents your dog leaves in your garden, and your cat leaves in someone else’s, pet waste is incredibly damaging to the environment in ways that are less apparent. Putting dog poo that would otherwise decompose into the ground, is instead incarcerated into plastic bags that contain the rancid contents for over 500 years in a landfill. Kitty litter is responsible for swathes of mining throughout the world for bentonite clay to make the fragrant and absorbent pellets.

The garish colours of imported plastic paraphernalia, abound with squeakers, fluff and jingle bells, we impart our need for new and shiny goods onto our pets. While for ourselves we may question the ethics of how and where our clothes, gadgets and furnishings were made, the same rule of thumb is rarely applied to our pets products. Manufactured overseas where regulation and human rights are seldom enforced, it’s likely that Tibbles newest plastic feathered friend has a far darker origin story than the bright colours would portray. Beyond the sensory overload of the pet toy aisle, the range of toiletries for pets arranged on shelves looks identical to those in Boots. Like the growing pharmaceutical industry for humans, so too is the one for our pets; shampoos, conditioners, spa treatments, even cosmetic surgery are abundant in the pet industry, spewing vast amounts of pollutants into the environment through the waterways.

Domesticated animals are not fundamentally damaging to the environment, but our resource-heavy lifestyles are not only changing the impact of how humans live but also our pets. With a planet buckling under the strain of our own lifestyles, it’s not feasible for our pets to as well. Pets have an important place in the homes of humans, but when they would probably be just as happy with a stick, a ball of (natural) wool and non-processed foods that are more similar to their natural diets, perhaps we need to think about who those environmentally harmful products are really for?

Carbon pawprint was originally published in Ruby Liv on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Without wishing to conform too rigidly to the stereotype of hyperbolic and scaremongering nature of environmentalists, life on this planet as we know it is on a set course to destruction and it’s businesses fault. The commercialised industrialisation of our environments and lifestyles has allowed economic growth, living standards and societal advancement to prosper. But at the same rate these essential principles of modern life rose, the bounty and sanctity of the natural world have perished. Corporate ownership has put human gain above the environment consistently for the last 200 years. From the ground churned up during the gold rush, fumes from factories coating the atmosphere above us, and vast swathes of natural flora being destroyed to make way for our expanding territories and to appropriate resources to make more stuff. Our need for more stuff, more money, more ownership has encouraged a business ethic treats the environment and its materials as its own personal piggy bank, that’s now left broken beyond repair.

The processes inexorably tied to our modern lifestyles that provide light with the flick of a switch, next day delivery, opulently parcelled goods that are cheaper than the sum of their parts, and all other aspects that come in the built-in package of being a citizen of an industrialised nation, come at grave damage to the rest of the world.

Factories are the epicentre of much of the harm caused to the planet due to their intense usage of resources and irresponsible disposal of the unused assets. The processing and manufacture of resources into goods regurgitates standard materials into a toxic cocktail of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, methane, and the infamous carbon dioxide, and a whole host of other solvents and particles. These pollutants wreak havoc on the natural and built up world as they build up in the atmosphere and prevent heat from escaping, coat natural landscapes from forests to the coral reefs, and build up in the lungs of all living creatures, including us. Pollution of water systems from contaminated effluents disrupt the workings of the marine environment, killing life and alter the hormones of fish and crustaceans. Soil contamination leads to once fertile land becoming void of nutrients to sustain life. Waste clogs the land and water of every corner of the earth. Pesticides put huge swathes of animal and insect life under threat of extinction. Areas of natural beauty are flogged to make way for the expansion of our species. And the enormous variety of living organisms that have survived since the dawn of time are being wiped out. The list is endless, and like the true impact of humans and the environment they reject, can never be surmised into a neat category.

Despite the irrefutable truth of these consequences, businesses, combined with the growing individualistic culture that puts self before others, view the environment as an externality that is an inconvenience to profit. Even when you search for ‘environment and business’, the vast majority of results is about how the environment affects business.

Even if your business isn’t in the manufacture of plastic straws or lithium-ion batteries, white collar industries can put a massive strain on the environment. In the UK, office buildings that are slung up quickly to meet the growing demand of the digital culture and business are more often than not built with non-renewable concrete blocks, with irresponsibly sourced insulation that is ineffective at capturing energy loss from heating and cooling systems. These temperature regulators are also often massively inefficient and pump greenhouse gas emissions from tower blocks while consuming colossal amounts of energy. Lighting, computers, printers and photocopiers in office blocks around the nation contribute to the 15% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions that comes from commercial buildings. Wastage is embodied in the mantra of office blocks, with the average person working in an office using 10’000 sheets of paper a year, 7000 of those sheets, from accidentally printing something twice or only printing on one side is wasted. With 5 litres of water going to produce one sheet of paper, just the stuff you don’t use accumulates to 35’000 litres of water wasted from one office worker. The traditional 9–5 workday that calls for people to commute in rush-hour congestion produce more emissions, emitting on average 40% more greenhouse gases than standard, steady moving traffic. The jet-set employees that travel across the world to forge and maintain international relations need no explanation.

There are plenty of solutions to these environmentally questionable working conditions. From investing in renewable energy generators like solar panels, to simply plugging electrical appliances into standby extension leads that turn everything off after a period of inactivity. From movement sensor lighting systems, to simply making double-sided printing the default, there are systems readily available that allow natural processes to facilitate modern business practices. Renewable natural resources like rainwater and solar energy can be captured and utilised without extortion to provide electricity, hot water and grey water to flush toilets and for other non-drinking water appliances. Even the furnishings and kitchenware can be reflective of a conscious culture, from office supplies made from post-consumer content, to replacing all plastic kitchen amenities with reusable versions, to arranging for the coffee grounds and other organic waste to be sent to biofuel composters. Even wasteful habits like buying food from other venues that are often swathed in plastic containers that end up in the big designated for landfill, can be adapted. Introducing canteens that make batches of food — often more nutritious than a supermarket-manufactured sandwich — can be more sustainable since individual portions are handed out on reusable ceramic crockery rather than singular portions divided up in plastic containers. Behaviour changes can be gently implemented, by upgrading to bin systems that require the separation of waste, to phasing out plastic provisions, to making video conferencing the standard of meetings before air travel is put on the table.

But there’s often little incentive and a lot of reason not to invest in them. Because shareholders seek a quick return, organisations are often dissuaded from making costly investments that lower shareholder dividend. And since CEO pay-packets & bonuses are directly linked to share price, they won’t push it. But extreme changes in the environment will negatively impact how we do business and the security of many industries that are depended on for economic growth. A lack of resources along with less predictable conditions could plunge many businesses into foreseen — but not acted on — financial blackouts.

But there is a burgeoning demographic of environmentally conscious stakeholders who are changing the model of business as usual. Concerned with the economic return of low ethics companies, and sensing the turning market tide towards transparency, strong ethics, and a plan for the future, investments are pouring into businesses that measure profit and environment as two parts of a whole. This business model that would have been scoff-worthy a few decades ago is now the industry that is predicted the most growth over the coming years.

Corporations are also aware of this turning tide and invest massive amounts of money into Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) teams to alleviate concerns of shady business operations. Lauded social and green projects get heavily marketed as a measure of their latest offerings to the world outside of business, appeasing consumers and investors with a deluge of greenwash, which is often no more than a Potemkin village — a literal or figurative construction built solely to deceive others into thinking that a situation is better than it really is. The fabled promise of TOMS shoes to ‘Buy-One, Give-One’, where a purchase from the brand would immediately donate one somewhere to the struggling populations of Argentina, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Rwanda, South Africa and more. But this project wasn’t about supporting the citizens of developing nations, it was about making Westerners feel good. The charitable act of donating a pair of shoes does little to solve long-term social, political and economic problems that have plagued these nations for decades. In fact, it often did more harm than good, by injecting a false economy of goods that was not sustainable. CSR teams often overlook the most basic adaptations that could be implemented to make business operations more efficient and instead focus on what looks most impressive on the companies ‘Responsibility’ page on their website.

Due to this veiled approach to green investments, certifications are cropping up to help investors and consumers wade through the jargon. But the abundance of green stickers with trees, thumbs up, stars and smiling faces has created an unnavigable compendium of labels for letterheads, packaging and website footers. One that aims to reduce this confusion is B Corp, a certification of sustainability that delves thoroughly into the inner workings of a company to access just how green they really are. Like the Fair Trade seal of approval on bananas and coffee, or the Soil Association certification on organic produce, the B Corp accreditation helps consumers and investors quickly identify that a company is as green on the inside as it claims on the outside. To achieve the endorsement, for-profit companies must meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency, all of which will be reassessed every three years, with the assurance that there is regular surprise in-depth on-site assessments on 10% of companies every year. Today there are over 2000 certified B Corps from 50 countries and over 130 industries, helping B Corps vision of the modern sustainable future as a place ‘where companies compete not only to be the best in the world, but the best for the world’.

Since shareholders can rest easy knowing that they can make money while making a difference, investments into B Corporations or other green-certified businesses is skyrocketing. The growing demand for transparency in industry is leading not just stakeholders to seek morality in brands. The relentless movement towards ethics in the public is forcing companies to move towards the green light in order to capture consumers favour; if a company can clearly assuage a consumer markets ethical morals, they can reap the profits. Due to this, sustainability has become a new arena in the strategy and operations of many businesses, pushing for a more transparent MO that has a positive impact on the environment and above all, on the bottom line.

This push towards green business has been relatively internal between the company, their shareholders and consumers. While governments, particularly in the UK, wrangle with multitudes of scattered green approaches and unrelated concerns, there are few policies in place that dissuade environmentally damaging practices. To put it simply, if there was a massive tax on business practices, from office buildings to manufacturing that is not carbon neutral like there is with cars, businesses would swiftly find a way to avoid the charge by adapting their energy usage and emissions.

But even the government have cottoned onto the ecological and environmental savings that can be made through sustainable investment. In 2010 The Environment Agency’s new office, Horizon House was opened; a grand building constructed in the middle of Bristol using over 85% of the materials from the demolished buildings. Flush with solar panels, automated windows that regulate ventilation and temperature, ground-source heat pumps, rainwater harvesting and smart lighting systems, the building uses almost 70% less mains water and 40% less energy than standard buildings. Employees of the building are encouraged to take more sustainable commuting routes, by offering bike storage and shower facilities, while dissuaded from using their cars by providing limited car-parking spaces. This government building provides a new template for the future in office buildings, though without extensive support and encouragement from the government to invest in green schemes, business as usual with undoubtedly prevail.

Reducing the environmental impact of your business will reap financial benefits along with ecological. Competitors who do not have climate change mitigation or sustainable running procedures at the forefront of their business will face expensive taxation and unforeseen natural consequences that a sustainable business will not. Sustainable enterprises are protected to a degree and will have a higher chance of long-term success, rather than the reactionary costs of natural disasters. As the door between our polluting past closes, companies who make it through in time will be rewarded with brand loyalty and high shares. But in the arena of business, those who limp slowly to the transition era will not be afforded a prize for coming last.

The new business model: Greening the Corporates was originally published in Ruby Liv on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For decades scientists have announced alarming predictions about the future state of the planet. In the seventies, it was speculated that by the turn of the century we would be plunged into an ice age that would ravage the earth and cause World War III. By the nineties, academia told us that in fact, it would be extreme heat, expected to wipe entire nations off the map (not strictly untrue), obliterate the rainforests by 2000, and melt the Himalayan glaciers by 2010. But from the blistering heat this summer, it seems that the scientific forecasts of recent years may have been too lenient.

Unprecedented levels of heat, wildfires, and drought have scorched vast provinces of the planet, from California to Arctic Sweden, down to Greece and across to Japan over the last few months. The lush landscapes of Europe have been baked to arid fields, while city residents in Asia have been faced with a rising death toll in the record-breaking heat. No longer a distant threat for our grandchildren, as of now, the devastating effects of climate change have arrived, and they’re here to stay.

But isn’t this just the weather? Summer is hot, and a few tropical days don’t prove global warming any more than some cold ones disprove it. But the ramping up of temperatures year after year parallel with greenhouse gas emissions tell a story that, while some may choose to argue on the semantics of, point to a clear trend that defines climate from weather. 2018 is on track to be the fourth hottest year on record, beat only by the other three chart-topping years; 2015, 2016 and 2017. Individually, extreme conditions are just a single data point but taken together over these more tumultuous consecutive years, the extremely high temperatures and conditions create a dot-to-dot that reveals climate change.

To truly differentiate weather from climate, think of the climate as a bucket and the weather as little blue and red balls inside it. If we draw a blue ball, the weather will be moderate, if we pull a red ball, the weather will be extreme. As the temperature rises along with greenhouse gases, more and more blue balls are being replaced by red, making it far more likely that we will draw a more extreme weather condition. Before global warming, the likelihood of fishing out a red ball made extreme weather events a once in a thousand years possibility, but over the last decade, we have seen such 1000-year events repeatedly every year, creating a pattern that is emblematic of a shift in climate rather than coincidental weather conditions.

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A new analysis from the World Weather Attribution Project, part of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute has found that Europe’s heat wave was at least twice as likely to happen because of human-induced global warming, demonstrating an ‘unambiguous’ link between climate change and today’s weather conditions. The continent has been baking under a massive high-pressure ridge pushing heat up to the Arctic and preventing cooler rainfall from giving the area any relief. Such a ridge had been sitting above California until this year, dubbed academically by scientists as the ‘Ridiculously Resilient Ridge’ stretching a one-off drought into a six-year mega-drought that plunged the area into chaos.

This is the beginning of the undeniable effects of climate change which is putting us firmly on track for coastal cities disappearing from the map, agricultural land left scorched and barren, and vast swathes of the Earth left utterly uninhabitable. Effects of which are the future of “Hothouse Earth” — the insulated greenhouse that the appropriately called gases have created. On such a planet, we will have passed the tipping point beyond which its own natural processes to correct uninhabitable conditions are ‘turned off’ by human tampering. Forests, oceans and permafrost that do us a much-needed service by storing carbon that are rapidly becoming overwhelmed and removed from the environment will potentially fall like a row of dominoes. Losing these defences will put global warming beyond our control, no matter how many policies we try and ratify after the fact. Under these predictions, even the 2°C limit hoped for by the Paris Agreement could still be too much for the planet to hold out against. In such a damaged future, it will be unlikely that nature or even the contemporary human civilisation will be able to unbridle itself from the mess created. Leaving us with a population that cannot support itself, with lacking water and food resources hiked up in price, and an ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots.

You would hope that under such overwhelming data, science, and evidence literally at our front door that policymakers will be compelled into action to prevent the looming environmental, social and economic ruin. But international governing bodies and policies around climate change are stagnant, and there is disconcerting evidence that we may be in a worse position than ever before. After a three year stall in global greenhouse gas emissions, this year they have risen, despite climate understanding rising too. Levels of carbon in the atmosphere are highest since the last 800’000 years, at over 412 parts per million. And despite movements towards divestment from fossil fuels, the industry has seen its first rise in share price since 2014. The heartwarming movement symbolised by the Paris Agreements has been diluted to a weak sliver of hope, with the last three hottest years occurring since the signing, the actual limits and policies slow to fruition and only incremental action has been seen, rather than required radical change. Soon to be lacking one of the worlds biggest polluters, the Paris agreement is in jeopardy of sorely missing it’s 2°C warming above pre-industrial level limit. And with the Hothouse Earth threatening even that level of temperature rise, it seems highly unlikely that the planet can be safely ‘parked’ at the boundary. Our laissez-faire approach to the earth has been so heedless that our options for the future are slim, leaving us with the choice between bad and catastrophic.

There are swathes of denial, postulating and professing that climate predictions are vague and unquantifiable, saying that perhaps global warming isn’t all out fault, that volcanoes and cow farts play a prominent role, and that it’s too economically stupid to leave hefty financial assets in the ground when there’s so much money to be made on them. But with runaway warming on the horizon, already threatening us with mass extinction, drought, heat and land loss, does it matter what the cause is, and is it something that we should leave to the roll of a dice?

Meet your new neighbour: Global Warming was originally published in Ruby Liv on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Along with food prices rising, there is a growing concern about the origin of produce, its air miles, seasonality, the rights of those who sow and harvest, to name a few. But with wages at a stagnant impasse it seems we’re at a disappointing juncture between knowledge and anxiety of the food available to us, but with little disposable cash to afford the better options.

There is an unusual solution on the horizon, inspired by the participatory culture of Airbnb and Uber, and the grassroots startups of fridge sharing and community gardening; food co-ops are providing a solution for affordable organic, local and unadulterated produce, in exchange for your time.

Food co-operatives stock all the same types of produce as your local corner shop, but are fundamentally pesticide free and closely sourced. Some even sell toiletries and household cleaners in a bid to be the only shop necessary to buy your wares. What sounds like the same sort of produce found at your local farm shop that would be sold with an average markup of 50%, the food in these co-ops is more in line with the prices of standard, pesticide filled produce from your nearest Sainsburys.

All of this is possible because they are run by the community for the community, without advertising, shelf fees and complex supply chains to manage. Consumers are instead members who pay a subscription fee and dedicate a few hours a month of labour for the right to buy products and vote on key decisions. Despite relatively low-profit margins, typically half that supermarkets charge, all of these conditions make produce that is luxury in branded stores, a more affordable price.

Food co-ops are not new and were once the mainstay of most towns across the industrialised world before 1930. But as branded stores swept across our urban areas, co-operatives fell to the cheap convenience provided. But with a population becoming weary of the individualistic culture plaguing our societies, this community-based approach to shopping is seeing a revival. In the United States, there are over 10’000 food co-ops, the most renowned being Park Slope in New York with over 15’000 members. There are a vast number of others around the world, including Park Slope-inspired La Louve in Paris, Alicante’s well-established bioTrèmol, Brussel’s Bee Co-op to name a few.

Food co-ops provide a fantastic and affordable solution to the heady profit margins on supermarket and traditional food shops organic produce. But can a low to no profit business model truly replace the hegemony that supermarkets have created across our high streets and industrial estates, who notoriously use their position to coerce suppliers into minimal returns?

Many members of co-operatives determine that it depends what you see as a profit. Where food co-ops reside quickly becomes a thriving community, with producers and members working together to support each other. Instead of a traditional business model that cuts corners to satisfy shareholders, co-operatives that are owned by its customers means that money, time and effort is all ploughed back into the business to benefit everyone.

With their kick-starter roots and decidedly buzz-wordy mission statements recalling the ‘sharing-economy’, food co-ops can be seen as a risky development into gentrification territory, with it bringing hordes of crunchy granola hipsters who fawn over the projects ‘authenticity’. But as the loss of dynamic variation of our high streets demonstrates, when the alternative is more branded supermarkets with unaffordable prices for good produce, perhaps we should be willing to open our arms to bearded strays and ‘good vibes’.

The new co-op was originally published in Ruby Liv on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Supermarkets are the grand monoliths of convenience. Where else can you buy a kilo of potatoes for £4 and cotton buds all in the same place? The likes of Waitrose, Lidl and all the others in-between have changed our perception of food.

We’ve become desensitised to where our food comes from, how it’s supposed to taste and what it really looks like. Before the 1950’s when supermarkets came into being, there was only grocers for our fresh produce when it was clear that they came from nature, be it the earth or trees, and were a variety of shapes and sizes like all natural phenomena. But as an industry, supermarkets did what only commercialised business could do; industrialise the process. Their mass-production attitudes to nature mean that only produce of the right size, shape and colour is eligible in their stores, resulting in a third of utterly edible food going to landfill because they don’t pass the beauty test. This means a third of farmers produce that they cultivate for a whole season go straight to the bin because they don’t match up to supermarkets standards. The brilliance of marketing and clever labels disguise the truth of what we’re putting into our kitchens and our bodies. Global transport and intensive indoor farming practices have made seasonal produce irrelevant despite shorter growing periods, while gluten sensitivity is increasing because of genetic modification in wheat (and not just for the hype). Salads that are British grown are flown out of the country, over to developing nations to be washed, prepared and packaged in plastic, to be flown back to us, still being able to brandish the little red tractor on their packets.

Public perception of food is changing. As wages stay stagnant and distrust for big brands grow, with discussions about pesticides, GMOs, the organic debate, meat farming and the idea of insects as our next food group becoming more common, we are more willing than ever to seek alternatives to our weekly shop. And with disposable income dropping due to more expensive necessities like phones and TV’s, we’re looking more into the basics where we can cut back. And with more people than ever working from home, there’s more time for people to think outside of the box.

Separate to what ‘The Good Life’ and Alan Titchmarsh attempted to rouse us with, the gardening scene is growing. What was once reserved for viewers of Ground Force has now been translated for the burgeoning community seeking advice online and in gardening and allotment groups that are now enjoying a member base below the age of seventy. The cultural shift towards shades of green has been theorised to many societal phenomenas, from a growing rejection of the relentless pace of the digital world pushing us towards the natural and tangible, to the ever-increasing expense of outdoor hobbies. Whatever the cause, a step towards the outdoors is not only beneficial to our mental and physical health, but also the world around us.

It needn’t be the dramatic ripping up of turf from the front and back lawns. Simply starting with a ready to go tomato plant in a bag or hanging basket and experiencing not only the pride of growing something yourself and not having to go to the supermarket to buy lacklustre cherry tomatoes, but tasting the difference between the two. Branch out into runner beans and courgettes in pots. Strawberries and potatoes grow just as well in tubs as they do on the land, and are more accessible. In no time you’ll have a small-production system enough for a vegetable stew and crumble and will have experienced the benefits of going off-supply. By becoming the sowers, tenders, harvesters and eaters of our own produce, we can begin to recognise the true extent of the unique systems that go into growing what goes on our plates.

When what should have been a glut of potatoes like the previous year is little more than a bucketful, the importance of infusing the soil with a variety of nutrients through rotational crop planting becomes apparent. Soon, the expense and smell of more and more fertilisers and ph-balance regulators will creep up, and you will begin to question why mass harvest farmers for supermarkets don’t operate a rotational system. The answer becomes clear when supermarkets pressure farmers into planting a single type of crop year on year to maintain their supply chains. When your lettuces are ravaged by slugs and snails, the importance of thriving biodiversity of insects = food, and birds = predators, will make you more acutely aware of how vital prosperous natural communities are. Yet the industrialisation of commercial agriculture continues to destroy bird habitats and replace it instead with pesticides. But when your raspberries fail to fruit because there were no bees or butterflies to pollinate the flowers, the importance of such pollinators that are killed off by pesticides becomes apparent. And when after harvest all your hard work is paid off, and the cucumber you spent months tending goes soggy and lacklustre in the fridge, you will understand just how much goes to waste in terms of labour and time when you let food go off.

Gardening and growing your own not only breaks the cycle of dependency on massive hedge-funded corporations but endows you with a better understanding of just how crucial all of these seemingly unrelated scenarios are. From a lack of biodiversity to the disappearance of the bees, the loss of arable land, food waste, to the build-up of food and drink packaging along global shores. Even to droughts (hosepipe bans) and warmer temperatures that sabotage neatly planned sowing, growing and harvesting seasons. These buzzwords and catch-phrases that are cropping up so often in the news that seem so distant and unconnected suddenly, and personally, become part of the much bigger picture of a need for more sustainable agricultural practices.

Sustainability is not about shacking up in wattle and daub huts and carving our own spoons while we shout obscenities at ‘the man’. But it is about taking control of what we bring into our homes, what we eat, and the practices we endorse by where we spend our money. It’s time to challenge our way of buying and eating and regain authority of our kitchens and wallets. A cucumber need never have its little plastic jacket, and you shouldn’t have to pay 89p for one stem of broccoli when that could grow you eight. Farmers shouldn’t be penalised for growing produce in the way nature provides, and our demand for food shouldn’t reek unstoppable consequences on the natural world. It’s time we grew our own.

Beyond the wheelbarrow: Growing your own was originally published in Ruby Liv on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Of all the greener lifestyle adjustments subliminally suggested to us by pious eco-advocates, patronising governmental campaigns and the people around us, nothing is more strongly encouraged than cleaner travel. Transport accounts for up to a quarter of the world’s energy consumption and emissions, the overwhelming majority of which comes from the direct burning of fossil fuels. Though Tesla and Nissan like to suggest that electric vehicles are steadily overtaking combustion engines, greenhouse gases emissions from transport are increasing faster than any other sector. With health problems rising in cities, undoubtedly connected to the smoggy haze pumped out by exhausts, the impact of dirty travel is creeping closer to home.

But for commuters, travellers and simply roamers, the need for green shouldn’t mean that you have to replace your car with an all in one desk with a yoga ball or swap travel miles for a vision board of the places you wish you could go. Public transport is believed to assuage much of our carbon woes. With many people getting from A to B with one engine rather than many, municipal travel at full capacity emits up to a third less of carbon emissions.

But this may just be an idealistic environmentalists fantasy. In reality in the UK outside of peak time, it often seems that the buses are running at a fraction of their full capacity. If a standard combustion engine car emits about 150g of carbon dioxide, at full capacity of 5 people, that’s 30g per person. With buses far less strict emissions standards this could skyrocket when they’re not running at full capacity. And trains aren’t much better; aside from rush hours, off-peak carriages often hold just 20% of their total capacity, making the average greenhouse gas emissions 75g per person.

Across the world, these statistics and the green revolution making the choice a necessity, governments and companies are rapidly transforming their fleets to electric. Currently, just under 400’000 electric buses are in service. This is predicted to increase rapidly to over 1 million within the next decade, with over half of the global municipal fleet running on electricity. It’s believed that China’s push for a greener nation will account for 99% of the worlds electric buses.

Contrastingly, the UK’s track record of greener transport met an abrupt halt when the money ran out on their grand goal of electrifying the nations railway service. What would have meant quicker, cleaner train transport for the country, is now on hold. The abandoned metal structures that snake through the landscape across Brunel’s original railway now signify a derailed green future that has yet to be completed.

But electricity is only as green as the fuel that produces it, and with 60% global energy usage still being met by the burning of fossil fuels, electric is not yet a fully green option. In Sweden, up to 20% of their transport systems use biofuel from waste and virgin oil that is carbon neutral. The risk, however, is that food crops like vegetable and palm oils are used to make biodiesel, that is incredibly unsustainable due to deforestation and land that should be used to prop up dwindling food security is instead diverted for transport use.

Even without these innovations in the fuelling of transport, public transport is simply the most efficient way of travelling. If municipal travel operates at full capacity the majority of the time, up to a third of greenhouse gas emissions can be prevented from entering the atmosphere. But to get the public on public transport, it needs to be more desirable than using personal forms of transportation. By just good common sense, people choose to take the most accessible, most convenient and cheapest mode of transport.

Cities in Northern Europe understand the necessity for public transport to be appealing to get people on it. The accurate timetables ensure that people arrive on time, with connections that are linked within a comfortable amount of time. They have payment systems like the London-centric Oyster card that works with a contactless tap across every form of transport, from underground trains, overground trains, buses, to trams, nationwide. While not luxury in any sense, they are reliant, efficient, and interconnected. This is in stark contrast to the ramshackle transport systems that plague the UK. From intermittent connecting routes that either leave you stranded on the platform for up to and over an hour, even if they turn up on time, to outdated payment systems specific to each transport company that many have yet to even upgrade to contactless.

In the UK, a part public funded organisation have been tasked with reducing the air pollution and congestion in big cities. Their solution is to encourage park and rides, reducing the number of cars that drive into smog filled cities. Instead of promoting the public transport, they discourage car driving, by taking away as make car parks as possible and manipulating the road system to make roads so complicated and congested that it becomes easier to use public transport or city provided bikes. This has been shown to work in Bristol and Oxford, contributing to a 20% and 40% reduction in emissions since the last decade. But this is only effective as long as you have public systems in place to take the strain. It has to be efficient, on time, and easy to understand to make people want to choose it over the comfort and convenience of their own car.

With carbon emissions needing to be cut decades ago, our reliance on personal transport needs to be cut. But when public transport is slower, less reliable, more expensive and takes more time, why wouldn’t people choose to drive? To make the vast majority of people to adapt to cleaner lifestyles, the means need to be preferable and destigmatised. But when public transport is inefficient, more costly and takes more time, how can we expect moral conscience to overcome these basic luxuries?

Fledgling schemes are entering the public sphere to encourage us to use our own energy to travel. Despite the Netherlands world-round reputation for cycling networks and a population of cyclists far beyond most nations, Amsterdam’s authoritative bodies are working to encourage people to commute by bike by paying cyclists 19 cents for each kilometre. Regardless of the quarter of the population that already cycle to work, this scheme hopes to encourage 200,000 people switching to manual transportation instead of cars.

In countries that don’t have cycling infrastructure as extensive the Netherlands, simple adaptations like car sharing and switching to an electric car that is getting cheaper all the time are the only available options before transport catches up to the grave situation we are hurtling towards. Even with climate change on the horizon, people still have places to be.

Cleaning up Public Transport was originally published in Ruby Liv on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When a chord is struck close to home, maybe it’s the sad eyes of a child who isn’t white, the pleading cries of a kitten, or the recognised menace behind polar bear cubs playing with a piece of abandoned plastic, most people are hit with the heartrending need to offer what they have to stop the torment mostly caused by our species wrongdoings. That’s where the charities step in, the intermediaries between our guilt and the solution to suffering, they selflessly put your money where it is best spent to improve the conditions so that you can rest easy, knowing that at least you’ve helped. But with charity scandals being the juiciest mainstream gossip beside political blunders, these saintly organisations are often swathed with injustices. Somewhere between their mission statement of protection and the massive amounts of money pouring into their hands, a disconnect occurs, making way for corruption and hypocrisy.

Greenpeace, one of the most iconic activist environmental charity is known for participatory members daring stunts in the name of all things not human. They’ve scaled the heights of the Shard, the Treasury building, and Big Ben, boarded Shell’s oil rig in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, and even trespassed and vandalised ancient Peruvian Nazca lines from over 1,500 years ago. These stunts, Greenpeace promises, are all in the name of anarchistic protest, designed to bring attention to environmental injustices around the world. But it’s recent sanctions against genetically modified crops (GMOs) fail to recognise the, though contentious, positive ecological imperative for such scientific feats. By engineering crops capable of withstanding higher temperatures and soils with fewer nutrients than what nature has evolved, we can assure food security for the future when vast swathes of our agricultural land are made infertile as it becomes too hot. Despite this, Greenpeace has deemed the GMOs as “environmentally irresponsible, poses risks to human health, and could compromise food, nutrition and financial security”. Instead of making a line of communication between the two standpoints, Greenpeace instead has taken it upon themselves to generally become a nuisance rather than an authoritative voice on the debate. Over the past decade, their contribution to the scientific conundrum has been to drop papayas in front of the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry in Bangkok, put protest banners in the arms of the angels on the Angel of Independence, a victory column on one of Mexico City’s major roads, and wrapping baby foods with hazard tape in a supermarket in Melbourne. Similar stunts have been held in objection to chlorine and nuclear power, despite limited scientific reasoning. Their protests are little more than teenage angst and tantrums that are thrown before the real situation is fully understood. Perhaps if Greenpeace with a little less ADHD and sat down and spoke, petitioned and lobbied against companies and governments rather than dramatic stunts, they would have a little more impact.

Despite being the other environmental charity heavyweight, the WWF doesn’t have a much cleaner track record either. With an almost 60 year legacy, the charity has been embellished with its own sordid track record. When an organisation grows as large as they have, much of the charitable donations towards the cause end up straight in the administration department just to sustain itself. And despite their mission to protect animals from the dastardly activities of our species, they have consistently enjoyed close ties with the same corporations they chastise, including Coca-Cola, Monsanto, and Cargill. In exchange for healthy donations, the WWF award them their iconic panda stamp of approval. The WWF’s habit of renting out the panda to the highest bidder is exemplified by Shell and BP’s payments to the organisation, to conduct studies on which forests south of the equator were available to be flogged for undoubtedly habitat destroying and local environment polluting industrial use. Since this, and various other discretions were uncovered in The Silence of the Pandas or Pandaleaks by Wilfried Huismann in 2014, the group have publicly culled their corporate ties. With 10% of funding 5 years ago coming from the public sector, last year just 0.3% came from its corporate allies. However, the 60% of the financing from the WWF’s personal network is not explained, despite the groups infamously secretive, The 1001 Club. Thought to be an elite club of the wealthiest people in the world, the list of members has never been revealed. Believed to be a schmoozy diners club of capitalist, conservative, blue-blooded old boys, its no stretch of the imagination to understand the influence a group like this at the helm of a major charity may have in regards to global and corporate policy-making.

This charitable corruption in the UK’s two most prominent not-for-profits may just be a consequence of their size. Having been around for the best part of a century, their scale inevitably leads to departments so far away from each other that mishaps are bound to occur. Mission statements become blurred, and the sheer amount of donations received makes it hard to do the thing they were set up to. Like most organisations in today’s society, corruption will inevitably find them. But there are many more environmental charities who have tenaciously stuck to their beliefs. Despite nearly 130 years since it’s founding, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) still stays true to its core principles; to protect and conserve birds and their natural habitats. The vast majority of their money is spent on acquiring land that would otherwise be used for commercial and domestic development, and they offer grants to farmers to keep part of land intended to support endangered species. Similarly, The Marine Conservation Society (MCS), the UK’s leading aquatic environment charity, works directly with those involved in nautical industries to encourage and support more sustainable methods of fishing.

Charities are a fantastic way to help support a community that specialised in the environmental issues close to you. But like other charities like Oxfam that are only now being held accountable for questionable ethics, it’s crucial to check for trustworthy credentials before you donate to what could be, a seal of approval for one of the worlds most destructive companies.

The wrong shade of green: Environmental charities was originally published in Ruby Liv on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

That’s the 130 billion dollars a year question. As we slide head-first into the untold catastrophe that will wipe out swathes of our own species and others, obliterate habitable and arable land, bring uncontrollable and devastating weather patterns, and knock the economy to its knees, we must find a quick and easily applied solution. That’s the understatement of the newly defined epoch of the world’s history; the Meghalayan Age. Estimated to have started 4200 years ago, this new era began following cataclysmic warming which brought a world-round drought that all but wiped out civilisations of the time as agricultural societies like ancient Egypt struggled to recover from the shift in climate. While today the post-apocalyptic entertainment genre may be thriving due to high-end special effects and courageous individuals fighting for their survival in a barren wasteland, soon the visuals we enjoy on the screen may be right outside our windows, void of attractive and toned renegades on a personal mission to save humanity. In order to prevent a similar culling of our own civilisation and the environment we inhabit, our lifestyles, businesses and material use need a drastic and thorough overhaul starting now and continuing into the future of our species.

First off, the overwhelming contributor to our impending demise is the colourless haze of greenhouse gases accumulating above our heads. Measured to weigh in at 410 parts per million of carbon dioxide just this year, the suffocating smog is trapping heat from the sun in and cooking the planet like a ready meal in the microwave with the plastic cover intact. Governments across the world continue to make pacifying policies to cut emissions down to levels in the 1990s, but since the temperatures in the nineties were already at 0.3 degrees Celcius warmer than baseline, even that 70% drop from today’s emissions won’t stop the coming super-storm. There is no alternative than for the whole of the globes countries and international air and waterways to become not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative immediately.

Cutting carbon emissions or even removing them entirely will not be enough. We will bulldoze through the remaining carbon budget to limit temperatures to a one and a half degrees rise in a few short years, and the two degrees budget in about two decades. Heavy investments must be made into carbon sinks; from massive forests of being planted, to carbon capture technologies that somehow suck up existing carbon in the atmosphere. It’s unlikely, however, that any one of these burgeoning technologies will solve this unsurmountable problem on its own. There’s a naive cohort of people who believe that we can continue with our polluting, business as usual, approach to carbon emissions because these future systems will be able to ctrl-z all the emissions caused. What innocent belief we still have in the human race. Carbon capture technologies are still in their infancy, and won’t be commercially viable for international rollouts for years yet. Since carbon has the dogged persistence of sticking around for 40 years after its creation, we’re already set for a 0.6 degree Celcius warming from our past emissions.

Our reliance on the resources that produce this chemical fog must be circumvented immediately. Despite the progression that fossil fuels have allowed society, at least in the industrialised world, it’s time to give it up, like removing the stabilisers from a child’s bike. The uninhibited use of the most damaging materials on earth must be curbed. Massive taxes need to be enforced onto companies who use fossil fuels in their operations, and despite their protests, they’ll surely find a way to protect their profits. Nations must take a leaf out of Sweden and The Republic of Ireland’s new manifestos for the future and swiftly divest from fossil fuels.

Consumption, overwhelmingly in the Global North, must be evaded. Our reliance on new stuff, more stuff, shinier stuff is putting a massive strain on the earth resources. We must be more selective in the products we allow into our lives and homes and question the origin, material make up, and other indirect impacts that an innocent pre-packaged sandwich, new phone, or sofa may be reeking on the natural world. The way we dispose of such goods must be streamlined and carefully managed to return as usable materials rather than build upon our reduced land space. Materials that are not fundamentally organic matter and therefore biodegradable need to be phased out to reduce the strain on natural ecosystems.

And the most unpalatable solution of all; limit the rise of our swelling population. With an estimated 10 billion people living, consuming, and damaging the planet by 2050, our already strained planet will be pushed to its limit. This is not a solution we can do the usual and tut at poorer nations while handing out condoms; with the average baby born in the Western hemisphere growing up to have a carbon footprint 65x bigger than one born in the poorest African nations, it’s us that will be in need of family planning.

To avoid the worst effects of climate change, trillions of tonnes of greenhouse gases must be removed from the atmosphere, and activities that spew it must be halted. These actions will cost a couple per cent of global GDP — about the same percentage poured into defence spending every year. Without such little expenditure on the grand scheme of things, the planet that all else is dependant on, including the sacrosanct chambers of business, will be irreparably damaged. If a war must be fought the prize may just be a world too damaged to pillage.

Above all else, this new format of living in coherence with nature rather than against must become the new norm. Like those who thought ideas that the world was round was nonsense, ignorance to the fact of climate change and hesitancy to circumvent it will go down in history as another one of the unlearned decisions from one of humanities archaic eras. That is, if we make it past this point.

What do we need to do to save the planet? was originally published in Ruby Liv on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Electric vehicles have been lauded as the first step towards out greener future. A snapshot into the sustainable age, this technology offers an adaptation into a progressive, technologically adept future built for a renewable and environmentally benign future. But like all technological advances, this fledgeling industry has a lot to discover and develop before it can entirely detach itself from the damaging practices it was born from. Can they be as clean as they make out to be? Studies have shown that they’re more efficient than traditional combustion engine cars, but do they have dirtier secrets underneath the hood?

The most widely contested aspect of electric vehicles (EV’s) is what produces the electricity to power them. Today, despite massive coverage on every renewable energy plant that is built, still 60% of the world’s energy is produced by burning fossil fuels. Since electric powered vehicles are subject to whatever electricity is delivered by their grid operator, the green credentials of electric cars are at the whim of however nations decide their energy mix. In Canada where just 16% of energy comes from fossil fuels, the effective carbon emissions from electric vehicles are far less than that of Australia, where up to 80% of electricity is produced from coal and natural gas. Regardless of where the energy for electric cars is found, electric cars still use it more efficiently than standard vehicles. A European study estimating performance in 2020 found that even an electric car using energy solely from an oil-fired power station would use 30% less energy than a petrol car travelling the same distance.

What makes it possible for a technology to run from electricity, regardless of source, is another contentious issue for electric powered vehicles. EV’s use lithium-ion batteries to store the electricity, the same sort that is found in our mobile phones and laptops. These batteries have higher energy capacity and longer lifespans than other conventional batteries like those found in traditional vehicles. Despite the sustainable benefits they offer, the production of these batteries is an environmental sore-spot. The lithium, cobalt, and solvent used to produce the cells are fraught with environmental and health hazards, from the degradation of natural territories to the human rights violations in areas like the Democratic Republic of Congo where the elements are mined. The push towards bigger and more powerful cars is resulting in a strange situation in which smaller conventionally oil-powered vehicles have a less environmentally damaging impact over a lifetime than big battery-powered electric vehicles. These bigger batteries could damage the green credentials of electric cars, even if power grids are fuelled by less coal and more renewables. In a town that is powered predominantly by fossil fuels, over its lifetime the massive Teslas Model S will produce over 226 grams of Co2 equivalent gases per kilometre, as opposed to just 118 grams per kg from a combustion engine powered Nissan Micra. The uncomfortable reality is that the manufacture of batteries plays a more significant role in carbon emissions than anything else in the production of electric vehicles. For a battery EV, 46% of its total carbon footprint is generated at the factory, before it has travelled a single mile. While much of this is offset within the first year of driving regarding the equivalent emissions produced by a combustion engine, it is far from the carbon-neutral perception they tout. As materials, the finite metals are recyclable, though currently the facilities to do so are lacking, and it is still significantly cheaper to mine for virgin material than to use it post-consumer. Lithium-ion batteries are far from perfect, but neither those of standard vehicles. The environmental savings electric vehicles offer are far beyond what is currently available, and technological advancements are getting the industry closer every day with predictions of a 30% reduction of the carbon footprint of lithium-ion batteries within the next decade.

Other materials involved in the production of electric vehicles, from the tyres to fabric lining to the chassis, are so far not much different to that of traditional cars. However, the obligation to make electric vehicles more comparable with standard through advancing their range capacity is driving the need for lightweight components and materials like carbon fibre which will, in turn, reduce consumption. The innards, like most products, are developing, are continuing to get more natural to further the environmental promise of EVs. BMW’s i3 is the first of it’s kind in pushing the green credentials of such transport beyond the powering capabilities. Inside the body made from carbon fibre assembled at a wind-powered factory, the seats are made from post-consumer plastic bottles, leather, wool, and natural dye from olive leaves. The console and inside panels are manufactured from a mixture of eucalyptus wood and kenaf fibres. Compared to the other BMW models, the i3 requires just half of the energy needed for production, and the choice of materials means the entire car is 95% recyclable. BMW is setting a new benchmark for how we assess the sustainability and life-cycle of greener products.

These scenarios of comparison between electric and traditional fuel powered cars raise the most compelling concern for the industry and the future of others as we transition into a greener economy; how do we assess the environmental credentials of these new products? It should not be enough to assume something powered by electric is overwhelmingly better than standard, or that being greener in one scenario equates to a cleaner life-cycle when all aspects are taken into account. For all vehicles, regulations should not be singularly monitored based on what comes out of the exhaust pipe, whether or not there is one. Policies need to be implemented across all stages of a products lifestyle to create accurate assessments of the total environmental impact. Like Energy Performance Certificates now make it a standard requirement for our houses, fridges and washing machines to be ranked across their lifecycle’s for efficiency from A-G, cars should be upheld to the same standard. Until nations fully divest from fossil fuels, the environmental impact of electric vs petrol and diesel cars is not yet different enough to make a definitive choice on what’s better, or worse.

Ultimately, electric vehicles offer hope to an inherently damaging industry. While far from perfect regarding meeting the green dreams they profess, they are a massive step forward to the industries that will need to be developed as we transform into less impactful tenants of the planet. Technology is advancing every day, and as governments reduce fossil fuel usage from grids across the world and implement stricter standards to protect human and ecological rights, the promise of green travel will be closer to being fulfilled. Transport is what developed our civilisation into a thriving global community it now is, not to mention expanding the gene pool. Our green future should not attempt to hark back to days gone by without long-distance travel but develop technology to work for our benefit, and the planets.

How green are electric cars? was originally published in Ruby Liv on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our extortionate levels of consumption, pollution and resource depletion can be easily explained; it’s your parents’ fault. Those who grew up somewhere between the 1940s and 60s haven’t enjoyed the easiest reputation, but having grown up in a time of plenty before these incessant warnings of impending disaster, with wages rising year on year and interest rates staying conveniently low, they did enjoy one of the most prosperous moments in recent human history.

Being born after the toil and hardship of two devastating world wars, they were brought up into a shiny new world risen from the ashes. This was a time when plenty was to be relished in after years of weekly allocations, destruction and insecurity. Consumerism in its infancy thrived during the younger years of the baby boomers. Dreamed up by Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays to reinvigorate the masses after the horrors of war, rationing and self-sacrifice, this was the moment in human history when buying stuff you didn’t need became a personal, political, and profitable doctrine that has yet to be revised. These post-war children were raised amongst the bright and alluring scenes of billboards professing the promise of new, bigger, better things that offered more enjoyment, more success and more money. This subliminal ideology soon became one of the most defining features of the boomer generation as they got older. Resource consumption skyrocketed as burgeoning companies began mining for more materials to keep up with the demand, without concern for what may happen to the surrounding environment because there was money to be made.

As the economy thrived under new industries, this young adult generation now benefited from low interest rates, high wages and low living costs. Credit became widely available, giving people the freedom to buy what they wanted and take advantage of the low entry level repayment rates. The vast majority of this generation could afford the mortgage on a house in their early twenties. Cars were affordable, and jobs soared in growing industries before any mainstream inkling of the damage they were pumping into the atmosphere. Now the baby boomers were in their own homes, TV ownership soared from just 36% in the mid-1950s to 84% in the mid-1960s. With work standards increasing with maximum working hours and required holiday hours, more leisure time led to a massive resurgence of hobbies and fads with expensive equipment to be put in the loft when the next one came around. More money in their pocket along with affordable plane travel led to a boom of tourist travel, with Spain, in particular, having a massive influx of burnt tourists on their beaches. Unsurprisingly, Benidorm, having opened less than 5 hotels in the 1950s, built over 50 the following decade. These prosperous years that the boomers enjoyed in their of age era is considered to be the start of the excessive consumption culture that has since plagued the industrialised north. With no need to prepare or worry for the future, they assumed the economy and wages would rise by significant percentage points every year, and there would always be a decent job for anyone who was in need.

They became the majority of the electorate in the eighties and became the predominant leaders in governments in the nineties. But propped up by a belief that the economy would return to that which they enjoyed in their youth, they spent the vast majority of time under-investing and accumulating debt at a massive rate. And their focus on stabilising a failing economy that only made it fall faster, caused them to deliberately overlook the climate warning signs that had reached a claxon point. The abilities of the baby boomers to mitigate real circumstance is confirmed by their electorate in the West; Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, George Bush, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Theresa May, and a certain Donald J. Trump.

The boomers inherited a prosperous future which they have gradually bankrupted and left none in preparation for the apocalyptic future their consuming and wasteful lifestyles helped create. Though they aren’t to blame for the burning of fossil fuels, they did, and continue to, fail to do anything about the growing consequences.

Now, with the generation spanning between 60 and 80 years old, their habits haven’t ceased. There is a belief that after 65 our individual carbon emissions start to decrease, though boomers, having enjoyed paying off their mortgages by just 40, have managed to accrue enough to buy second and even third homes. Now hitting their midlife crises, they are contributing to the massive booms in consumer industries. More outgoing than their parents, the golf, road bike and crochet industries have been experiencing an unexpected surge in profits. Thanks to improvements in health care over the last 50 years, zimmer frame sales are dropping as Harley Davidson sales rise.

That said, environmental attitudes within baby boomers are generally very high, with over 60% concerned about the environment and over 70% practising basic sustainable habits like recycling and using spare time to shop around for sustainable products. Other ways the generation are looking to support the green movement is by donating their leisure moments to environmental groups. Baby boomers make up a significant portion of volunteer work in the eco sector, including weekly beach cleans, rescuing animals affected by human refuse, and helping campaign groups to raise awareness. The boomer cohort is also leading the way in sustainable investments, which have almost doubled in profitability over the last twenty years.

But their time in power has left nations with unnavigable decisions like choosing between saving health services, protecting defence systems or saving ourselves from rising temperatures and sea levels and all the associated risks to our planet and security on it. Perhaps in retirement, the Baby Boomers will adopt a cleaner, simpler life that puts less pressure on the planet, but as retirement plans get put on hold, holiday homes get bought in foreign lands, and inheritance money gets lavishly spent, the younger generations may just get stuck with the ecological bill.

Sustainability and the baby boomer was originally published in Ruby Liv on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.