I would like to talk to you about the environment. I know that that sounds like the environmental activist/annoying environmentalist film stereotype but rest assured, I'm not here to call you out for fly-tipping (even though I don't particularly agree with it) nor am I here to tell you to try and become more like Infinity Jackson from The Politician season 2. This isn't going to be a guide like the book from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy,which says "Don't Panic" even though it knows that everyone is panicking.
This is going to be about how many geeky/teen references I can fit into a single post...just kidding. In all mock seriousness, it's my usual thing of telling you weird stories that have actually happened for the sake of my enjoyment and your amusement/confusion.
My first encounter with the fact that we humans are killing the Earth was in year 5. I watched a David Attenborough documentary in class, learned about overfishing and suddenly decided to stop eating fish. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but at the time it was because my mother started letting me pick out fish at the fish counter at our local supermarket a few times a month. Needless to say she was a bit annoyed. It wasn't long afterwards that some distant relatives of mine decided to invite us to go on a boat trip with them. My mother, seeing this as a prime opportunity to renew my taste for fish, accepted. BIG MISTAKE. We went "Jigging" (google it) and I managed to catch mystery fish. Me, being young and naive, thought that we were going to keep the fish for a while and then set it free. NOPE. I watched it being gutted on the deck with the handle of a winch and vowed never to eat fish again. Long story short, I thought prawns were okay so I only ate those if we were having seafood up until the point where I decided to go vegetarian (even longer story short, it is practically impossible to stay vegetarian in Germany).
I haven't eaten fish since.
The year afterwards I was in a geography lesson. I didn't know that tax is added to stuff, heck I didn't know what taxes were (I still don't), I also didn't know that you have to pay for the water that comes out of your tap. Naturally I got freaked out when a teacher talked about how we were going to have to pay more for water. I had an idea that I genuinely believed was genius. I was going to fill up as many bottles as I could with water and put it in the freezer so that we would get free water when the government decided to make us pay for it. One of these bottles happened to be a brand-new metal bottle my mother got to take with her to work. I learned 2 things that day:
1. Water isn't like vegetables or meat, it expands when frozen. Trust me, having that conversation about how you managed to break the bottle beyond use because of a severe lack of common sense is VERY AWKWARD ON BOTH SIDES.
2. You have to pay for most things. Capitalisim Yo!
Funnily enough, this was the same year that I joined my middle school's "Eco Group". It only lasted a year because of lack of membership and all I learned was how to make button badges and how to convince people that it is cheaper to buy from the school shop than it is to buy from somewhere like Tesco. It was not cheaper in any way, shape or form but the stuff was impossible to break, looked cooler and the money went to a good cause: environmental conservation.
Secondary school: became a fulltime vegetarian for a year because I saw a silent protest in London about animal testing whilst I was on my way to see a show. Quit for various reasons.
Last year felt like a final straw for my environmental awakening. I met up with a friend in the morning so we could hang out for the day then go to a party in the evening, when I got there she told me that we were going to take part in an environmental protest before doing anything else. I hadn't seen that many people in one place since Comic con and it was honestly intimidating. I held up a protest sign for the first time in my life, I learned a chant that wasn't about feminism (I accidentally came across a feminist protest in London a few months earlier) and I sat down in the middle of the road with an insane amount of people my age, blocking traffic, with the police protecting us on one side and various adults shouting at us things like "You should be in school", "Screw the environment" and "I fully support you all!" Confusing much. I didn't end up staying for long, it was too hectic and loud for me although I still consider it to have been a great experience because of what I learned about firsthand activism.
Having had various experiences with environmental ideas, I have come to my own conclusion. I don't need to be outspoken or go to a protest to be an activist. Being outspoken or even voicing my thoughts anywhere except on this blog feels majorly intimidating, so I generally avoid it where possible. That doesn't mean I don't have ideas or believe in things strongly, it just means that there are other ways of being an activist.
I educate myself in my own time and listen to other people's point of views. I occasionally re-post on instagram but I take the time to read and save posts. I look through social media as well as read books that people who understand more have written. I read fiction and non fiction. Recently I wrote an essay about the art of rhetoric in environmental speeches. I sound like I'm boasting (I probably am) but these are various examples of what any quiet activist can do, there are probably a lot more things that I don't even know about yet.
What I am trying to say is this: just because you many not want to be loud doesn't mean you can't whisper from the sidelines. It certainly doesn't mean that you can't/don't quietly support a cause in your own time. Activism isn't just about spreading the word, it's about navigating it and understanding it for yourself in your own way.
On that note, I'm going to head off and read my current book "Queenie", which I recommend for anyone who is interested in gaining a better insight into Race and Sexisim.
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