Climate Change – We have everything, yet we could potentially have nothing, not even our home.

We are living in amazing time, never before have our Parents or Grand Parents had the choices we have.  Everything we could every wish for is at our fingertips. Every need, every want is just a click away.  Provided you have the money of course.

Our throw away culture, our need for new, our global population boom.  All of this has meant new technologies that would have been fantasy only 100 or even 50 years ago.  100 years is nothing, it goes so fast.  A blink of an eye so to speak.

So when we heard last week that we had just 10 years, 10 years to change the affects of climate change on our planet quite a few of us have sat up and listened.  We have heard.  But have we ALL heard hard enough.  Have we LISTENED? I fear we that we have not. I fear that those in powerful positions within our governments and big business have heard but have not listened.  I fear that they will not heed the warnings from scientists, from children, from those whose future is being taken away from them.

I fear that our throw away lifestyles and our reliance on plastic and synthetic has got us in it’s grip too tightly, that the thought of anything else is too much, too great, too hard.

I’m not perfect but I want to do better, be better.  Watching the BBC’s documentary Climate Change last week has made me ashamed.  Ashamed at my habits.  As someone who is pretty clued up on the affects of climate change I was shocked to learn the facts that were being shown to me by the amazing Sir David Attenborough and the wonderful team at the BBC.

Why didn’t I know a lot of the the facts? I’m ashamed that I didn’t. I had no idea that we had just 10 years until we are at the point of no return? (By this I mean we will set off a chain of events that our Earth, our World, our home, cannot recover from)

In part I think we aren’t aware because we are not told, our media skirts around the edges of climate change awareness, it uses buzz words and things that ‘on trend’ the same goes for our governments.  They say that these things are difficult, that we need to be careful.  They are worried about popularity, and rightly so, they are worried about upsetting big business.  Big business who are responsible for fossel fuels, the cause of Co2 gases that are changing our planets landscape.

In 2015 the members of the G20 signed the Paris Agreement.  The agreement tabled and signed in order ‘to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius’

Did you know that in the last century the overall global temperature has seen a rise of 1 degree?  this has caused ice caps to melt, our oceans to heat up and our weather to behave uncontrollably in some regions with warmer countries and continents such as Africa, Asia, Australia and South America bearing the brunt of this climate change.  Poorer countries are seeing a growth in floods and oceans rise  and weather becomes even more unpredictable with rains and storms that cannot be prepared for.

Yet our leaders want are only aiming to stop keep the temperature under another 2 degree increase??? when just 1 degree has done so much damage?

And we are failing to meet these targets, we are failing to keep to the promises that our leaders have made.

How are we all not livid about this? why aren’t we rioting in the streets? where is the anger or are we too busy watching I’m a Celeb and worrying if we are ‘beach body ready’?

I’m livid.  I’m angry.  I’m saddened and also there’s a bit of despair in there too.

But I’m also hopeful, passionate and determined that we, as individuals, can affect change.

With amazing movements from Greta Thunberg, her global school strikes and the fab team at Extinction Rebellion people are starting to see that with small, and large changes to our lifestyles we can affect change.  We can work together to stop the spread of climate change.

We have the power to show those in charge that we will not stand by, we will not be quietened.  Some of us can protest, write to our MP, demand to be heard.  Some of us can join movements like Extinction Rebellion, some of us can speak to local schools and children working with them to affect change.

But you know what we’ve all got?  Choice.  Freedom of choice in our purchasing power, in our everyday lifestyle choices.  From our recycling habits to our cosmetic purchasing to the food we consume, we can change things.

We can change this path we have set ourselves on.  We can do it together in unity with compassion and understanding.  Compassion for each other and compassion for our earth.

By speaking to others, having the conversation, sharing ideas we can do it.

In the coming weeks and months I’m discussing these ideas, tips and tricks on our facebook group as well as blogging about how to’s, why to’s and what for’s on here as well.

I’ll also be discussing how our dental care products are helping the earth, what initiatives we are taking part in as well as the work our brands are doing and how their products are helping us be kinder to the earth.

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Because our Earth is our home, lets not see it ruined beyond measure so much so that we can no longer live here… because then, we will be the next extinct species.

Thank you.

Jayne.