Seven ways to save a stage of load shedding

Wandering around the house, looking for my other pair of glasses, yet again, I thought: if I could harness this energy and put it into the electricity grid, it would go quite a long way to powering the country out of load shedding.

If you put it all together, we might even be able to save a stage of load shedding.

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The simple joys of escapism

We all need avenues of escapism – a good book, a hike, a cup of tea. For me, it’s television…

Once, at a dinner party with friends and family, the conversation turned to what it must be like to live in countries near the Arctic Circle, with never-ending dark days in winter and (correspondingly) never-ending summer days. (One of our number has a sister who lives in Norway.)

Well, I said, in Alaska they have terrible trouble with mosquitoes.

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What will we give up to fix a broken world?

The climate crisis is often, and rightly framed, as a problem generated in the first world. And solutions and mitigations are framed as ways in which the first world needs to change.

Rebecca Solnit, a writer and historian, describes it this way:

Much of the reluctance to do what climate change requires comes from the assumption that it means trading abundance for austerity, and trading all our stuff and conveniences for less stuff, less convenience.

She proposes a different way of looking at things:

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Charity, done in a dress

I don’t do much charity work, or volunteering – but every March I wear a dress every day.

I am answering a challenge from the Milk Matters organisation, which provides donor breastmilk to premature babies. I wear a dress every day, and people sponsor me, much as they might sponsor a runner for every kilometre they run for a good cause, or a child for reading a book in a school Readathon.

In addition to raising funds for Milk Matters’s point of view, this yearly event  raises awareness, because the challenge also involves posting pictures of yourself in a dress on social media.

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