There's charity and there's charity...

Walking in to work this morning was a bus-stop advert for a supermarket's charity Christmas cards. Not wishing to gripe or anything but from their 50p box of charity cards, only 10% went to the charity.

Card Aid, the not-for-profit organisation gives 100% of its profits to the charities involved. Indeed, their website also links to the Charities Advisory Trusts annual Scrooge Awards that "awards" the companies with the meanest donation from their "charity" cards.

So remember, if you're still looking to buy your Christmas cards this year, not all charity cards are equal.

Downs and ups

It’s been a while since my last post, due in part to other commitments. However, I have to admit, I felt a bit despondent after reading the last couple of posts at monbiot.com. I’ve read his stuff for quite a while, and was always impressed by the optimism and can-do attitude but the last couple really quite scared me. The first was the blackest projection I’ve yet seen that it’s actually pretty much too late to do anything now. The second was the opportunities missed in the recent Climate Change bill. Faced with such a bleak projection, it's difficult to see where to go.
However, it’s important to take a range of views, and there’s great value in reading the no-holds-barred worst case scenarios. It can fire you up, make you angry, make you determined for change. And it’s also important to see the good around you.

And I’ve been inspired by a couple of things this week.

The first is the website of the East Anglian Food Link – a not-for-profit organisation promoting resilient food production. The thing I like about the site is the fact that it doesn’t start by highlighting a big problem and then revealing the magic bullet solution. Instead it states “The problems are relatively clear, the solutions more tentative” and provides evidence, discussion and debate. I was interested to learn that the evidence they have gathered does not support the notion that the answer is simply local food, and also that the Real Bread Campaign was launched a week or so ago on 26th November. I was amazed to find that, despite living in a medium-sized city, there are only two places near me that bake “real bread” (based on being made of only four basic ingredients, and without the use of improvers). The campaign’s website is, like that of the EAFL, engaging and clear.

The second source of inspiration is, of all things, soil… I’d been reading National Geographic’s September 2008 issue, all about where food comes from (no prizes for guessing it’s the soil!). But the thing that interested me most was the discussion around terra preta, the dark soil created in the Amazon thousands of years ago by indigenous peoples enriching the soil with charcoal. Not only does it create a microbial environment that improves crop yields, but, also locks away vast quantities of carbon. I’d already read an overview of this process in the book “What about China?”, so was really delighted to find that tantalising mention expanded upon in Nat Geo. While many in the developed world are looking for high tech solutions (seeding oceans, space mirrors etc), it’s a wonderful thought that a solution to global warming could be simple, centuries old, and under our feet all the time.

Debt Week Website

Hmm. Looks like the http://www.debtweek.org/ is unavailable (unless it's just me?). So instead, here's my "Spotlight On..." debt, with thanks to the Jubilee Debt Campaign, whose website makes great sense of a tangled subject.

What is the key message?
The kind of debt we're dealing with here is debt held by countries in the developing world, where there is either no chance of the country ever being able to repay it, or where to do so is impossible without sending its people into a spiral of poverty.

Isn't that their problem, not ours?
It would be if the debt was part of a fair process, but most of the debt in question either has impossible conditions attached (such as unfairly high interest rates), was provided illegitimately (such as to dictators to buy arms to oppress their own people) or removes the ability of the debtor country to support its own people.

So who's making a fuss about this?
Lots of people - there are campaigns all over the world to get this debt cancelled, but often as the first step towards a fairer and more equitable world for all of us, rich and poor, in the developing or the developed world. Third World debt is seen as a touchstone issue by many - as a clear and visible illustration for the way in which we treat each other in ways that are often unfair. Any internet search will throw up many organisations dedicated to this work. Or see some of the other posts on this blog.

http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/ is, in my opinion, the best place to start.

The master at work

I mentioned George Monbiot's blog page in a previous post - got my first mail today, and was hooked. Here's a guy who writes as brilliantly in a short article as he does in his books. I was really bowled over, and (as per last week's post on his archive) now really interested in older varieties of fruit trees! You'll have to take a look to get what I'm talking about:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/09/02/strange-fruit/

I'd mentioned the list at the back of Heat for organisations committed to combatting climate change:
www.foe.co.uk
www.greenpeace.org.uk
www.wwf.org.uk

were the obvious choices, but also liked:
www.transport2000.org.uk

Complete Muppet

Being a complete muppet, I still haven't sorted out making a will. It's the single most important thing on my list of things to do, but keeps getting put off. So a poster in the Help the Aged shop prompted me to go to (and sign up with) willaid.org. For a suggested donation this November, a qualified solicitor will draw up your will and the money will go to one of a number of charities you can choose from a list of participating charities. Since 1988, the scheme has raised over £7m for good causes.

Looks like the government's coming in for a pounding today over its refusal to provide some sort of one-off payment to cover the rise in fuel costs for the most needy people - Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary argued for improvements in energy saving measures such as insulation etc rather than a one-off payment or a windfall tax on energy companies. But surely this is just avoiding the root cause of the issue - namely that we cannot guarantee energy security in the current climate (economic, political &, hey, why not climate change too), that a deregulated energy market cannot prevent speculation, and that energy companies may not always be working in the public interest, despite what their PR says. Until we tackle those things, energy is always going to be a social issue.

On a more cheery note, Planet Earth interviewed a chap called Johan Eliasch, a businessman who "put his money where his mouth is" and bought a huge chunk of rainforest from a logging company to prevent its destruction. Lo and behold, I wikipedia it and come across http://www.coolearth.org/. What a great idea - and it provides jobs for local people at the same time. And even James Lovelock approves!