Fasting for the Climate

Taking part in FAST FOR THE CLIMATE as a food blogger and food activist.

“I will #fastfortheclimate to feel rooted in community united in solemnity, activism, steadfast facing of evolving emergency.” — and so I tweeted…

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I recently learned about Fast for the Climate, a movement that’s about people fasting once a month (or alternatively on a schedule related to United Nations climate negotiations).   The movement of people joined up in this personal action sprung from the very powerful gesture of  Yeb Sano, the climate delegate from the Philippines at the Warsaw negotiations in November 2013.  He refused to eat for the remainder of the conference unless meaningful action was taken, and many people joined him as an expression of solidarity with his brave, outspoken and emotional stance.  Yeb Sano became a kind of hero to many.  There he was, the violent destruction of that hurricane slamming his country, and he stood in front of the world relating climate change as something already with us to the terrible events in the Philippines dominating the news.

Fast for the Climate grew from this, and seems to be a kind of action and political expression that speaks particularly (though not exclusively) to climate groups coming from a religious point of view.  There’s a universality to relating sacrifice (not eating) to a moral or political cause and feeling the directness of that relationship in one’s body.  The experience of hunger becomes a grounding, a focus, a lens through which to consider, in this case, whatever aspect of climate change that concerns you– the destruction and suffering already affecting lives around the world, fears for the future, anger at the lack of government and international action, and more.

Regarding food and climate change– because this blog tries to keep food and eating at its core — there are numerous directions of thought and concern.  Our diets matter, just as a changing climate will implicate our diets.  Food availability, security, sovereignty all matter.  Hunger, food justice, water, agriculture, our very ability to live on this earth — it’s all big stuff we must remain focused on.  Perhaps I will emerge from these short fasts with new insights, which I can also share.

In the food blogging world, we’re cooking all the time, and eating all the time, and talking about cooking and eating all the time.  There can be something kind of too-much, excessive, last-days-of-Rome about it.  So it feels right to fast once in a while, and to talk about this as well.  I’m hoping my readers, food bloggers and not, will join me in this, and let me know, and we can write about it and link together.

Meanwhile, there’s a new book out in the US, soon to be released in Australia and then in October in the UK, called Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change  by George Marshall.

This book, to me, isn’t really about what the title says; it’s more an exploration of how the topic of Climate Change has been taken up conceptually, and ways that this has led to ideological divisiveness that clearly blocks effective action.   The author has lots of insightful and extremely original and often humorous ideas that offer hope in this time when despair could take hold among people who understand the seriousness of climate change.

George Marshall, with whom I happen to share married life (full disclosure), proposes we cultivate something among us he dubs “Climate Conviction.” (The website for the book is called this.)  I understand this concept to be a way we carry our understanding of the climate emergency, as well as understand our committment as activists to respond however we choose.  We carry the conviction, and we do it speaking first from an I and We point-of -view.

When I first read about Fast for the Climate, this was the connection I imagined.  That if I chose to fast, I would feel hunger that I could experience and use to reflect upon the rootedness of my beliefs.  And I could  experience this awareness as a connection with friends who were fasting, and other fasters I knew would be sharing this experience around the world.  This would place me squarely in a community of believers, rather than rather alone in a world that often seems to be obliviously, stupidly, dangerously choosing blindness and inaction.

The 1st of September, tomorrow, I will be fasting.

“I will #fastfortheclimate to feel rooted in community united in solemnity, activism, steadfast facing of evolving emergency.”

Think about joining in.

Update here.

Guardian Sustainable Blog of the Week– Me!

On the Cover of the Rolling Stone– I mean — on the back pages of the Guardian Online.  I’m excited to be featured in the Guardian’s online Sustainable Blog of the Week this week.  I like the company I’m keeping and feel grateful for the new followers: Welcome!  And thank you to the editor Katherine Purvis for being really tolerant of my incapacities  sending photographs through e-mail, and for including me in her collection.

Katherine sent me a set of questions to answer, and this forms the basis of the interview.  She’s edited that, for reasons of space, but I like some of what I said and have included the longer version below if anyone is interested.

Goodbye Emad Asfour, Slow Food in Gaza

Dear Slow Food friends, 

One of us has been killed in Gaza.

His name, Emad Asfour.

Here’s what Slow Food founder, Carlo Petrini wrote.

As for me:

One power it would seem is to use my social media and blogging to express a strong conviction that the methods and outcome of Israeli military might in Gaza, and Palestine, is definitively wrong.  And encourage others to do the same.

I didn’t know Emad Asfour, but when someone dies– killed by a bomb– and that someone shares things with you, you grieve.

I have tried to think through what’s happening in Gaza this past month through the lens of a cookbook called The Gaza Kitchen, and the work of Zaytoun, a Fair-Trade local-produce company working to ensure UK markets for Palestinian produce.

Through all the death, destruction, carnage, uprooting– I’m also thinking a little about the small gardens people plant, the rabbits, the bakeries, the aquaculture ponds, the trees they nurture– lots of these projects are likely destroyed too.  Aspects of daily life, daily eating, daily growing, daily hope.   Underneath rubble.