Sunday 6 May 2012

Bloated

I have ate too much today.

I am a little like Baby from Dirty Dancing in that I don't like food to go to waste. The difference is rather than getting somebody to pretend to send it to Africa I eat it all myself. It makes me thankful that I am not contributing to the terrible piles of food that is wasted every year while at the same time I get full of  terrible guilt at the methane I am contributing to global warming. If they could find a way to harness me after Sunday lunch they could probably turn of the national grid for the rest of the day.

Another downside is the ever expanding waistline. Occasionally I am lucky that everybody in my house eats all their food and I can lose a few pounds. I never eat breakfast now safe in the knowledge that I'll get half a bowl of porridge from my youngest son and a full cup of coffee that my partner. I try to trick myself that I am somehow doing something for the environment by not cooking for myself.

The reality is the new wardrobe I have to purchase every time my belt goes up a notch is starting to require a months cotton output from Uzbekistan. The shipping costs of the materials (not to mention the ethical implications of the children taken out of school to pick the cotton) combined with the power of all the mills that produce it plus the shops that sell it and finally the recycling costs of the clothes I am discarding mean it is at the very best a truly awful environmental trade off.

I am afraid I am just a bloated representative of the bloated western world. I am fully committed to environmental and ethical causes until they require me to actually do something.

I do not support all the activists in the world, many I think are misguided, but I admire all of them for actually getting off their arses and doing something about the things they are impassioned about.

But I'm afraid my son has just left half a bowl of angel delight, so it is back to bloat for me.

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