laratheescapeartist

Some days I am more positive than others. This was not one of those days.

How are my children going to judge me in the future? Are they just going to have vague memories of me nagging them to turn off the lights and not use so much paper for their art projects and wonder why I wasn’t screaming all the time about environmental breakdown and blockading roads?

I think they will remember that we didn’t go on planes when their friends all did (we haven’t flown since 2018 so our youngest daughter has so far never been on a plane), but is that going to make up for not doing other things that we could afford to do but somehow just couldn’t make the necessary effort to do despite knowing the consequences? Why does becoming vegetarian or getting an ASHP or getting rid of our car or finally stopping buying plastic crap on bloody Amazon seem too hard in face of catastrophic flooding and heatwaves?

(These are my excuses at the moment: I just want them to eat SOMETHING and it is hard enough trying to prepare a meal that both my children will eat and is vaguely healthy without cutting down on meat and learning how to cook all new meals (I personally have stopped eating beef or lamb and that has been easy because we never cook lamb at home and I just swap an aubergine &tomato sauce I’ve premade for our weekly spaghetti bolognaise meal, but neither or my children eat aubergine, and bolognaise is one of the few meals they will reliably and happily eat so it stays in our dwindling rota of family meals), we will probably move house in the next couple of years so there is no point in changing the heating system of this house especially when it’s small and energy efficient anyway but if we redo the kitchen will add value and maximise our small space, the kids are too young for it not be a total pain going on public transport from where we live to all their different activities and friends houses and I do use my electric bike when I’m alone instead of the car, and it’s Christmas how can I not buy them presents, and what else is there to buy but plastic crap?).

Will they just blame ‘the system’ for not making it easier for us to make these choices? Will they absolve us and say it was too late in any case, or that individual actions don’t matter, and wish we had taken them on flights to exotic destinations while we still could?

Is anything I or we do as a family now going to make it less likely that in 15 years we’ll be sweating and hiding indoors during the summer eating uncooked canned goods during a power-cut?