Big problem, little changes
Because I had to talk about Earth Day
Pull Up A Chair is a weekly newsletter containing all the things I’d like to be chatting about if we could hang out together in real life.
📚 Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon. I read - and really enjoyed - Rachel Lynn Solomon’s previous book, The Ex Talk, last year, so I went into Weather Girl with high hopes - and they were fully met. If you’ve seen the Netflix film Set It Up, the premise will be familiar: two colleagues try to make their work lives better by setting their bosses up romantically. In this case, though, the bosses in question are an already married-and-divorced couple, whose bad breakup has soured the tone of the newsroom our heroes work in. The two magic words: Shenanigans ensue.
Rachel Lynn Solomon is a hundred-percent aware of the tropes of the romance genre and works them in with glee. At one point, a character says “We need to force proximity the shit out of them,” for example. If you enjoy Emily Henry or Mhairi McFarlane’s books, you’ll love Rachel Lynn Solomon’s (Amazon | Bookshop affiliate links - ads).
💌 Table Manners? Impeccable. A regular fixture of my weekend is the Guardian’s Blind Date column, which comes out early on a Saturday morning, and then Justin Myers’ annotated version, which he puts live on his website, The Guyliner, astoundingly quickly. This week’s couple, Deborah and Graham, seem to have had a ball. And as Justin said in his post about it, "What else do we want from life – other than food, a stable income, and a new government – than for someone to think WOW when we walk into a room?". Justin also has a newsletter here on Substack, The Truth About Everything.
🎭Kidnapped! Not knowing a lot about Robert Louis Stevenson or his novella, Kidnapped, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Isobel McArthur and Michael John McCarthy’s new stage adaptation, but as they are the team behind Pride & Prejudice (Sort Of), which I adored, I was more than willing to go along and find out. What. A. Joy. McArthur’s style is to take an irreverent sideways look into a classic text, find the parallels with our life today, and package it up with 80s pop bangers and delightful anachronisms aplenty. The Guardian gave it three stars, which to me is on the low side for the incredible evening I had in the theatre on Friday. The tour continues through Scotland and then to Newcastle and Brighton - see it if you can!
Yesterday was Earth Day, and as someone who works in climate policy, I wanted to share some thoughts. The climate emergency can be overwhelming. People are, understandably, worried.
The good news is this: it is still, just about, within our power to prevent the very worst effects of climate change. As Gaia Vince wrote in the Guardian last week, it’s up to us to imagine the future we want to live in, and build it. Problem is, when the transition will affect every part of our lives - in many cases for the better - it’s hard to know where to start. So I’m here to give you my top three tips, as a sustainability expert, to know that you’re doing your bit.
One: Make it easy.
You may have heard people talk about ‘set it and forget it’ as a principle for things like budgeting and saving. Kendra Adachi at The Lazy Genius calls this Decide Once. I have a few ‘Decide Once’ decisions locked into my life, which make a big difference on my climate impact: I barely eat any red meat, so when I’m thinking about what to make for dinner, it doesn’t even occur to me to make a bolognese with beef mince when I have some Meatless Farm mince in the freezer. (I used it to make a take on Caroline Chambers’ crispy farro with sausage and asparagus this week and it was delicious). On a bigger scale, I have designed my life so that I don’t need to drive - this was a choice that I know I’m lucky to have been able to make!
Two: Focus on what matters.
In character for me, this is actually a book recommendation, for Mike Berners-Lee (brother of Tim) and his book How Bad Are Bananas. He lays out, in an easy to read and extremely rigorous way (there are tonnes of sources listed at the back of the book), the lifecycle carbon footprint of a whole load of common activities, foods, and other items. The most interesting thing is that he also explains some of the things that affect the carbon footprint - for example, cycling when you’re using a cheeseburger as fuel has a much higher carbon footprint than cycling with a banana in your stomach. Obvious, when you think about it - but I had never thought about it!
The key here is this: once you have the information at your fingertips, you know which easy choices are actually worth making. In the business world we talk about ‘materiality’, which is a fancy way of describing getting the biggest bang for your buck. An easy example: the difference in carbon footprint that comes from switching a cow’s milk latte to one made with soy milk (or an Americano or filter coffee with just a splash of milk) is much higher than the saving you make by putting that same cow’s milk latte in a reusable cup. So now, I don’t beat myself up for forgetting to take my KeepCup out with me - but I do make an effort to choose milk alternatives, most of the time.
Three: Use your words, and your wallet.
There’s a stereotype that eco-friendly choices are more expensive, and while they certainly can be, that’s not always the case. Frozen green beans have a much lower carbon footprint than out-of-season fresh ones, and they’re cheaper too. On top of that, though, it costs nothing to write to your Member of Parliament (or equivalent government representative) and tell them you’re concerned, or to send a Direct Message through your social media platform of choice to ask a supermarket chain to more clearly label fresh produce that comes by ship instead of by air, so you can make a more sustainable choice. If you have an election coming up… you also have an opportunity to think about it in the ballot box, and maybe even more importantly, you can write to your elected representative after the election and tell them it’s a high-priority issue for you. Using your voice could also include checking where your workplace pension is invested, or asking an events venue where the best place to lock a bike is. The more people ask those questions, the more the teams working at those companies will know there’s a demand for sustainability.
Speak soon,
Lily
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We missed Kidnapped! We couldn’t get childcare so I ended up putting the tix on freecycle so I’m hoping they enjoyed it. I’ve got Anna Karenina tix in June and cannot wait. I’ve just really loved what the Lyceum has done this year.