March 20
Eating Green to limit global warming
The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C WORLD is a new report by the C40 Cities Climate Group, academics at Leeds University, and engineering firm Arup. It addresses the important role cities play in reducing consumption-based emissions to limit global warming.
The research identified that 73 per cent of all changes needed by 2030 to keep the world on course to meet the Paris agreement targets need to be made by governments and industry.
But private citizens have considerable influence over the remaining 27 per cent – which is HUGE.
The Jump has summarised the six key changes people can make from the Report:
1. End clutter: Keep electronic products and home appliances for at least seven years
2. Holiday local: One flight every three years
3. Eat green: A plant-based diet, healthy portions, no waste
4. Dress retro: Three new items of clothing per year
5. Travel fresh: If you can, no personal vehicles
6. Change the system: At least one life shift to nudge the system, like moving to a green energy company or a green pension supplier
No 3. Eat Green: A plant-based diet, healthy portions, no waste
My action for today was to focus on Eating Green by committing to sharing a daily Plant-based Recipe – a choice Harvard also identifies as a high priority for human health.
Coming up on Saturday, 26 March, Blue Mountains City Council is also hosting an online workshop on how to reduce your household food waste and save money. You can book a place at: https://www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/waste-recycling-workshops-events
Production > Consumption
Focusing on Eating Green, follows on from my commitment yesterday to increasing my production to balance the amount I consume.
Today I planted 120 broad bean seeds at our community farm, and 30 in an old water tank garden bed at home:
Both the broad beans, and the peas I planted yesterday, add Nitrogen to the soil. It’s a fertiliser that’s encountering global shortages at the moment, but can be added naturally to soil by planting legumes. With peas and broad beans I’m also ensuring availability of plant-based proteins for many yummy meals to come.
Tonight’s plant-based dinner – Purple Potato Rosti, with Parsley Pesto, baby carrots, slow-fried beans and cucumber salad
Inspired by Libby’s post on container gardening in the City, for tonight’s dinner I made a meal with food grown mainly in pots – something almost everyone could do – supplemented by food from my local community farm. You can find out about community gardens and farms in the Blue Mountains in one of our earlier posts here
If you only have a small growing area, one of the best things to grow is parsley – it’s a tasty vitamin-rich herb that can be used in almost every meal, including salads, soups, quiches, stews, tabbouleh and pesto, and, unlike basil, can survive colder Mountains weather. Mine grows in a pot on the driveway (with a potato!):
This evening I also harvested pot-grown tiny carrots and purple potatoes. The beans, cucumbers and garlic were from the Community Farm and the rest of my garden.
I could have used the carrot greens to make the pesto tonight, but the parsley was looking just so beautiful ….
In the past I’ve always made this pesto recipe with ½ cup parmesan cheese. Tonight, for the first time, I substituted Nutritional Yeast (or savoury yeast flakes) for the cheese … we couldn’t believe how delicious it was!
Parsley Pesto
Ingredients
- 2 Cups Parsley or other green Works particularly well with basil, carrot greens, mint, silverbeet, oregano .....
- ½ Cup Olive oil
- ½ Cup Walnuts You can also use almonds, pine nuts, hazelnuts, cashews ....
- ½ Lemon Squeeze for juice
- 2-3 tbsp Nutritional yeast (vegan)
- 3-5 Garlic cloves Finely chopped
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Roughly chop parsley or other green, then combine with all other ingredients in blender, and pulse until well combined and smooth.
How are other people contributing to A Year in a Day?
Larry has just finished a course with Bird Life Australia on protecting gang-gang cockatoos. Part of it was to develop an action plan, which for him will be planting some hakeas. He shared that Gang-gangs are endemic to the higher altitudes of SE Australia, including parts of the Blue Mountains. In NSW they have a conservation status of vulnerable. 36% of their range was burnt in the 2019-20 fires and 10% were killed or displaced.
Planting natives in our garden not only helps these charismatic birds, but also many other birds and animals that are important parts of our ecosystem.
Today Libby was so shocked to find her old calligraphy set from nearly 30 years ago! She even had the receipt from a course she did- but had forgotten.
Planetary health had sparked her desire to use an ink pen as she cleaned out her old unused biros !
She was going to purchase one but now I has her original.
She’s getting ready to take her pens to an Office Works TerraCycle Australia unit.
Others have started emailing me about actions they hope to do on the 7th April for World Health Day so that we can try to reach 365 actions in one day. Would love everyone to contribute on that day if you can!
Join #AYearInADay Citizen Science Project to see if we can all inspire one another to do more to restore planetary health
We’d love you to collaborate with us and share any actions you take to restore planetary health in the comments below or on our social media. While we welcome you to share ANY ACTION you take to inspire others, we’ll be recording NEW or EXTRA actions that people take as part of our tally, because we’re trying to inspire one another to do more than we’re already doing. Feel free to copy some of the actions our participants have been sharing – the action only needs to be NEW for you.
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