Climate Change & Caring

[Francis_1709]

Climate change is an issue I care a lot about.

My experience of being a carer suggests it brings its own unique challenges to doing things to help address this challenge and take action.

How do people on here feel about it? What actions do people take, or barriers you feel you face? Generally interested to hear peoples views and discuss

[bowlingbun]

It's not the highest issue on my agenda.
Recently I heard that some bright spark has suggested that conservatories should be banned. Utter twaddle. I love mine. 27 feet facing south, I save huge amounts on heating as when it gets over 20degrees out there, I open the cottage doors and windows inside, put the fan on, and the house can be heated for free.
I put my clothes airer in there, in front of the fan blowing cold air, dry in no time, even duvets dry well like this.
Then there's the idea of banning coal. Did anyone consider historic vehicles like my steam engine?
Using public transport would be fine, if thee was some in my area. No practical alternative to the car.
I'd love to be able to ride my bike still along the lanes near me, far too dangerous with the traffic.
Can't even walk, no pavements to the nearest village.
I used to push my babies in their pram along the road, not safe now.

We need to address these little things, as well as the big things.
"Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves" used to be a motto.
The same surely goes for climate change?

[Francis_1709]

The last couple of days has really brought home to me the impact of climate change on caring in terms of the effect of the heat on my wife, on myself helping with her care, and for the professional carers who come 3 times a day in between travelling to others. Draining!

Days like these are going to become more common, which is only going to bring new challenges for carers.

Hope others have bearing up as well as they can do!

[thara_22071]

I do what I can

[Melly1]

HI Francis,

S struggles with the heat even on an ordinary British summer day, let alone the extreme temperatures we just experienced. I work part time and our base was 36c on the Tuesday - very draining. I then came home to a stressed careee and the prospective of trying to sleep in a hot bedroom.

What efforts do you have in place to support the battle to halt climate change?

Melly1

[Francis_1709]

Sorry to hear that Melly, it was a real nightmare of a heatwave wasn't it?

Apart from having a couple of (quite ineffective) fans blowing the hot air around and moving as little as possible, there was not much else we could do, though I couldn't stop completely as I still need to help care for my wife, it's a case of just keeping on, keeping on! I'd love to hear some suggestions of what I could do differently when it gets that hot again, as It seems it will happen more often in the future.

More generally, we do what we can to limit our carbon emissions, nothing special, just lots of little things as much as we can, but I feel that I inevitably clock up more carbon emissions than others who are not carers as we don't always have the ability to choose alternatives.

Sometimes we really do need to travel short distances by car, sometimes we do need to have the heating on more than others, and sometimes we do use a lot of medical, hygiene, and health supplies that create a lot of waste or are not recycled or recyclable.

Would really like to have an electric WAV car (or share one!), would love to use more renewable energy (we looked into solar power but it didn't add up), and would love to use more recycled health and personal products, but we don't have the time or resources to do so. There is probably lots more we could do, and would love to hear from others, as I feel its extra hard for carers to do the right thing, and yet with climate change, we'll have to do more!