1 Million Women

Pam's Story

This has been an interesting journey for me.  I never really understood the issues surrounding climate change before now.   I am not a scientist, but I am a mother and grandmother and I do see that the world is changing. More droughts, more hot weather, more severe cyclones and weather conditions.

I realized we cannot keep saying  "we didnt  do this or that in our day" and I understand it is not our day anymore.  It is now and I believe Climate Change is real and it is transforming the way that we live and the way society operates.

The main contributor to climate change is CO2 or carbon dioxide.  Right now it is at its highest levels in the atmosphere , in the history of humanity.  
Getting involved in 1 Million Women made me start looking at the things I take for granted.  It has made me stop and think about all the things I buy, the way I manage the kitchen waste, the way I waste electricity.

I started thinking  back to when I was a child as I am absolutely certain most of you can think back as I am expressing these thoughts
.  we did not have 2 cars in the family, I guess some of us were lucky if we had one car. We walked to school or  got the tram to where we needed to go.   we did not have TV , mobile phone, computors,  my mother had one washing day, one ironing day, a cake and biscuit cooking day , I remember there was the bread cart that came around once a week, the ice man ,the prop man to prop the clothes line up for the washing to dry , there were no clothes dryers,  the milkman delivered milk in glass bottles every day, we did not worry about where our food came from becasue it was all grown in Australia. we did not have the big supermarkets  we relied on the corner grocer who would deliver our groceries right into the kitchen once a week.
we had not heard of the word pollution,
 I remember my mother would cook a roast dinner,  she used to get three meals from this even though there was Mum and Dad and three children,  and we certainly  did not go without .
Many mothers made their childrens clothes because there was not the variety of stores there are today , we wore the same dress to several parties not like today where young people can purchase spmething new for every occasion and most of these purchases are from overseas. 
we were not given highly packaged presents which nowadays fill the rubbish tin to the brim , we did not hop on a plane and fly all over the world,
Yes things have changed .  And for me in the last few months my thinking has changed  and I am trying very hard to make significant changes in my life and that of my family.

I turned off the second fridge (I must admit Henry was not too delighted about this one so I turned this on again.)
  I try not buy over packaged food, I try to buy Austalian  made  products wherever possible,  Henry gets the bus whenever he can,  We only wash when the washing machine is full the same as the dishwasher,  I make sure the powere points are turned off at the switch and even when I am out I look for that little red dot on the power point and I will switch this off.
I do recycle and although this takes a bit of getting used to I am certain eventually I will be able to master this.
We do not use as many lights as we used to do  and we are getting around to change our lold light bulbs to energy efficient ones. 

I believe we all can make a difference and that we should all do our bit.