Guilt

• Given this, it’s not surprising that one study surveying thousands of young people found most respondents were worried about climate change, and over 45 per cent said worries about climate change affected them daily.
• Taking climate action is one proposed way to reduce climate anxiety by turning negative emotions in response to the reality of urgent challenges into positive action.

What is a food system?

• A food system includes everything that happens to food from farm to fork.
• The food system also includes all the people involved in each of those steps, including us.

Impact of daily choices

• Many of us rarely consider the impact our daily food choices have on the environment.
• Those that do seldom see our own potential in engaging with and transforming the food system beyond eating on the basis of conscience.

Beyond nutrition, cooking

• Research about Canadian curriculums has similarly found curriculum policies tend to focus on eating in healthy ways as a matter of individual choice.
• Nutrition and cooking are important for individual health.

Taking action locally

• You could also write to your provincial or territorial legislative representative to advocate for the inclusion of these issues in the curriculum.
• Together, visit a local farm or starting a small indoor or outdoor garden.

How a meal arrives on a plate

Another activity to start thinking about the global impact of food systems is to explore how a meal comes to be on your plate. You could ask questions like:
Analyzing even a simple meal can lead to complex thoughts and discussions around food systems and reveal stark social and environmental issues. By looking beyond nutrition, food can become a powerful tool to empower young people to take climate action which, in turn, can lead to reduced climate anxiety and increased feelings of hope for the future.

• Dominic Raab has resigned as deputy prime minister and secretary of state for justice following an investigation of accusations that he bullied civil servants.
• However, his resignation letter contained no apology and barely any admission of guilt.
• And yet while the report cleared Raab of intentionally targeting staff, it found that he had acted “abrasively” towards civil servants and in a way that was intimidating.

Delay and denial

• The investigation into Raab’s conduct was launched in November 2022 – more than five months ago.
• Civil servants have been left with the message that their negative experiences at work come second to Raab’s political career.

Politics over principle

• Discussion around Raab’s fate has been consistently tied to his loyalty to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and whether the Conservative party can survive another scandal.
• But these factors should never have played a part in decisions around Raab’s professional conduct towards civil servants.

Collateral damage

• This is not conducive to a healthy and efficient work environment.
• And if their own experiences are not enough for these matters to be taken seriously, their victimisation has a negative impact for their employers too.
• We also found that it is not only direct victims that suffer in a workplace where bullying takes place.

• Earlier this year, the US Department of Energy and FBI endorsed the same theory.
• The lab leak theory remains a legitimate hypothesis to investigate.
• These exploded into mass violence in the mid-14th century, and survive in later legends about witches’ ability to concoct poisonous agents.

Poisonous powders and plagues

• Who among us never felt compelled to disinfect our groceries or mail during the early months of the pandemic?
• The threat of disease is layered onto suspicious “others” – such as Jews during the Middle Ages, or Chinese labs today.
• Jews were accused of concocting poisonous powders from spiders, toads and human remains – the ingredients form a running list of items invoking disgust and fear of infection.
• The contagion effect easily convinced medieval Christians that a terrible disease must originate with people already considered suspicious.

Conspiracy and Christianity

• There are similar fears of magical contagion in theories about the lab leak being the pandemic’s origin.
• We continue to be swayed by the idea that some specific agency must be responsible, rather than unpredictable processes of virus mutation.
• Even China has embraced this logic, with various suggestions made about the virus emerging somewhere (anywhere) outside its borders.
• So is the a priori assumption that nefarious intentions lie somewhere behind every major event, a cornerstone of conspiratorial thinking both ancient and modern.

Viral magical thinking

• Such accusations attempt to impose coherence on a profoundly uncertain situation, and suggest a reassuring narrative of clear cause and effect rather than random chance.
• In the eyes of lab-leak theory advocates, the desire to hide information suggests something more nefarious than a simple desire to avoid blame.
• But embracing an argument built on a tissue of circumstantial evidence is also part of the conspiracy theory playbook: magical thinking enters the grey zone of unanswered questions to create elaborate narratives of false reassurance.

• The sums – a few euro-cents when you’re at the till – may seem derisory.
• This form of giving has enabled more than €50 million to be collected in France since 2010.
• However, asking us to donate on each journey to the till can end up aggravating.

I don’t have any money!

• In this way, one can find evidence of three different causes of annoyance associated with asking for money at the till.
• potential donors suffer from a lack of tailoring, as they’re deluged by causes that rarely interest them.
• Customers can sometimes find it hard to tell the difference between a brand’s sincere support for a cause, and reputation laundering.
• In France, for amounts over 5 euros per store per year, customers can even exercise their right to tax exemptions.
• One answer to this is that generosity is associated with so many virtues, for wider society but also for oneself.