Friday, 17th January 2025
The Stove Cafe, High Street, Dumfries DG1 2BJ
Happy New Year from Climate Kitchen! This month we explored the twin themes health, healthcare and the climate emergency, and how we can succeed in keeping our new year’s resolutions, be they health- or climate activism-based.
Katie Percival is a local cardiology doctor and chair of the NHS Dumfries & Galloway Green Clinical Network. She gave us a whistle-stop tour of some of the intersecting issues around health, healthcare and the climate crisis. Healthcare sits in a difficult position because it is essential, yet culpable for 4-5% of global (and UK) greenhouse gas emissions; it’s a contributor to and a negative beneficiary of climate and ecological destruction. How can we reduce the environmental impact of climate change while improving health, and working within budgetary constraints that seem to tighten every year? As usual, we came back to themes of self-care, community, and good food (I can only blame Pam at the Stove and her magnificent stews, for our monthly preoccupation with food…)
January can often feel like a hopeless time. Light and warmth can feel a long way from the horizon, the trees are bare, and wildlife in retreat. Why we choose this time of emotional turmoil and psychological adversity to make promises to better ourselves, I’ll never know. It can sometimes feel like setting ourselves up to fail.
Luckily, we had our guest ace up our sleeve! We invited Ross Warwick, a consultant clinical psychologist with NHS Dumfries & Galloway, to help us unpick the unhelpful thoughts that can derail our resolutions, overcome our mind’s defences, and move closer to a version of ourselves that we want to be.
Hopeless was the opposite of how we ended the evening, which scintillated with the ideas and discussion between a packed-out audience who all care deeply and bravely face up to the realities of the climate crisis every day. Bravo to all of you; I can’t wait to see what you achieve in 2025.