I'm on my second day of 4:45am wake up calls. This is because I've not yet moved into my new, much closer to college campus, apartment. This means that my daily commute is quite a long journey. I think if this sort of day continues I'm going to have to start taking Nanna naps at about 2pm. The upside to long train journeys is that I have a lot of time to read and write. However, rather than inducing enviable productivity, the morning journey occurs pre-caffeination and thus results in live-tweeting as I read The Australian, rather than clever analysis or comment for my blogs.

This week on Tres Lola I'll be talking about celebrating the 80's, beating the back to work/school blues and body image (which I also touched on a few weeks back in this article about naked and unretouched Jennifer Hawkins). In yesterdays Australian Daily Telegraph, it was reported that Australian women have the highest rising obesity rate. Which got me to thinking, why is this the case? A male commenter touched on what is probably quite a likely contributing mindset to increasing weight gain amongst women when he said "Food is fuel, it isn't recreation, eat when you're hungry, not bored ".

Earlier this week I noticed a tweet from Natalie about the fat acceptance movement and the lack of media coverage it receives (at least, here in Australia). When asking her whether she believed a movement of this sort really deserved greater media attention, she replied that she didn't believe any person deserved to be demonised based on their body type. And I agree with this sentiment whole-heartedly. I know I could never consider judging the worth of a person based upon what size pants they wear.


In saying that, on a personal level, I think that we place too much of a link between our body image or size and our self worth. But when it comes to 'fat acceptance', comfort in ones own skin can be a positive, but I must err on the side of health. We must also acknowledge that being underweight can be just as damaging as being overweight. The only questions I pose when considering my weight are: am I healthy (ie. how is my energy, have I been poorly a lot lately?) and do I feel good about me? If I can answer both of those questions with a yes, that is good enough for me. There will be more on this on Tres Lola this Thursday.

Onwards to contentious topic #2: Late last week I attended a talk by radical British climate sceptic, Christopher Monckton. I wrote an article about his presentation that you can read here. You may know, my hometown is Newcastle, Australia. Newcastle is the worlds largest coal exporter. While this is most certainly not a feat to boast of, it gives some context as to the sort of receptive crowd (consisting largely of people around my grandparents age group) Monckton met with when he addressed Newcastle. To hear so many allowing fear of a loss of traditional industry in Newcastle result in mockery of climate science, and those who lobby in favour of it, was disheartening. However, as I write this on my train journey back to Newcastle, I can over hear a mother explaining wind power to her young son, my faith is renewed and the enviro-activist in me is encouraged.

Whichever side of the climate argument you find yourself on, surely both sides can come together to agree that a move towards sustainable energy is positive for the new jobs it will create and the economic prosperity it will bring about. If we want to operate a capitalist society, the least we can do is to capitalise on natural resources, such as wind and solar rather than coal, in a way that will ensure that not only us lot in the United States, Britain and Australia are enjoying all the luxuries our industrialised societies afford us, but that we give developing nations such as Bangladesh and island nations like the Maldives a fair go too. And, if, a time comes where all the incredibly learned climate scientists and economists are proven to have miscalculated the effect of our carbon emissions on the environment, we will still have developed a new industry to bolster our economies, provide jobs for our families and ensure that even after we have exhausted our oil and coal reserves, we can still enjoy our lifestyles.


What are your thoughts? What's going on in your world this week?