#showthelove and turn Valentine hearts green

Valentine’s Day is coming up. How do you show your love?

If you follow the advice from Hallmark, you’ll shower your loved on with cards and gifts.

Perhaps flowers, chocolates or a decadent meal.

Underwear, a cute teddy bear or a diamond ring.

But how much of that really matters? Do we need a ‘thing’ to declare our love?

Anyone who has experienced a tragedy in their lives will know that most of the stuff we accumulate is meaningless.

You only have to clear out a deceased parent’s home to know this is the case.

Everything they worked hard to earn the money to own, well most of it ends up given away or thrown out.

Because, once we get over our sentimentality, it’s nearly all meaningless. We have our own stuff, we don’t need theirs.

But the memories? Well they last a lifetime.

It wasn’t until I had a child my perception on ‘stuff’ changed.

And it wasn’t until I witnessed, first hand, the devastation that flash floods can cause that my eyes were *really* opened to what’s important.

The dirt in your back garden, the trees, the bees, the rivers and the rain are the things that sustain us.

We can live without the stuff, but if the bees become extinct or the water on this planet becomes so contaminated it can’t sustain life? Well that’s a different matter.

When I was standing with my daughter in my arms, knee deep in water, wondering whether I’d ever see my husband again, my thoughts weren’t about the car in front of me that was being washed out into the sea or my shoes that were getting ruined in the sea water.

It was this:

“All the stuff I’ve been reading about climate change is happening. Not in fifty years time,but right now.”

And it was in that moment I decided to become part of the solution; to show my love to the planet and my daughter. After all, she deserves to inherit a healthy and beautiful planet that can sustain life.

This Valentine’s Day, why not do something completely different?

Spend 101 precious seconds watching this video, then share it with your friends using the hashtag #sharethelove.

A collaboration between Ridley Scott Associates (RSA) and The Climate Coalition – a group of over 100 organisations including CAFOD, Greenpeace, Oxfam, RSPB and WWF – this video is a call to ensure world leaders make decisions to protect all we hold dear.

Some people I truly admire are in the film – Stephen Fry, Deborah Meaden and Jarvis Cocker – which ends with a message for the public to join a call for action on climate change.

Oxfam Supporter, Stephen Fry said “When you think about losing what you love because of climate change, it’s a no-brainer to want to see things change for good.”

“It’s time our world felt the love. We need to stop climate change so that the things we love are not lost.”