It is difficult to get away from talk of tree planting these days. Everyone is proposing it, which is important progress, because even if we manage to reach zero emissions within years as the science demands, we will still need to suck some of the carbon dioxide we’ve already emitted out of the air. Planting…
Read full postAvailable in bookstores now Animalkind by Ingrid Newkirk and Gene Stone Published by Simon and Schuster Animals have never had it so good. In Animalkind, Ingrid Newkirk (founder of PETA) and Gene Stone (How Not to Die) are keen to emphasise this. The 20th century saw rapid escalation of the animal rights movement and the…
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Taking time out to connect with nature can help to get your creative juices flowing. Research from the U.S. found that a four-day nature hike improved creative problem- solving by as much as fifty percent. Sadly most of us don’t have the option of taking a long hike in the wilderness, but a twenty-five minute…
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The 2019 report by The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) on the critical decline in wildlife states that to save nature we need to re-evaluate what we mean by a ‘good life’. In Western culture, a good life tends to focus on having more money and more things. However, a recent…
Read full postI have noticed something about people who do amazing work on behalf of our planet – they are not always good at taking breaks. I am terrible at building gaps in my life, and when I don’t, it leads to trouble. I understand why it’s hard for me to take breaks. Some of the reasons…
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The other day I noticed some Lego kits in a shop window showing Arctic landscapes that included a mini Lego figure drilling into the ice, industrial vehicles and ice cutters. I was shocked. What do we want to tell our children about the Arctic? Perhaps about biodiversity, wildlife, Indigenous people, and maybe that the ice…
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Studies estimate that food production accounts for 19-29% of greenhouse gas emissions, 80-86% of which are agricultural. Agriculture is itself a threat to biodiversity and increases the risk of soil degradation. Modern society and the rise of capitalism has seen the middle classes expand within developing countries and this leads to increasing demands for foods…
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The West Coast Main Line, on its last push into the built-up South East, rises through a tantalising swathe of rolling, yearning countryside. The trains breast the scarp in minutes. Then this narrow ribbon of the Chilterns is gone. How many travellers, since Robert Stephenson built the line in the 1830s, must have thought: ‘If…
Read full postI feel the tug of the sea as I exit Hastings railway station. No need for a map. Just follow the wheeling seagulls downhill to the beach. What does the town forever linked, with geographical imprecision, to England’s biggest home-defeat do to erase 1,000 years of hurt? It turns instant recognition to its advantage, rebranding…
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Imagine you are trying to create inhospitable conditions for wildlife. Cut down any plants, dig out the soil, compact the ground and concrete it over. This is what millions of people in the UK choose to do when they raze their front gardens to the ground for reasons such as ‘ease of maintenance’ and ‘convenient…
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