There was a time the two words ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ were barely uttered, but now almost EVERYTHING, quite rightly, is linked to these few words.
Here’s a brief look at some of what’s been in the news and what I’ve been reading.
Environmentally friendly burials – returning bodies back to nature
I think about this stuff a lot but I’d never considered that burials could be carbon intensive. But they are, apparently, and a woman in America has started a business, called Recompose, offering ‘above ground decomposition’ or as Britta Lokting in MIT Tech Review puts it, ‘turning your corpse into soil’.
This is apparently a much more environmentally friendly way to be laid to rest as it doesn’t use up precious land, like cemetaries do, or require wooden casks (bodies are instead put in a ‘cone container’ with straw, wood chips and other natural ingredients) or cremation.
It sounds a bit weird but at the end of the process (around 30 days) a cubic metre of soil is produced per body, some of which relatives can take home and grow something with while the rest is donated to a 700-acre conservation trust. Nature literally in full circle.
Boris Johnson unveils his 10-point plans for a green industrial revolution
Revolutions ALWAYS start with a nice, rounded 10-point plan, of course. Can’t have a revolution without bullet points.
The plan covers everything from energy (nuclear, offshore wind, hydrogen) to – and importantly – tree planting, which is needed to absorb the carbon produced by the things we consume and use. Apparently, this is the first time the carbon-absorbing part of the Net Zero plan has been addressed.
It’s a decent enough plan as a starting point, though much of the detail needed for investors to make long-term investments, I’m told, is missing. However, notably, but unsurprising, it mentions nothing about reducing consumerism and carbon consumption, or about the carbon produced in the things we import from abroad – clothes, toys, practically everthing these days. A conversation he’s saving for later perhaps. You can read the plan here.
Pollution listed as cause of little girls’ death
This, I think, is significant. Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah tragically died in February 2013 after an asthma attack that led to cardiac arrest. The coronor said poor air quality played a significant role in inducing and worsening her condition.
Attributing pollution as the cause of someone’s death helps us see something we know but don’t often think about: that, just like smoking, pollution is very bad for our health and can contribute to our death. However, we don’t reflect that in taxes and restrictions – yet – like we do for smoking, though we do pay for the impacts in our tax-funded hospitals and through worsened health. I imagine that at some point this will change.
Warming not slowing despite coronavirus restrictions
The average surface temperature across the planet in 2020 was 1.25C higher than in the pre-industrial period of 1850-1900, dangerously close to the 1.5C target set by the world’s nations to avoid the worst impacts, The Guardian write. This is the joint global highest temperature recorded, 2016 was the other, with the past six years the hottest on record.
A stark reminder that there really is no time to waste.
Beetle watching
I leave you with this nice little description of a saproxylic beetle living in a European forest by Leigh Cowart writing in MIT Tech Revew. The story was about tracking biodiversity loss.
“Voracious, oblivious, forever scanning the world at hand for snacks, sex and danger.’
Nevermind a beetle, this description could be applied to several people I know.
Climate Change Site 