And there we were, all breezing along and assuming we could do anything we liked, that the Planet Earth was only there to exploit and provide for whatever humanity wanted, when along comes ‘global heating’ and then Coronavirus! https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2671/long-term-warming-trend-continued-in-2017-nasa-noaa/ Governments, and people, around the World mostly managed to ignore the ‘climate crisis’ problem, although it’s tough on people in the countries who are at the nub end of hot weather and lack of rain, and islanders whose homes are being inundated, and locally, those
Read more →Following my recent blog about the wind turbine proposal near Ford, there is an excellent article in the CPRE’s magazine this month that states the case from both sides. It is also to be found at http://www.cpre.org.uk/magazine/opinion/item/2802-getting-wind-energy-right I think that the most useful point made is by Rachel Coxcoon, who is broadly in favour of more turbines because of our need to produce our own energy without large carbon emissions. She says that the problem is more one of people feeling disempowered, and having infrastructure thrust
Read more →Humane (adjective): Kind or considerate towards people or animals. The opposite is ‘beastly’. Introduction: The UK Government has decided to carry out a cull of badgers in an attempt to deal with bovine tuberculosis which infects some of the UK cattle herd. Over 100,000 of a protected species could be killed with little certainty about outcomes, and alternative solutions remain undeveloped. Such wildlife massacres have occurred throughout human existence, and we take full advantage of our technology to kill more efficiently where we should be using
Read more →The owner of Lower Waldridge Farm (Mr Jeremy Elgin) in the county of Buckinghamshire, Near Aylesbury, is proposing to put a wind turbine on his land that will generate electricity for the National Grid. This has stirred up highly organised and vocal opposition that is passionate, and fixed in it’s view. For the protestors, it is instantly a question of right and wrong, a gut reaction, and emotional. We have lived with power pylons striding for hundreds of miles across the countryside through beautiful areas,
Read more →I read in the New York Times that people in the States (Land Of The Free, subject to terms and conditions and having money) are having to think twice about knocking down the old house and building a brand new one when they move, and of students brewing their own coffee rather than buying a moccachino in the cafe, or using library books instead of buying them. Good! Even if it’s only temporary. To each of us, having more money, more freedom, more choice is a
Read more →Ancient woodland has been continually wooded since at least 1600AD, and some may even link back to the original wildwood that covered the UK around 10,000 years ago, after the last Ice Age. There are ancient beech woods in the Chiltern Hills which I explore at all times of the year. They are particularly lovely in the spring and autumn when the colours are vibrant with the changing season. Beech trees are very stately, their smooth grey trunks, like cathedral columns rising from the leafy forest
Read more →It is an August Sunday in Cuddington, in rural South Buckinghamshire. The air is a mild 20 degrees centigrade and an occasional breeze wafts the ripe wheat, and the sun has a pleasant intensity when it moves out from behind the broken cloud. I set off for a walk through the local countryside for exercise, enjoyment of the scenery and to try to get some good wildlife photographs. Down Spickett’s Lane there are several wild plum trees festooned with fruit and I stretch up, standing on
Read more →Yesterday I walked for about a mile through grassy fields, about half of them overgrown with grasses, nettles and other vagrant species. This was not in the middle of nowhere, but in prime Buckinghamshire farmland: some of the most fertile and longest farmed in England. These fields were completely vacant – no livestock, and certainly no crops. Were these fields to be left alone, apart from mowing, for long enough, they could become meadows, rich in wildflowers, with nesting places for skylarks and other birds, and
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