curiosity about the ways of the world

Category: Environment (Page 3 of 7)

our built and natural world

Are we inviting the storms?

Oddly, almost eerily, quiet today. For nights over the last week the house has rocked with angry sound. First Gertrude then Henry came rattling at the windows, hammering on the doors, playing merry hell round the chimneys. The latest storms have blown over but surely Imogen will not be far behind? Continue reading

Blood on the tracks

“Many of the smaller ones perched on my hat, and when I carried my gun on my shoulder would sit on the muzzle. During my stay I killed forty-five all of which I skinned carefully.”

 

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I really wish I hadn’t read that extract from David Douglas’s diary describing the birds he killed during his few days on the Galapagos Islands in 1824. Douglas happens to be a bit of a hero of mine. I get a powerful kick looking up into the huge trees he brought back from his travels in what was then the wild woods of the Pacific North West. He went to such trouble to collect seed without destroying the forest it is sad to discover he was blasting eagles and owls and other grand feathered things off the face of the mountain. But I guess no-one is perfect. Continue reading

Can democracy deliver in time for climate change?

Is the NHS equipped to deal with floods, gales and heatwaves of extreme weather?  A deadly serious question is posed in a quiet corner of the Houses of Parliament.  While the media fulminates in a flash storm conjured by David Cameron during Prime Ministers Questions, the Environmental Audit Select Committee contemplates a more fearful threat than Ed Milliband ‘crawling to power on Alex Salmond’s coat tails’. Continue reading

Fiddling with Europe while the planet burns

The Red Gateway leads to an almost unimaginable world.  Yet it models the prospects for a future very like the one we are sleepwalking towards at present.  We will arrive there if we do nothing to turn away from business as usual. Stephen Blackmore

On a misty, moisty Sunday morning there is not much chance of doing useful work in the garden..Another weekend’s work undone. I’m now so late getting seeds in the ground, our vegetables may not see the light of day this year and the fields around Pond Cottage are not doing any better.  So I’ve been digging out old documents on climate change instead.

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