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Now that the dust has settled, lets have a look at the whole Greenpeace debacle and what it is going to mean in the future in the UK.
This was started by Greenpeace engaging in a public protest at Rishi Sunak’s mansion. The reason that they went to his house, is that he is the UK prime minister.
Climate change effects are not restricted to the third world (though very often the impact is felt more harshly here).
In the USA the volume of water in the Colorado river has fallen by the volume of lake Mead in 23 years – this is the equivalent of 15 billion Olympic sized swimming pools. More than 40 million people rely on this river for their water – along with millions of acres of farm land.
Despite the drought that has hit the area, scientists have calculated that the water loss would not have had anywhere near the effect without the human caused climate change.
This may simply be early signs of things to come in the USA
Grey wolves from Oregon now appear to be thriving in California (where they disappeared from about 100 years ago).
Wolves have never been reintroduced to California, instead they were returned to Yellowstone, re-entered Oregan back in 1999, and then entered California in 2008.
Short of a sudden sustained assault on their numbers, they are back in California and are likely to multiply over the next few decades to take back up their position as apex predators. This should not be feared in any way, with sensible management, it could end up benefiting California, with healthier ecosystems, less car crashes caused by wildlife amongst many other benefits.
A total of 3000 cars caught fire on the ship, but where did the fire start?
The ship was 199m long and started on the ship while it was on route from Germany to Egypt. It caught fire off the coast of Holland. Of the 3000 cars, 350 of the cars are Mercedes and 25 were electric.
The fire has not been good, and one person has died as a result. However, what is clear is that a large number of media sources have blamed the electric cars before anyone has worked out what is happening.
BP has made profits of £2 billion in the second quarter of the year, while global warming continues to become a more and more existential issue.
Unfortunately, it also appears that BP is not thinking of the future at all. The vast majority of this money will be returned to share holders in dividends and buybacks.
Perhaps there is something in extra tax on companies which make extra profit, simply because oil prices are high – largely as a result of the Ukraine war.
Despite all our promises, Rishi Sunak (the UK prime minister) has vowed to max out the UK fossil fuels reserves.
Now there are several stupid issues with this position.
He has also suggested that in some way, the war in Ukraine is what has required this move – only 4% of our oil came from Russia. As to Ukraine, while we may have imported some grain, we do not import any oil from there.
More insanely, Rishi Sunak suggested that this was an essential plank of our move to net zero. Unfortunately, he argues that it is cleaner because it causes less emissions to drill near the UK. This would be slightly true if our oil could be extracted with similar emissions to elsewhere, however, we cant. Once the oil is put in huge tankers, the carbon footprint per litre is so small it does not overcome the extra emissions for extraction.
There are some fears that this is signalling a swing right in politics after the loss of Boris Johnsons seat in the byelection that his resignation caused.
He has argued that this will help our move to net zero, but many Tory MP fear that this will simply lead to them loosing their seat at the next election. I think that this will lead to many problems, and shows that he really is not up to being PM at a time like this. It shows a lack of understanding of what the country needs – even suggesting that this will keep gas prices down in the 2050s is foolish – between now and then, every boiler in the country will fail, and should be replaced with a heat pump, which then wont need the oil or gas anyway.
He did pair this announcement with 2 more carbon usage and storage centres. However, it is thought that the new oil fields that he has announced will give roughly 500 million barrels of oil (about 80 billion litres). Put differently, the carbon dioxide released from a barrel of oil during its use, is roughly 426kg of carbon dioxide (for reference one litre of petrol used in your car emits around 2.3 kg of carbon dioxide directly, though these emissions would likely double if you include extraction refinement and transport of the petrol before it enters your car) which means that the carbon dioxide released by these licences is likely to be around 213000 mega (million) tonnes of carbon dioxide. For reference, our current emissions as a country is about 313 megatonnes a year, so this is huge.
This is not a positive step for the people of the UK, so I am not sure what he is doing it for – the oil and gas companies? While I recognize his reason is that he wants to make sure the UK has enough oil and gas to be fuel independent, if the transition is successful, much of this oil will have to end up as stranded assets, and it seems reasonable for oil and gas companies to demand their money back with large interest, when the government is forced to change its mind.
There is a great deal of time in the media given over to cutting our carbon footprint. To be clear, this is essential – we need to cut our carbon footprint as much as we possibly can.
My family have recently bought an electric car (second hand) and this has probably reduced our emissions by 2.5 tonnes a year directly (let alone indirectly, which is often far higher – think of the carbon footprint of extracting refining and transporting the petrol from the earth to your car – usually easily doubling the carbon emissions coming out of the tail pipe).
We are currently in talks of having a heat pump installed (I hope that this goes well) and perhaps having the same people install our solar panels and thermal solar panels (those who have been reading this blog for a long time will remember me getting them a long time ago, it has been bizarrely hard to find someone to install at a sensible price).
These moves probably combine to reduce our housing emissions to near zero – we have carbon neutral electricity as well a to reduce our gas use to zero.
So why do I run a website that is intended to simplify wild travel? It is simple! No one has yet found a model which pays locals for the wildlife that lives on the doorstep. Tourism is good at doing this. Now it is true that most wildlife is a significant distance away, which means that air travel is required. However, if as a country, we reduce our housing carbon footprint by 5+ tonnes each, per year (on average the emissions per person is around 5 tonnes per year, so for a family of 4 this is a reduction of about 25%) then a flight, preferably in cattle class and on a modern efficient plane, is not going to greatly increase our carbon footprint.
More important, if everyone in the west stops ecotourism trips, what benefit is there for locals in western Africa to retain their rainforest? A small number of visitors is likely to greatly increase the standard of living of remote communities, as well as giving incentive for thousands of square miles of rainforest to remain standing.
Carbon offset schemes are also a good idea, though much care must be taken in picking what to support (and often doing it directly is better). As this website grows, I hope to set up a scheme that does it properly. You should be looking for projects which will either reduce emissions (new green electricity generation, reforestation- with native crops, that will be left standing, and many more)
The fact of the matter is, that if all of us who are lucky enough to live in the west stop engaging in eco-travel, this removes the incentive for countries around the world to retain their wilderness and wildlife. Worse, ecotourism can give livelihoods in wild places all over the country which if removed, would require entire ecosystems to be cleared. We must be careful, and keep our carbon footprint for this travel low, but feeling smug about not flying will not keep rainforests standing, coral reefs intact, mangroves where they are and many many more
It is back in the 1940s that wolves were last resident in the Grand Canyon national park. This is why it was so exciting that a grey wolf is roaming the northern rim of the grand canyon.
I wonder what proportion of the country would recognize the name Chris Packham? He has been one of the lead presenters for the BBCs natural history unit for decades. Why is people like this important? Without people like this, all sorts of threats to our world, including things like climate change would be less well known in the public.
These people are essential for disseminating information which might allow us to deal with these challenges without leaving a dystopian world to our children. Naturalists are important, as they give us the knowledge to deal with many problems far cheaper than any manmade solution.
Continue reading “Chris Packham was awarded £90,000, so?”It is, unfortunately, a fact, that meat eaters create a significant extra quantity of carbon released into the air. How much? Well this varies from place to place, and product to product.
There are an increasingly large number of people who are recognizing this issue. Now while some will argue that without the meat industry, much of the UK farmland would be built on, and that this would be disastrous for the environment are missing the point. We live on an island, and as such it is in our own best interests to make sure that the worlds ice sheets do not melt.
Continue reading “If the US beef industry is deploying tricks similar to fossil fuels and smoking to delay action, what should we do?”