Climate change impacts

Now we have come to learn of the outcomes of the Copenhagen climate change talks, it seems an awful lot less was achieved than was hoped for, or indeed necessary. Of course it was always going to be incredibly difficult to get 192 countries to agree to the same bit of paperwork, but the lack of political will and flexibility has resulted in a very watered down document that is not nearly good enough for the current predicament the human race is in.

Meanwhile, carbon emissions continue to rise, warming of the planet continues and its impacts are becoming evident everywhere. Recently the Met Office and UK Government produced a very useful map detailing global impacts of a changing climate if average temperatures rose by 4C.

It's very good to understand the impacts visually, and remind ourselves of the very serious situation that runaway climate change could bring about.

The Transition Scilly website has some free downloads to help you understand climate change better and do something by reducing your carbon footprint.

Population: the taboo subject

Human population levels are the one big environmental and social problem that are not given the degree of thought and coverage that they should be.

In this BBC Horizon program, David Attenborough presents a highly thought-provoking documentary about past, current and future population levels, and their impact on the world's resources.

It's available on the iPlayer until Dec 18th and is really worth watching:
http://bbc.co.uk/i/pdjmk/

The Wave

On Saturday 5th December thousands of people are expected to come together in central London to make a show of support for the UK Government to make every effort to secure a deal at the forthcoming climate change talks in Copenhagen.

This is a critical time in human history where the leaders from every nation in the world have a chance to come to an agreement that may just avert runaway climate change.

To show our support here on the Islands, Transition Scilly have organised an event running parallel to the London event. It will be on Saturday 5th December and start at 15.00 on Porthmellon beach, St Mary's (weather permitting). The only stipulation is that you wear something blue!

A vivid description of oil in society

Rob Hopkins is an eloquent speaker and this video, from the TED talks in Oxford earlier this year, vividly describes the role oil plays ion our society, how oil will become less available and what impact this has on climate change. It's encapsulating:

Carteret Islands

As part of E-Day, Matt Prescott organised Earth Summit, where people from around the world (as well as more locally) were invited to talk about the impacts of climate change on their part of the world.

One of the most moving and profound had to be from Ursula Rakova from the Carteret Islands. The archipelago were she was born and lives is incredibly low lying in the Pacific Ocean, with a maximum height of just 1.2m above sea level.

Rising sea levels and increased storms, caused by climate change, has hit them badly. In this video she explains what life is like for Carteret Islanders in 2009.

The rainforests must not be lost

Tropical rainforests are the single most important habitat on planet Earth. Besides the tens of thousands of species for whom the rainforests are home, these forests regulate the climate of the planet and lock up billions of tonnes of carbon.

Destruction of this habitat cannot continue any longer. A Greenpeace campaign, Slaughtering the Amazon has had positive impacts already as multinational companies have signed up to not buying meat and leather products from cattle raised on pasture that used to be rainforest.

Now the Prince's Rainforest Project is pushing for the importance of rainforests to be included in the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in 5 weeks time. Add your voice to this campaign through the application below:

Energy Saving Day

On Tuesday 6th October, the focus will be very much on Scilly for E-Day, short for Energy Saving Day. The event has been the brainchild of Dr Matt Prescott, who has done most of the organisation and has 'got the show on the road'.

E-Day is about everyone on Scilly joining in the effort to reduce electricity demand as much as possible, by witching off all unnecessary electrical items. By all of us concentrating our efforts on just one day, the E-Day team (by some clever gadgetry) can measure how much electricity has been saved over a 'normal' day.

The E-Day website is fantastic, featuring live energy feeds from the National Grid, videos of people who live on Scilly, advice and much more. It's a great resource with so much to look at, so do spend some time on it. Most importantly, we can monitor the drop in electricity demand next Tuesday as it happens.

On Saturday and Sunday is the Earth Summit in the Town Hall. It's a free event and is on from 12-6 each day. With a line up of speakers from all over the world, this is a must-go-to event as it doesn't happen on Scilly very often!

Home - a masterpiece

Yann Arthus-Bertrand is a French photographer who specialises in aerial photography. His first book, The Earth from the Air, is a beautiful collection of photographs from around the world, portraying the natural environment with and without humans.

His latest project is called "Home"; again a stunning array of aerial photos, but this time with a very strong environmental and social message. Sub-titled a hymn to the planet and humanity, this book looks at man's impact on the planet. It combines photos with very accessible text and portrays a clear message.

A book, simply called "Home" was published just a couple of months ago and is available from most online book retailers. The author also has set up an organisation called Good Planet Foundation, to promote the messages in the book...and film.

Yes, there's a film. It's an hour and a half long, has stunning visuals and costs...nothing. The entire film is available on YouTube. It's an incredible piece of work, documenting the formation of the Earth (in geologicalm time), diversity of life and Man's impact on the planet. A complete joy to watch; here's the trailer, from which there's a link to the full film:


As a bonus, here is a link to a video of the author giving a recent talk in Oxford. Very inspirational stuff:
Watch it here

The fruit season

For anyone who has apple trees, July is the month when you tend to start noticing the apples on your tree(s)! Signs are that this season will be quite a decent apple season - generally good conditions at blossom, an extended warm period in June and now lots of rain to swell the fruit.

All we need now is a maixture of sunshine and showers to bring on the crop for the autumn. There were reports in the national press of Discovery apples ready for picking in mid July in Kent - that is incredibly early! But perhaps it indicates that most apples will be ready earlier than most years.

We hope to be making the most of unwanted apples on Scilly again this autumn in the apple press - more details here nearer the time.

The extent of localisation possible

Local Food is a really important area to focus on for many reasons - resilience, health, wildlife, landscape, local economy, climate change and much more besides. As little as perhaps 75 years ago, the vast majority of food required by local populations up and down the UK would have been provided close to home. The only exceptions to this rule would have been major cities, which would have acquired food from a regional or perhaps national basis.
But before today's era of international travel and transport, imported food would have consisted largely of goods like bananas, spices, tea, coffee and cocoa. Today imported food can be anything from beef to vegetables and fruit to milk and thousands of items in between. In this mad world, where for example the UK exports about as much dairy products to the Netherlands as it imports from the same country, our food is entirely linked to cheap oil.

The question therefore remains, in the light of dwindling oil availability and a need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% as soon as practically possible, could we largely feed ourselves from our local area? Transition Town Totnes have just completed a seminal piece of work, titled "Can Totnes and district feed itself?" A detailed study, this has been carried out in a very professional manner and comes to some interesting and enlightening conclusions.

In a nutshell, the answer is "yes", Totnes could (largely) feed itself, BUT it would require some major changes in diet - mostly by eating less meat and dairy and ensuring that arable land was producing cereals for human rather than animal consumption.

From a back-of-the-envelope calculation, Scilly would fall in to a similar situation to Totnes...the tricky bit is that economically Scilly is 85% dependent on 120,000 or so visitors per year. Feeding these people as well as the local population shifts the goal posts considerably.

This will be the subject of future Transition Scilly work. In the meantime you can download the full Totnes report here.