Fires Raging, Disorder Spreading, Greta Rules

Admit it, we’ve all been a little fixated by the recent uptick in social unrest. We’ve had a few flavours to chose from this time around, whether it’s the US protests, the Hong Kong riots or the lockdown rebellions. I guess we enjoy a dose of chaos and confusion, an almost biblical rewind to fire and brimstone.

Given the extreme levels of inequality blown wide open by the Corona crisis and the somewhat ideological leaders currently reigning in Covid flattened countries, you might be asking yourself if civil disorder is a new norm in the making, you know, like Zoom video calls.

But there’s something else chewing away at this. There’s something echoing around my head a bit like a Jean-Michel Jarre concert. Something pulling at my conscience and bugging my brain only this time it’s not Cummings-and-goings. It’s something even more sinister.

For a number of years climate scientists have been warning us of the consequences of unchecked global warming. The cost of climate change. And Greta keeps telling us that we’ve got to listen to these scientists. Not just because they actually know they’re shit but because Greta’s had it with politicians offering her consulting gigs to go solve the Cummings affair, er climate crunch when she just wants to get back to hanging out with her friends and flunking school to go to the beach instead of dropping out to save the planet. (She promises to hit the beach in a non Cummingsy trash the lockdown rules kind of a way).

Environmental scientists have been warning us for a long time that continued global warming will lead to extreme Stormzy, flooding and drought – check. They’ve stated that the continued destruction of key habitats, like rain forests, in the name of industrial farming will increase the risk of desease and wildlife loss – check. And the combination of the two will lead to mass migration, social upheaval and more extreme politics – check disorder in the US, Hong Kong, Syria, Michigan and our very own one man protest at Barnard Castle.

So, in the name of Greta and every darned climate scientist on the planet, we should not only invent a vaccine for Corona but also spend some cash on a wake up pill the size of Donnie’s Trumpian ego to get us ALL to smell the friggin coffee and realise that there is a way out of chaos and confusion and pandemic after pandemic followed by Noah like flooding conditions, hurricanes every five minutes and droughts the length of the second Cummings.

The way to avoid America and China and the rest of us going to war, with Kim Yong Ding Dong chipping in, but not in a teeing up at Mar-a-Lago kind of way, the way to stop the planet going up in fire and SpaceX’s share price going up to Mars is to rewild the friggin planet and keep those pesky bat’s and pangolins and Dom’s locked up as far away as possible in some hidden, protected, untouched rain forest so the virus stays with them. And while the virus sticks to them, the rewilding of our planet bit means we get to stick to where we are – or at least for a little bit longer.

This rewilding would not only be good for us, but would also be good for our little pangolin brethren. It might keep the climate scientists off our backs, keep Greta on the beach and stop us shooting up in a rocket to go piss off some other planet in the name of industrial farming on a separate universe, only to stir up their extra-terrestrials like we pissed off the bats and pangolins down here. Yep, like a bunch of suicidal, narcissistic terrestrial muppets, right at the point at which we might finally recover from Corona, we’ll go shake up a bunch of infested aliens who’ll invade us cos they have SpaceX and Zoom too. Then they’ll unleash on us the next pandemic from hell except this time around even Jacinda won’t be able to save us.

Shit, I think I’ll start rewilding my place. Oh, I already did. I guess I won’t need to migrate to New Zealand after all.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

A Net Zero Climate Change Plan for Cities

Global warming is the single biggest threat we face as citizens, as public officials and as businesses – beyond even Covid-19. Indeed, Coronavirus is a symptom of climate change. So, if we want to tackle the real problem, our phased lockdown exit plans will need to include plans to tackle climate change.

At DSP we thought it would be timely to publish our net zero climate change framework for towns and cities. It is designed to be high level – a simple ten step plan and a list of methods and initiatives you might want to take into consideration as you develop a region-specific approach. It is intended to inform local leaders and their citizens while stimulating debate. It has been forged from the work we have done with municipal leaders, business managers and environmental experts in developing more holistic approaches to greener, healthier, environmentally sound cities and towns.

City leaders will need to set a clear net zero target and time frame up front. Most will be focused on achieving net zero emissions by a certain date before 2050. You will need to outline your definition of emissions so as, for example, to include or not, all greenhouse gasses including Methane, Halogens and Nitrous oxide at a minimum and not just Carbon dioxide. Further, over time, you will most likely want to stretch the target as ultimately you should be aiming for a fuller drawdown of greenhouse gases so as to get ourselves back to pre-industrial levels of warming and greenhouse gases and not a less ambitious net zeroing of 1 degree or 1.5 degrees warming above pre-industrial levels.

Cities should structure their net zero climate change plans into a distinct category of projects and actions. Larger cities may want to appoint a leader for each category and separate project teams to address each. Category leaders should report to whoever is leading the project overall in the city organisation and ideally the city leader. Measurement is vital so be clear about how you will measure the likely business case/impact for each category and initiative and set six monthly rolling targets for each prior to adoption.

10 Point Net Zero Climate Change Framework for Cities (with project categories):

1. An action plan for the people. The only way a city will be able to pull off aggressive targets such as net zero emissions by 2030 will be to get as many of their citizens as possible to change their behaviors. DSP has developed a universal 10 point climate change action plan for individuals and households which is comprehensive and practical.

2. An action plan for businesses. Alongside an action plan for your citizens you should also adopt and market an action plan for businesses. Getting businesses, small medium and large, to buy into a straight forward, universal net zero climate change plan for their business could make a big difference.

3. Energy: strategies should include approaches and targets for wind turbines, microgrids, geothermal, solar farms, rooftop solar, wave and tidal, biomass, micro wind, in-stream hydro, waste to energy and energy storage.

4. Food: to include a plant-rich diet, reduced food waste, green/clean cooking stoves and cookware, nutrient management, composting, conservation agriculture and irrigation.

5. Women and girls: women have a key role to play in the environmental movement as more often than not they influence household decisions, purchases and practices. They are generally more responsible for gardens and small holdings and they spend considerable time educating children and informing their values. They are also ultimately responsible for family planning. Educating women and girls in net zero strategies and environmental approaches should prove highly worthwhile.

6. Buildings and infrastructure: the following components are essential to your plans – net zero buildings, walkable cities, bike infrastructure, green roofs, LED lighting, heat pumps, smart glass, smart thermostats, district heating, landfill methane, insulation, retrofitting, water distribution and building automation.

7. Land use: make sure to include forest protection, new forests and tree planting, coastal wetlands, bamboo, peatlands, perennial biomass, local community land management, rewilding and afforestation. Develop community learning initiatives e.g. wildlife gardening techniques and centres of excellence like a rewilding town centre park.

8. Transport: transport is a key opportunity for any climate conscious city plan. Take a look at mass transit, high-speed rail, shipping and boats, electric vehicles, ridesharing, electric bikes, cars, aeroplanes, trucks, remote working and learning and trains. Think through natural capital approaches that could, for instance, combine incentives for good practices as well as taxes or charges for the most polluting behaviours. Education and supportive, positive economic policies are the key.

9. Materials: this is an area often overlooked but, done right, can make a significant difference to effective net zero strategies. For proven eco materials strategies look carefully at household recycling, industrial recycling, alternative eco-friendly cement, refrigeration, recycled paper, bioplastic and water saving in homes.

10. New eco innovations: there are a number of new innovations and trends that, as they mature, could make a significant difference to achieving and enhancing climate friendly action plans in the medium term. We believe the following deserve your attention: artificial foods, the ‘artificial leaf’ project, autonomous vehicles, living buildings, direct air capture, smart highways and roads, hyperloop, smart grids and building with wood.

At DSP we help organisations and individuals to become more climate friendly and adopt healthier living approaches. We offer a cost effective online app, DSP Online, to help you better understand how to become environmentally conscious with simple actionable techniques gleaned from the day to day approaches and learnings at DSP’s center of excellence in the UK southwest. Sign up to DSP Online today – CLICK HERE.

What If Coronavirus is a Dress Rehearsal for Something Way More Sinister?

Some thing’s been nagging me for a while. Kind of an itch really. And it’s been growing since before the Covid-19 nightmare. Like deja vue in reverse. That what we’re living through now is just a dress rehearsal for something much bigger. Maybe we’re experiencing the appetiser. You know, the precursor to a scintillating, jaw dropping main course – a goddamned Big Mac and fries!

What if Coronavirus is just the first step to something way more sinister? What if it’s like an early skirmish in a much deadlier war. And what if that war’s lurking just around the corner. What if Donald Trump was right and all the thousands of scientists were wrong about climate change but not in the way that we might expect. What if their predictions for climate catastrophe are actually too cautious.

What if we only have a few more years before we get hit by another global catastrophy – you know like another deadly virus or massive droughts, endless rainstorms, flooding, coastal collapse, or a combination of the above leading to huge population migrations, starvation and a devastating world war.

What if the world’s wildlife get so pissed off that they finally turn on us – lions and tigers roaming the streets of New York or London randomly attacking people. Snakes in our showers, tarantulas up our pj’s. What if aliens drop in to nuke us because they agree with the wildlife and have had it with watching us from afar while we fumble with the planet like a bunch of 3 year olds. Or what if, way, way scarier than any of the above, what if Donald Trump wins the next US election and we get another four years of his friggin twitter account.

ENOUGH!! ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT!! ENOUGH I SAY!!

What if we DO SOMETHING. What if we stand up and fight back. What if I didn’t have to write this domesday crap of a climate nightmare that’s starting to make me wanna find the next cliff and nose dive it like a kestrel. What if my rantings were about our progress defeating Corona and climate change and inequality and obesity and all things neo-con, er Liberal, er fascist.

What if we all just wake up one day and decide that we’d had enough. Enough of just waiting around watching storms get worse, public health get more viruses, forests get more fires, politicians get more useless and ExxonMobil make more money. What if we act now to survive our extinction – to roll back global warming. To save the planet.

What if we decided that Donnie and Bolsonightmarearo were wrong and Jacinda and Greta were right and that the way to attack the Corona consuming every inch of our daily, increasingly Netflix driven lives, was to kill it by waging war on the real problem – the climate thing. Getting all the public money flying around to go on green, healthy, climate friendly initiatives including walkable, bike loving cities, green spaces everywhere with rewilding verges, parks and commons.

What if all national treasures, reserves and crown lands were rewilded, what if every country started a major national tree planting campaign, what if the politicians and business leaders went all in and insisted on 100% renewable energy by 2035. What if us citizens stopped eating meat before dinner and shopped on foot to local stores and walked to work and to school and got on aeroplanes way less. What if we invested more in universal healthcare systems. What if our carbon emissions starting decreasing on an annual basis, what if pollution became an old desease we eradicated like malaria, what if national pride was restored by living in the greenest, healthiest and happiest place on the planet. You know, like Disneyland or the Playboy mansion or New Zealand.

And then again, what if we don’t. What if we do nothing and we have another five years of Corona 1.0 and Corona 2.0 and Donnie and Bozzer and heat and rain and fire and bedlem. What if we do nothing and the planet swallows us up and spits us out like a bug in a Big Mac. Or what if China and America decide that nuclear war is easier than tackling climate chaos and more fun than the endless twitter back and forth. What if Xi Ping Pong and Donnie end up being the last men standing – you know like a same sex Adam and Eve. What if these were like our least few years on this earth – like EVER.

You choose and God help you.

I’m emigrating to New Zealand.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

Climate Change and Coronavirus

The problem with Climate Change is Coronavirus and the problem with Coronavirus is Climate Change. Go figure. And I promise I’m not trying to confuse you – we get enough of that from our elected compadres (see previous post) so no desire here to continue to screw the pooch/muddy the (polluted) waters/sound like a politician.

The sad reality is that our continuous erosion of vital environmental ecosystems by endless deforestation, expansion of industrial scale agriculture and the forced inhabitation of what probably should be protected forests, coastal areas and wetlands has contributed big time to climate change which in turn has kicked us back up the ass by contributing big time to Covid-19 which has given me the chance to prove that I too can talk smarty pant environmental mumbo like the best of them.

You see poorer farmers in less developed countries have generally been shoved off their small holdings by big agriculture which has forced them to move to cheaper, wilder environmentally sound foresty kinda places where one of the few ways they can make cash (other than flashing their you know what’s on Zoom) is by hunting down some pretty weird creatures to pay for the way too many bills they accumulated thanks to big agro taking the rug from under their paddy field.

This eco migration led one of them to a place where some poor little bat (don’t blame him) gave a big ol’ Corona bug to some cute little armadillo looking thing called a pangolin (don’t blame her) who was then caught by said impoverished ex-smallholder and sold to some not so cute live animal market in you know where. Anyhoo, this sorry, infected pangolin was tout suite bought up by some equally cute little kid who wanted it as a live action stuffed toy or maybe it was bought by some super hungry person who just wanted to eat it. And they’d need to be super hungry cos have you seen the scaly little thing? (NOT the kid) And not exactly top of Michel Roux’s menu. The rest as they say is Corona history. So the next time you’re out trash talking scaly little wild animals think how much this dudes done to change the course of history versus what maybe any of us have done – obviously other than God or Elvis or the guy who invented the Big Mac.

But the reality is that this poor little pangolin who probably sits in some even poorer dudes belly by now, if not she sits right at the top of the U.S.’s most wanted list along with the guy who invented ISIS, may just be the first step in nature’s combined boot back up the ass to us for having decimated nature’s ability to absorb all the gargantuan amounts of CO2 and other noxious gases we pump out while simultaneously destroying nature’s habitats to the point where we’ve killed enough animals to take us straight to the next ice age and back. And all this while we nuke plant life and insects who by the friggin way need each other but apparently nothing like as much as we need them cos without insects and plants we stop the flow of another (non Corona) invisible thingy called oxygen which means we just stop breathing.

So, we may survive this Corona blast from a rewilded past but that won’t matter while we keep raping the planet cos there’s a lot more bat’s and pangolins out there and we seem to have pissed nature off to the point that the next boot back us might just lead to a reverse big bang sucking us into some nano-sized black hole to hell and (no going) back.

The other problem with Coronavirus (sorry) is that right at the point that the airwaves were finally starting to focus on climate change they’ve gotten all bunged up with the Corona meaning that there is a risk Coronavirus might just stick it to climate change as well as all of us. Stay with me. You see Coronavirus doesn’t just attack our bodies and health systems but it also reenforces our politicians innate inability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time (see Brexit) while attacking our economic arteries to the point where no one’s gonna have any money left to fix the climate thingy that gave us Tesla, Virgin Galactic and this damned pandemic in the first place.

And while all this eco tripping doomsday soothsaying just makes me want to go to the pub, Corona/climate change/one little bat and one very cute little pangolin put paid to that too. Christ.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

Supporting a Climate Change Project

As you may know I am Chairman of DSP which is an organisation focused on natural solutions to the climate crisis. It includes the UK’s leading smaller-scale rewilding project, a wildlife haven, an education centre for environmentally sound practices and healthier living and an environmental art park (see devonsculpturepark.org). We are also working on specific eco-innovations including a wildlife biodome developed with the help of the Forestry Commission to assist in the fight to save endangered fauna and flaura and specific wildlife gardening models and methods.

Recently we launched DSP Online which is a subscription based app for people to be able to support this vital project, learn from our work and share in our findings and education. It serves a weekly stream of narrated video shorts, photo-tips, articles, interviews and recipes from our wild kitchen. I would greatly appreciate it if you would become one of the earlier supporters of DSP Online and give us early feedback and, if you like it, help spread the word. You can support DSP Online from just £3 or just over $3 per month. Even in these challenging times we hope that this is a small price to help find scalable, practical solutions to the climate crisis. I look forward to personally welcoming you over at DSP Online – just click this link to sign up https://bit.ly/3btezFC.

Thank you in advance. We greatly appreciate your generous support.