rachel.blog

Tag: Climate change

  • Faith-based leadership and a climate emergency

    Faith-based leadership and a climate emergency

    I was going to write a post about faith-based leadership when I came across this article – Faith without works: Why the Prime Minister’s call to pray for rain is offensive It was written by a Pastor and is very good. The author, Byron Smith, writes about a speech the Australian Prime Minister gave last…

  • I’m going on a permanent shaving strike

    I’m going on a permanent shaving strike

    I’ve decided to stop shaving my legs. Living in a cold climate where I wear tights or trousers for 8 months of the year has made me realise what a pointless waste of time shaving is. I started shaving as a teenager because this is what society told me I had to do. I never…

  • It was summer here in February

    It was summer here in February

    It has felt like summer here for the past week or so and lots of temperature records have broken. A 120-year winter temperature record for Scotland was broken on February 21 when Aboyne reached 18.3C. This is unprecedented for this region in winter. 18.3C is a summer temperature for us. On the 25th February the…

  • Air pollution event recap

    Air pollution event recap

    I helped organise an air pollution event in Aberdeen yesterday. This was a joint initiative of the Aberdeen Cycle Forum and Friends of the Earth Scotland. Air quality has been in the news recently because we’re only just starting to understand the harmful effect air pollution has on our health. It’s particularly harmful to young…

  • Cycling on the AWPR and a weekend of protests

    The AWPR still hasn’t opened. It has been beset by delays and no-one knows when it will open or even if it will open this year. Members of the Aberdeen Cycle Forum organised a protest about the new motorway and the failure to include provision for cyclists in a demo in September this year. We…

  • Fed up with hot and dry

    Fed up with hot and dry

    I miss winter. I truly do. Yes, I like watching the garden come to life in spring and the buds blossom but I love the muted lighting of winter more and feeling the cold air on my cheeks. It has been hot and dry here. It has been the driest first half of summer for…

  • It’s not all or nothing

    It’s not all or nothing

    I’ve recently started drinking oat milk drink. I usually drink soya but Ben recently went dairy-free at home and prefers oat drink so I thought I’d give it a try. It’s delicious. I’m addicted and prefer it to soya now. I like that oats are grown widely in Scotland and so I feel virtuous buying…

  • McPiggy and the meaning of life

    McPiggy and the meaning of life

    Aberdeen Climate Action recently had a competition to design a mascot. Children completed entries at Climate Week North East earlier this month and the runner-up is my favourite. Meet McPiggy who eats plastic and poops paper. Designed and illustrated by the 8-year-old Ashton. I thought of McPiggy this morning when I read about a true…

  • Growing your own food

    Growing your own food

    Climate Café no.5 was on in Aberdeen last night. If you live in Aberdeen I highly recommend this series. It’s an initiative of Aberdeen Climate Action, a community organisation for which I’m a volunteer, and we are spreading inspirational messages to encourage our communities to tackle the problem of climate change. Inspirational is absolutely the…

  • Aberdeen’s Climate Café Series

    Aberdeen’s Climate Café Series

    About 6 months ago I started volunteering for a local community organisation dedicated to inspiring real action on climate change. The organisation is called Aberdeen Climate Action and my first task has been to build them a website which promotes sustainable living. It’s still a work in progress but it’s looking good so far. Feedback is…

  • Meat allergy tick is spreading thanks to climate change

    Meat allergy tick is spreading thanks to climate change

    I thought this story was a hoax at first but I Googled it and found reputable sources like the New Yorker, ABC Science, BBC, and Science Daily. There’s a nice symmetry to the thought that one of the causes of climate change – livestock farming – could also bring about its demise. Livestock farming produces…

  • Is Donald Trump right to claim unfairness over Paris?

    There’s a brilliant article from Peter Singer in Project Syndicate this week about Donald Trump’s whinging over the unfairness of the Paris climate agreement. Trump is basically the fat kid who ate 3/4 of the cake and then complained that it’s unfair he didn’t get more while 3 other kids shared the 1/4 remainder between them.…

  • Hodmedod’s

    Hodmedod’s

    Recently I discovered lentils and soya beans are grown in the UK and in the process I stumbled upon Hodmedod’s, an online store selling British grown beans and other products. I decided to give it a try and bought the big vegan box: Apparently carlin peas make a good replacement for chickpeas. I will whip…

  • Climate change and the elephant in the room

    Livestock farming produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transport sector. That’s all the planes, trains, trucks, buses, cars, and boats on the planet. Exactly how much the livestock farming sector produces varies depending on which study you look at. The most conservative estimate is from the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United…

  • Pumpkin and the Dog’s Bollocks

    Suppose there’s a planet called Dog’s Bollocks and the aliens on Dog’s Bollocks have been using something called pumpkin for all their energy needs. But pumpkin has several problems. One: it’s running out. There’s a limited supply of it and eventually there’ll be none left. Two: it produces pollution which when inhaled can cause asthma in young aliens and reduces…

  • $5 million up for grabs!

    I thought I’d share this. It appeared in my Twitter feed yesterday and even if you have no intention of participating there are some interesting questions there. How are we to solve the problems of today? Humans are good at solving problems but so far we’ve failed to address the problem of climate change despite…

  • Greenhouse gases: not just a bunch of hot air

    I saw this last week on the Australian Sydney Morning Herald site and it’s good and needs to be shared. It explains the greenhouse effect and how we can tell it’s us making the planet warmer in less than 4 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd0cl10oaF0  

  • Frozen

    Frozen

    We had our first frost last week and there’s another heavy frost this morning. I went outside to take some photographs. It’s very pretty. I used to miss frosty mornings like this when we lived in Auckland. Here are my cyclamen surrounded by frozen leaves. Can you see the pink flowers? Despite the frost in…

  • Old people don’t care about climate change

    I saw this video last night on Grist – Old people don’t care about climate change – and it was funny yet there’s some truth to it. Unfortunately I can’t post it to my blog so you’ll have to click through to Grist and watch it there instead. I really like Grist.org. They have an interesting assortment…

  • Scientists paying for advertisements to get message across

    Australian scientists have paid for a full page advertisement in a Queensland newspaper – The Courier Mail – because they felt the newspaper was not covering the coral bleaching of The Great Barrier Reef adequately. Coral biologist, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, is quoted in the Guardian today saying, One of the reasons we placed the ad in the Courier…