Scorched earth in Sicily (Oct20)
What a beautiful time of year to come to this island perched on Italy’s toe. We were lucky to have clear blue skies and the trees were turning gold. One of the most striking things about the island is the number of wind turbines on nearly every horizon. I rather like them both visually and […]
Wilding week 2 (Jul20)
The diggers are in their element The water meadow is now looking pretty earthy with very little water at all. The old mill pond has been drained to reveal a shallow muddy bottom – it turns out that it was pretty full of silt. If we’d left it for a few more years, it would […]
Wilding has started… (Jul20)
Yesterday, the diggers and dumpers arrived, along with the wonderful Andrew George and his fellow wilder, Lesley Malpas (Operation Future Hope). When I’ve mentioned wilding people imagine it means animals like badgers and beavers. Actually, the focus will be on bees, butterflies and birds, along with the wild flowers, hedgerows and trees that will attract […]
ANIMALS TURN HUMAN…(May20)
A role reversal. Imagine humans behaved like animals and vice versa. What would we think about our homes being destroyed, our oceans poisoned and our forests being hacked? This video does the imagining for us. It shows human’s petrified on a shrinking ice block, whilst polar bears sit in offices and wheel trolleys through over-stocked […]
How Covid-19 is Changing the world (Apr20)
The Covid Crisis is sowing the seeds of division – young vs old, local vs incomers, poor vs rich etc. People are worried that we’ll never get ‘back to normal’ whilst others are wondering if that’s actually desirable. And, there’s also concern that the impacts of crashing the economy may even outweigh the terrible toll of the virus. However, there are positive initiatives too. I thought it would be interesting to look at some examples of what different organisations are thinking and doing…..
COVID 19 MAY BE THE BOILING FROG WE NEED (MAR20)
I remember referring to the boiling frogs analogy in speeches about 20 years ago. Some of you may remember that it was used by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth to help us understand why the world is not doing enough to avert calamitous climate change. If you put a frog into a pan of […]
Simply switching from plastics to other materials could actually increase carbon emissions. (Mar20)
This is the conclusion of a new report from the Green Alliance: Fixing the System – Why the circular economy for all materials is the only way to solve the plastic problem. One of the rather intriguing insights in this report is that plastics were invented to prevent the extinction of elephants! How so? At […]
Turning the Big Yellow green
I’ve just been appointed a board member of FTSE 250 company The Big Yellow Self Storage! I’ll be chairing the new Board Sustainability Committee and am looking forward to seeing how I can help turn The Big Yellow green… In 2007 I gave the key note speech at the Self Storage Association annual meeting. Had […]
Getting beds (Sep19)
I received an email last week giving me some shocking information about the number of mattresses that are discarded in the UK every year.
SMART METERS ARE SMART (Sep19)
My son, Monty, has worked out how we can save over £2,000 per annum on our energy bills – and smart meters are a key factor in the savings. Even more important than that smart meters will play a key role in a shift towards a renewable energy powered UK.. The critical factor in this […]
