2022 Climate and Financial challenges
Sitting in August 2022 and reading back through the 2021 update below written in August 2021, it feels a bit like Ground Hog day, apart from this year is worse. We have seen temperatures reach over 40 degrees in England, daily reports of wild fires, drought conditions and risks of flooding. It can make us feel helpless and scared. Add to that a war in Europe, spiralling fuel prices and cost of living feels totally out of control. We can't directly change any of these things alone but there are things we can do together which can make a change. How do we know this? When the [andemic caused lockdown in early 2020 global emissions dropped, why because we couldn't travel and we couldn't buy stuff. This was imposed upon us and had negative as well as positive effects on health and wellbeing, but there are things we can take from that experience to lower our environmental and financial costs. We will start to add some of these into out website as we travel through this year.
2021, Climate Change and Covid overview
The piece below was written in about 2013. How our planet has changed. The news reports the worst wild fires in parts of the world, while other communities are tackling the worst floods they have ever seen. The State of the Climate in 2020 report by Blunden.J et all, published in the Bulletin of the American Meterological Society in August 2021 found that surface temperatures across land and see in 2020 was one of the three highest ever recorded. Many countries recorded their highest temperatures ever including Europe and the third highest ever recorded temperature of 54.4 C on 16th August 2020 in Death Valley. There are many more highest temperatures, lowest sea ice figures in the report. CO2 levels continue to rise despite the pandemic which did result in a 6-7% reduction in CO2 levels from normal. Many of us feel helpless as to how to reduce our impact and support the climate especially as we are now living with a pandemic. We will try and look at the choices we have and what science says about how best we reduce our impact
Low impact living
Many people have jumped on the Climate Change band wagon and there is great fear that we are heading back to the stone age. Certainly, our weather is changing and our fossil fuels are running out so we need to do something. For some, sadly often in poorer parts of the world, their communities are not resilient enough to with stand our changing climate.
What we are trying to do is to minimise our contribution to Climate Change and oil depletion, whilst becoming more resilitent as a family, and community and continuing to try and live a life in the 21st century.
A challenge yes, and somethings we forgo. Much of what we own is new to us (second hand), but not the latest kit. We also try to renovate, or have renovated as much as we can. It is a fine line to walk and we often slip too much to one side or the other. Children have a huge influence, they very much buy in to what we are doing, and the Scottish education system is on side, however, the playground pressure for the latest electronic toy is huge and can be damaging. There therefore has to be some give and take.
What we are trying to do is to minimise our contribution to Climate Change and oil depletion, whilst becoming more resilitent as a family, and community and continuing to try and live a life in the 21st century.
A challenge yes, and somethings we forgo. Much of what we own is new to us (second hand), but not the latest kit. We also try to renovate, or have renovated as much as we can. It is a fine line to walk and we often slip too much to one side or the other. Children have a huge influence, they very much buy in to what we are doing, and the Scottish education system is on side, however, the playground pressure for the latest electronic toy is huge and can be damaging. There therefore has to be some give and take.
