The North Pole Is Now a Lake

You thought it was hot on the Underground this summer? The North Pole is now a lake...

"If you think these images from the North Pole look more like a lake than the snow-covered expanse you'd expect, that because it is is--the North Pole has melted."

http://google.com/producer/s/CBIw_vbcEw

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Bidder 70 - a lesson in civil disobedience

"In 2008, as George W. Bush tried to gift the energy and mining industries thousands of acres of pristine Utah wilderness via a widely disputed federal auction, college student Tim DeChristopher decided to monkey-wrench the process. Bidding $1.7 million, he won 22,000 acres with no intention to pay or drill. For this astonishing (and successful) act of civil disobedience he was sent to federal prison. Bidder 70 tells the story of this peaceful warrior whose patriotism and willingness to sacrifice have ignited the climate justice movement."

Read more: http://www.bidder70film.com/

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Students Build A 22-Foot-Tall Home For Local Bees

How's this for an impressive bee hotel? Bit more ambitious than our efforts back in January!

Read more: http://goo.gl/mag/9RPtfrw

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Can you be an environmentalist and be pro-nuclear?

This looks like an interesting new documentary on nuclear power and alternative energy:

"The atomic bomb and meltdowns like Fukushima have made nuclear power synonymous with global disaster. But what if we’ve got nuclear power wrong?

An audience favorite at the Sundance Film Festival, PANDORA’S PROMISE asks whether the one technology we fear most could save our planet from a climate catastrophe, while providing the energy needed to lift billions of people in the developing world out of poverty.

In his controversial new film, Robert Stone tells the intensely personal stories of environmentalists and energy experts who have undergone a radical conversion from being fiercely anti to strongly pro-nuclear energy, risking their careers and reputations in the process."

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/pandoraspromise/

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The wrath of Sandy

Like many people, I was struck this week by the images of hurricane Sandy tearing through America's East Coast. There was a grim fascination to the sight of such iconic and familiar locations battered by winds and flood. Of course, we've seen several of them face destruction before on the big screen, not least in films like The Day After Tomorrow, but to see such disaster strike in real life was shocking.

Of course, its not just Hollywood blockbusters that have threatened New York with destruction by flooding. Al Gore's seminal documentary An Inconvenient Truth also highlighted the Big Apple's vulnerability to extreme weather. Indeed, one of the iconic images of Gore's presentation - the flooding of Ground Zero - came to pass thanks to hurricane Sandy.

Of course, Gore's point was to shock Americans into taking climate change seriously, to make the perils of climate change tangible to US consumers. Many will be hoping that after this tragic storm, more will take the threat seriously and change their behaviours accordingly. I certainly do.

Practical steps to change the world

During this term, we have been collecting simple actions that each of us can do to make a difference to the world we live in. Ryan has kindly typed these up, so here we have a top 25 Everyday Tips for Ordinary Radicals.

1. Switch your energy provider to one that uses more renewables.
2. “Soap-up” before running shower.
3. Cut down on petrol ‘fill-ups’ (conserve fuel).
4. Allotment sharing, or collective sharing of your fruit and veg harvest.
5. Do some gardening for the elderly in exchange for growing fruit and veg in their garden.
6. Use E-Cloths.
7. Buy ecover washing up liquid and clothes washing liquid. You can even get refills from local natural food and health stores - so it saves plastic too.
8. Send less to landfill less - get a compost bin.
9. Turn off unnecessary lights at home.
10. Turn off plug sockets that aren't in use (eg. mobile phone chargers).
11. Don’t leave TV on standby – switch it off when you're not using it.
12. Eat meat sparingly (say, once or twice a week). Its very energy and water intensive to farm.
13. Go vegetarian, vegan or pescetarian.
14. Make your own cleaning products for bathroom / kitchen / glass / floors (lemons and limes have natural cleaning properties).
15. Buy organic food.
16. Recycle.
17. Walk or cycle to places rather than driving.
18. Don’t waste paper - use portable electronics rather than printing things out that you only need once.
19. Reuse old paper by tearing it into quarters and using it for shopping lists and fridge notes.
20. Research the ethics of your supermarket. Consider switching to Waitrose, M&S or Sainsburys.
21. Make your own clothes.
22. Get involved in clothes swaps.
23. Shop at charity shops - supports people in need and extends the life of discarded clothing. The ones that in affluent areas often have top fashion labels and barely worn items!
24. Convert car engines into being fuelled by recycled vegetable oil from restaurants (bit more effort but great idea!)
25. Don’t get a lawn mower – get a goat! You get a mowed lawn without the cost of fuel plus regular milk - what's not to like?! To be fair, this probably isn't too practical for most of us, but Urban Shepherding is a real thing. Perhaps a more practical response is to share a lawn mower with your neighbour - after all, how many mowers does one street need?

At the end of our last gathering, Victoria challenged us to commit to doing one of these by the next time we meet. We'll be looking forward to hearing what people get up to when we meet in November. 

Which one will you do?

Why worry about the state of the world?

“The story started in a garden. The Bible is not artistically symmetrical: it ends its story in a city. Since Eden there has been progress. Important things have happened. The object is not simply to restore Eden. The plan is more exciting than that... 

God loves his creation. He loves matter. Despite all the trouble it has given him, he has not thrown it away and started again, and he never will...

The plan is not to scrap the earth, but to unite it with heaven in a way so intimate that the only metaphor the Bible can think of is marriage - one-fleshness... There is a vital continuity between this world and the next which is one reason why being here is useful preparation for what is to come, and one reason why it matters what we do to the planet.”

From The Selfless Gene: Living with God and Darwin by Charles Foster, 2010 (Paperback, p186-7)

Extreme weather here to stay

Britain needs to plan now for more erratic, unpredictable and extreme weather patterns in the future says Lord Smith, Chairman of the Environment Agency.

"The weather extremes which we've seen this year - with widespread floods almost immediately following a long term drought - have brought the importance of resilience into sharp focus. Climate change science tells us that these are the sort of weather patterns we are going to have to get used to, so taking action today to prepare and adapt our homes, businesses and infrastructure is vital."

Read more: http://www.environmentmagazine.co.uk/latest-news/966-extreme-weather-shows-need-to-plan-for-climate-change

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Someone else's problem?

We did it with smoking, seat belts and drink drinking - its time we made excessive waste equally socially unacceptable...

"Trashed - No Place For Waste looks at the risks to the food chain and the environment through pollution of our air, land and sea by waste.

The film reveals surprising truths about very immediate and potent dangers to our health. It is a global conversation from Iceland to Indonesia between the film star Jeremy Irons and scientists, politicians and ordinary individuals whose health and livelihoods have been fundamentally affected by waste pollution.

Visually and emotionally the film is both horrific and beautiful: an interplay of human interest and political wake-up call. But it ends on a message of hope: showing how the risks to our survival can easily be averted through sustainable approaches that provide far more employment than the current 'waste industry."

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/trashed/

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The world I want to see

Last Wednesday, some of us went along to a panel discussion inspired by the forthcoming Rio+20 World Summit. The speakers - including Caroline Spelman MP, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Rt Rev Peter Price, Bishop of Bath and Wells - were asked to speak on the subject of 'the world I want to see' and then engaged in a lively Q&A session. Sara, Lizzie and Sam were tweeting avidly, so you can find more by looking up the #FaithinRio hashtag on Twitter.

First to speak was Caroline Spelman MP, who began with a review of what has and hasn't been achieved since the original Rio World Summit in 1992:

"[The original Rio Earth Summit]was a turning point in the way the world looks at the links between the environment, development, and the economy. There has been progress on poverty alleviation, with significant improvements in access to water, education and healthcare in all regions of the world. Many businesses have embraced sustainability issues, and renewable energy has grown substantially.

Yet substantial challenges remain. Approx 1.4 billion people around the world still live in extreme poverty and those who were the poorest 20 years ago are still the poorest now. Environmental degradation continues, and sustainability has not been integrated fully into economic decision making."

Spelman highlighted that in just three year's time there will be an extra one billion mouths to feed. By 2030, DEFRA forecasts that water, food and energy will all be stressed. Each of these are potential flashpoints for conflict as well as sources of suffering. We do not have the luxury of time; we need Rio+20 to hasten change that benefits the most disadvantaged. But growth should be about more than just raising GDP, she said; well being and quality of life should also be indicators of success. For these reasons, the minister pledged that the UK would to push for a meaning set of sustainable development goals (SDGs) to be agreed in Rio.

DEFRA have posted her whole speech on their website, so you can read what she said in full if you are interested.

Next up was Steve Waygood of Aviva who spoke on the need for better corporate social responsibility within the global business community. He said that consumer power was an important way for the masses to shape the behaviours of the multinationals, but since

"90% of the data on business responsibility is missing [from public scrutiny]"

holding businesses to account and making informed investments is hard. To solve this, Aviva are leading a broad coalition of businesses and other stakeholders to pushing for corporate accountability and sustainability. At Rio+20 they will be seeking agreement on a transparency framework to that will reveal the true state of an organisation's corporate sustainability. As Waygood himself put it: 

"Corporations should deploy their vast resources to improve lives, not just profit margins. Paying tax is just the start."

Third in the line up was Nanette, a lady working with CAFOD in the Philippines. She spoke about the importance of meaningful collaboration between communities, local government and local church to effect sustainable development, identifying that:

"ordinary people, anointed leaders and elected leaders need to take on responsibility and accountability."

She was especially keen to stress that sustainable growth must be socially just; Rio+20 must not be about developed countries making decisions about developing countries without their say or involvement. In the same way, she argued that while the Green Economy held great promise for the development of underdeveloped parts of the world, to deliver change that benefits local communities and not just shareholders, those green technologies should be in the hands of local communities, not the multinational corporations.

The presentations closed with a rousing statement from the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who spoke with great passion, challenging Christians to stand against poverty, the arms trade and the military industrial complex. He encouraged those present not to fritter away their potential but rather to spend their lives doing something that changes the world. After all:

"We can't just have a concern for poverty," he said, "we have to act to end it."

Watch the Bishop's speech in full:

Throughout the presentations and the Q&A that followed, we were reminded that the impact of climate change is not a future problem; for many in the developing world it is a real problem today. It was clear that amid financial meltdown in Europe, ongoing conflict in the Middle East and political scandals at home, keeping sustainable global development and the ambitions of Rio+20 high on the public agenda is going to be a struggle. Struggle we must however, for as Caroline Spelman identified in her closing statement, the charge we have is to leave the planet in a better condition that we received it.

Save the bees!

Friends of the Earth are asking people to sign their petition to save the bees.

Why?

Bee-cause...!

But seriously, read their petition to find out why the loss of bees is a major environmental issue.

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New study, old news?

A recent study has warned people to eat less meat to prevent climate disaster:

"Fertilisers used in growing feed crops for cattle produces most potent of the greenhouse gases causing climate change."

This is not really a new discovery - indeed, it was the subject of some discussion at our recent session on Sustainability. Some of our members have responded to this and other shady truths about modern industrial agriculture by giving up meat, or at least reducing their consumption.

What do you think?

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