The big news at Carsington, bigger than shags, peregrines or any bird for that matter, and in some ways quite literally big, is that Carsington Wind Energy has won its appeal against Derbyshire Dales District Council's decision not to allow the wind farm to be built.
Now the project seems destined to go ahead it is perhaps times for those of us associated with the site to welcome the new development. Carsington is so brilliant because it provides such a wealth of biodiversity for Derbyshire (plus a wide range of recreational pursuits for Joe Public), and now the opportunity arises to contribute toward a sustainable future for the region. Perhaps that is the view chosen by the RSPB, the organisation has dropped its objection to the plans.
The impact of wildlife and rights of way are still concerning, and even the most loyal windfarm advocate would have to confess they are something of a blot on the landscape - turbines higher than Big Ben is the oft quoted comparison at Carsington. So are they desirable? No, no at all. Will planting them in Carsington Pastures mean we're taking one for the team in the name of sustainable development and action against climate change? Yes, and what a tremendous thing to do.
Let's face it, better us having the wind farm than Lewis.
A high worldwide demand for wind turbines may delay the development until 2010. Try to stave off the pessimism during the wait, all right folks?
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Saturday, 27 September 2008
Friday, 11 January 2008
Is Birding Bad for the Environment?
Here's an interesting article from The Times...
A lungful of carbon delusion
How are we to deal with climate change? If you had asked that question 10 years ago the answer would have been simple: plant lots of trees.
If, however, you had asked that same question four years ago you would have been told that nuclear energy and wind farms were the solution. More recently still you might have got yet a third set of answers: biofuels, carbon capture and trading.
...continued
Give it a chance as it goes on to explain the fashionable five minute answers to climate change, carbon sequestration, nuclear energy, etc, for the fallacies they are. It also has harsh words for conservation groups, indeed it mentions the RSPB by name, and I'm vexed because its criticisms are entirely valid. The society does encourage car travel, its magazine is dependably full of advertisements for long-haul birdwatching holidays, while inside in the news pages the dangers of climate change could form an omnipresent headline.
Closer to home I think about all the birdwatchers I know. Most weekends they will be travelling by car, often to sites flung across all regions of the UK, and I begin to wonder, is birdwatching as an activity really such good news for wildlife conservation? We commonly use private transport far more than people who could scarcely give a damn about wildlife, the of which irony sticks out like a saw thumb, and a particularly unwelcome saw thumb at that.
It is abundantly clear to most of us now that carbon emissions influenced climate change has to be the greatest concern for all conservationists. Saving those coastal lagoons today may mean very little when the sea has claimed them in 50 years time, rainforests in South America are already suffering severe drought as weather patterns change, we know the list of conservation projects imperilled by climate change has the potential to be endless. This is why in certain quarters expeditions like The Biggest Twitch can receive such unquiet derision. During 2008 a former RSPB warden plus partner shall fly all over the globe, carbon footprint and all, hoping to break the record for number of species seen in a calendar year, and they do this in the name raising 'awareness' for conservation issues (that bang you just heard was your jaw dropping on your desk).
Clearly we're not all quite as deluded as the Biggest Twitchers, and yet, so many of us will think nothing of regularly driving 50 miles to see some admittedly charming birdlife. With a million RSPB members, maybe 3 million more people birdwatching every year, this all adds up. Fearing that they are a growing influence on carbon emissions and climate change George Monbiot uses the term 'love miles' to describe the flights and car journeys we undertake to see friends and relatives . In a similar capacity, the phrase ethical birdwatchers may need to begin thinking about is 'bird miles'.
Surely this makes it time to reined in our bird miles, and enjoy our local birds for the beautiful natural heritage they are. What is the other option? To continue down the path we're on, encouraging mass transit to top bird sites, ultimately beckoning closer potential oblivion for simply countless numbers of species in the UK and around the world.
'Bird miles' may be a drop in the ocean, infinitesimally insignificant in the face of India's new model car or China's new model coal-fired power stations. But where do we make a stand? There could be no more idea place to begin that with our choice of leisure, should we find it pollutes beyond reason, even if that includes birding. This does not mean the end birding, we all still have kitchen windows.
This month the RSPB heavily promotes the Big Garden Birdwatch, a great exercise indeed. It campaigns to save the albatross, the Sumatran rainforest, the Aquatic Warbler in Poland and fights the expansion of Lydd airport.
Is it time for the RSPB to begin encouraging away from our cars, to make more of our local areas, dare I say, limit our travel?
I can hardly imagine a message members would want to hear less. What to do folks?
Closer to home I think about all the birdwatchers I know. Most weekends they will be travelling by car, often to sites flung across all regions of the UK, and I begin to wonder, is birdwatching as an activity really such good news for wildlife conservation? We commonly use private transport far more than people who could scarcely give a damn about wildlife, the of which irony sticks out like a saw thumb, and a particularly unwelcome saw thumb at that.
It is abundantly clear to most of us now that carbon emissions influenced climate change has to be the greatest concern for all conservationists. Saving those coastal lagoons today may mean very little when the sea has claimed them in 50 years time, rainforests in South America are already suffering severe drought as weather patterns change, we know the list of conservation projects imperilled by climate change has the potential to be endless. This is why in certain quarters expeditions like The Biggest Twitch can receive such unquiet derision. During 2008 a former RSPB warden plus partner shall fly all over the globe, carbon footprint and all, hoping to break the record for number of species seen in a calendar year, and they do this in the name raising 'awareness' for conservation issues (that bang you just heard was your jaw dropping on your desk).
Clearly we're not all quite as deluded as the Biggest Twitchers, and yet, so many of us will think nothing of regularly driving 50 miles to see some admittedly charming birdlife. With a million RSPB members, maybe 3 million more people birdwatching every year, this all adds up. Fearing that they are a growing influence on carbon emissions and climate change George Monbiot uses the term 'love miles' to describe the flights and car journeys we undertake to see friends and relatives . In a similar capacity, the phrase ethical birdwatchers may need to begin thinking about is 'bird miles'.
Surely this makes it time to reined in our bird miles, and enjoy our local birds for the beautiful natural heritage they are. What is the other option? To continue down the path we're on, encouraging mass transit to top bird sites, ultimately beckoning closer potential oblivion for simply countless numbers of species in the UK and around the world.
'Bird miles' may be a drop in the ocean, infinitesimally insignificant in the face of India's new model car or China's new model coal-fired power stations. But where do we make a stand? There could be no more idea place to begin that with our choice of leisure, should we find it pollutes beyond reason, even if that includes birding. This does not mean the end birding, we all still have kitchen windows.
This month the RSPB heavily promotes the Big Garden Birdwatch, a great exercise indeed. It campaigns to save the albatross, the Sumatran rainforest, the Aquatic Warbler in Poland and fights the expansion of Lydd airport.
Is it time for the RSPB to begin encouraging away from our cars, to make more of our local areas, dare I say, limit our travel?
I can hardly imagine a message members would want to hear less. What to do folks?
Tuesday, 3 July 2007
Bird Miles
So let's face facts, very often birding expeditions will involve an extensive amount of car travel. Even in a nation as small as ours, public transport just can't cover the job. The problem is, whether you are aware of your carbon footprint or not, the more you drive to see wildlife, the more you imperil it through your own personal contribution to Global Warming. I don't know about anybody else, but that came as quite a frightful notion for me.
It has been with that thought in mind, that I've begun to think about 'bird miles', the distance we're willing to drive in pursuit of our hobby and that perhaps we should do our bit to save the planet and restrict ourselves - after all, for most birders it counts as purely a recreational habit.
Now any limit can only be arbitrary, but it occurred to me, that a 200-mile-a-month limit wouldn't be a bad commitment for most birders to make, it ought to allow one or two decent journeys to big nationally important sites (or to find must-see a rarity), or several more closer to home. Not only could that limit decrease the carbon released by hobbying birders, it may very well prove to be a renaissance for local sites if we paid more attention to them.
I have emailed the RSPB's magazine about this, and the editor said that although the next issue is full, the one after that may very well include something on the topic.
I proposed to him a members' commitment, if you could just imagine a million members cutting even just a third off their 'bird miles', then maybe you can understand why I'm enthusiastic about the idea. We could be talking millions of miles worth of petrol not burnt, a worthy contribution to the enormous overall challenge our societies face and a top example for us to set.
In a couple of other online birding forums I broached the subject, and was met with a generally indifferent reception, at other times it was blatant unpologetic opposition - 'it's my right to drive however much I want' etc...
Such reactions I simply do not understand, and they leave me quite dispirited. These are folks supposedly interested in the plight of our wildlife and the environment, and yet they found that moderating their car use was unthinkable, so what hope for the regular punter cutting his emissions?
Some of them cover well over 100,000 miles a year on bird trips!
Anyway, I remain hopeful of a more positive reflection from the RSPB.
ETA: I decided to try out some rough figures. If the RSPB has a million members, let's say that each of them individually covers 100 miles on birding trips per year. Less than 10 miles per month, which might even out it we consider shared journeys.
Now extrapolating from the fact that the average car travels 12,000 miles per year emitting 4.3 tonnes of CO2, that 100 million miles jointly covered by RSPB members equates to the average carbon emissions of 3,500 households (at 10.3 tonnes each per year).
Even if my figures are off the mark, it's clear to see there is a significant issue here that the RSPB really should think about. I don't know the answer, perhaps a parking charge for vehicles visiting reserves could fund an RSPB lobby for extra bus routes, or maybe the solution is the simple one; we all drive less.
It has been with that thought in mind, that I've begun to think about 'bird miles', the distance we're willing to drive in pursuit of our hobby and that perhaps we should do our bit to save the planet and restrict ourselves - after all, for most birders it counts as purely a recreational habit.
Now any limit can only be arbitrary, but it occurred to me, that a 200-mile-a-month limit wouldn't be a bad commitment for most birders to make, it ought to allow one or two decent journeys to big nationally important sites (or to find must-see a rarity), or several more closer to home. Not only could that limit decrease the carbon released by hobbying birders, it may very well prove to be a renaissance for local sites if we paid more attention to them.
I have emailed the RSPB's magazine about this, and the editor said that although the next issue is full, the one after that may very well include something on the topic.
I proposed to him a members' commitment, if you could just imagine a million members cutting even just a third off their 'bird miles', then maybe you can understand why I'm enthusiastic about the idea. We could be talking millions of miles worth of petrol not burnt, a worthy contribution to the enormous overall challenge our societies face and a top example for us to set.
In a couple of other online birding forums I broached the subject, and was met with a generally indifferent reception, at other times it was blatant unpologetic opposition - 'it's my right to drive however much I want' etc...
Such reactions I simply do not understand, and they leave me quite dispirited. These are folks supposedly interested in the plight of our wildlife and the environment, and yet they found that moderating their car use was unthinkable, so what hope for the regular punter cutting his emissions?
Some of them cover well over 100,000 miles a year on bird trips!
Anyway, I remain hopeful of a more positive reflection from the RSPB.
ETA: I decided to try out some rough figures. If the RSPB has a million members, let's say that each of them individually covers 100 miles on birding trips per year. Less than 10 miles per month, which might even out it we consider shared journeys.
Now extrapolating from the fact that the average car travels 12,000 miles per year emitting 4.3 tonnes of CO2, that 100 million miles jointly covered by RSPB members equates to the average carbon emissions of 3,500 households (at 10.3 tonnes each per year).
Even if my figures are off the mark, it's clear to see there is a significant issue here that the RSPB really should think about. I don't know the answer, perhaps a parking charge for vehicles visiting reserves could fund an RSPB lobby for extra bus routes, or maybe the solution is the simple one; we all drive less.
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