In the News
CLIMATE CHANGE AND WILDLIFE STATEMENT
The Chairperson and other members of the Grimsby & Cleethorpes Group Committee of the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust wish to underline that the following articles by retiring Secretary Ray Hume are his personal opinion and not necessarily the view of the Trust or of the remainder of the Committee.
Far from not responding to Ray’s Part 1 of Getting it into Perspective: a personal view, several members of the Committee did just that soon after publication and the matter was discussed at our committee meetings on 2nd October and 24th November 2008.
We, the Committee do believe the world faces tremendous problems with GLOBAL WARMING and CLIMATE CHANGE but we do not agree our efforts to protect wildlife in this country or the world are of little consequence. We believe we need to do both lobbying government and protecting wildlife. It is up to all of us as individuals to try and reduce our 'CARBON FOOTPRINT'— thinking about our use of aeroplanes, our cars, how we heat our homes and whether we recycle all we can, etc., etc.
The L.W.T., along with other Wildlife trusts, has been working to try to get a CLIMATE CHANGE ACT into LAW since at least 1999. An interim policy statement on behalf of the Wildlife Trusts in November 2005 stated:
"We need to incorporate climate change response into all aspects of our day–to-day work; creating robust large areas to allow wildlife to respond to climate change, facing the challenges of reducing carbon emissions in today’s society to reduce future impacts, and working with people to change individual behaviour. Ambitious maybe, but the wildlife Trusts are well up to the task, and nothing less will do."
There is Climate Change and Wildlife Impacts with several references on the Wildlife Trusts’ website, www.wildlifetrusts.org/?section=climate change*:
Our own Chief Executive, Paul Learoyd, along with other Wildlife Trust directors and managers met with Hilary Benn (Secretary of State for Environment) soon after the Act became law. The Act is a great achievement and very much the result of sustained lobbying by environmental nongovernmental organisations including the Wildlife Trusts. This included attending the Stop Climate Chaos rally in 2006. The Climate Change Bill became law on 26th November 2008. The document can be viewed on www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2008 **
The key provisions of the Act can be seen at:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/
as either the 103 page document or the key provisions of the Act
Paul Learoyd also says, "There is a huge amount of working being undertaken by the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust to adapt, dealing with the consequences for wildlife. It is often hard to connect work at a very local level with a global issue but I for one feel it is essential."
Furthermore, from time to time articles are published in both the L.W.T. Lapwings and also in Natural World, the Wildlife Trust’s magazine. The latest from the L.W.T., Climate Change and Wildlife by Dr. Pam Berry, followed by Climate Change and Lincolnshire Birds by Dr. Ted Smith, our President, appeared in the Winter 2007/08 edition of Lapwings.
Jennie Redpath, on behalf of the rest of the Grimsby & Cleethorpes and Area Committee.
P.S. If you are really keen to debate climate change and its effects on wildlife, come and listen to and ask questions of Anne Goodall on November 9th at Grimsby Town Hall at 7.30 p.m.
Editor's notes:
* This link is a bit 'iffy.' After some tinkering around, I tried going via the home page:
http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/index.php?section=home
This, too, protests, but does eventually work, and the site can be navigated from there.
** This link does not work (gets an http 403 error. ) After some investigation, I have managed to find this link:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2008/pdf/ukpga_20080027_en.pdf
I hope it's the one you want?
Getting it into perspective: a personal view (part 1)
All the efforts of the wildlife conservation bodies worldwide are in vain unless something can be done on a global scale to combat the terrifying changes that are happening. It is sickening to contemplate where these changes are taking us. Virtually the entire human community is now locked into a system that is guaranteed to bring catastrophe.
That system is called capitalism. It is based on the assumption that growth can continue indefinitely. With growth comes "development". Strange, isn't it, how such a positive-sounding word has come to mean its complete opposite: the capitalist's "development" is, with very few exceptions, the conservationist's "destruction".
That so-called "development" has wrought such havoc upon wildlife habitats and destroyed countless thousands of square miles of wilderness worldwide is bad enough; but there are worse worries than this. Global heating is now accelerating at a very scary rate and the signs are there for all to see. Within a very few years we can expect to see a world that would have been unimaginable to our grandparents. Amazingly, even otherwise intelligent and well-informed people seem incapable of grasping just how bad the situation is. We’re not talking simply about having a bit more nice warm summer weather, with swallows arriving a few days earlier than they used to. The potential is there for the most grievous consequences – not just for wildlife but for all of us as well.
Any child of five can tell you it doesn’t make sense to squander all the money in the bank, without making sure some more is coming in soon; yet that’s exactly what we’re doing with our precious deposits of oil and gas. A child of three could probably tell you it’s a bad idea to pollute the air with our effluent; yet that’s precisely what we continue to do and - with China and India now big players in the growth game – at an ever faster rate. Glaciers worldwide are melting, threatening the water supply of millions; extreme weather events are commonplace; vital resources – especially energy resources – are starting to fail us as we insist on continuing to plunder them.
OK, so we're agreed the situation is bad. What on earth can we do? Many eminent scientists think we have already left it too late and that nothing can now prevent a slide into the abyss: climate chaos and resource scarcity will bring unthinkable hardship – starvation, pestilence and quite probably war on a scale we can scarcely dare to visualize.
And that, of course, is our fundamental problem. Living creatures are born with extraordinary optimism and although we see death all around us, we can't quite get it into our heads that it's going to happen to us as well. We don't want to think of horrible things so we just pretend they're not going to happen and carry on with business-as-usual.
Personally, I am with those who fear it's already too late and that, as history clearly shows, all civilizations crumble sooner or later. Fortunately not everyone is quite the pessimist I am. So, for those of you out there who think there might still be some hope, why not log on to:
4C – Concerned Citizens about Climate Change
and sign the petition.* And why not write to anyone and everyone – particularly politicians - about it. Above all, if we have a cat in hell's chance of saving ourselves, we need to get everyone realizing the enormity of the problem. So keep talking about it. Forget Eastenders, forget football, forget Christmas and all the other petty preoccupations of our trivial lives. Get Real. Otherwise the party's over.
Ray Hume
Hear! Hear!! Very well said! - Ed. (* I have!)
Getting it into Perspective: a personal view (part 2)In last summer’s newsletter of the LincolnshireWildlife Trust local group, I wrote an article with the above title. It was basically about the threats to the world posed by climate change and I was making the point that all our efforts to protect wildlife in this country (or anywhere else in the world) are of little consequence if we cannot deal effectively with runaway climate change. I’m sorry to say that only one person responded to that article (Sue Mitchell who manages our website). This has led me to believe that either people don’t believe there’s a problem, or they simply aren’t interested in doing anything about it. I know many will think that all the talk of global warming is alarmist – especially following such a (relatively) cold winter. If they lived in Australia or Alaska they might think differently! In any case, the reasons for the recent weather are understood by those who study these things*, and a couple of slightly cooler winters do not fly in the face of overall rising temperatures worldwide. Professional scientists in the field of climate change are all but unanimous: it’s happening; it’s happening much faster than anyone thought; it’s our fault; and it will almost certainly bring catastrophe within just a very few decades unless we dramatically alter the way we live right now. Despite this, some people strongly resist any notion of human-induced global heating. No doubt there were people aboard the Titanic still claiming it was unsinkable minutes before it disappeared forever beneath the waves. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary there seem to be many who still reject Darwinian evolution in favour of the biblical account of our origins. There is no shortage of irrational people in the world and irrational people will do everything in their power to cling to their cherished beliefs no matter how compelling the evidence may be against them. A passionate enthusiast for nature for the best part of sixty years, I was an active member of the Worcestershire Wildlife Trust before moving to Grimsby in 1997, where I have been regularly involved with the R.S.P.B. group and, these past three years, serving as secretary on the committee of the local group of the L.W.T. But now I am stepping down, and I will probably not even renew my subscription to either the L.W.T. or the R.S.P.B. The reason is that it seems very clear to me from the numerous articles I have read on the subject that runaway climate change is imminent unless there is an immediate and massive reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide. Unless and until this happens I’m afraid I have lost the faith. It seems utterly pointless to go to the considerable trouble and expense that we volunteers do, for a cause which is so hopeless. In the face of such insurmountable odds all the efforts of the nature conservation movement are akin to someone doing a spot of decorating or D-I-Y in a house that’s on fire! As if climate change itself weren’t bad enough, there are of course many other continuing threats to nature. The landscape of England is now a far cry from the countryside of my youth in the 1950s. In spring, every hedgerow used to bustle with birds and there was an abundance of insect life wherever you went. Spotted flycatchers and tree sparrows nested regularly in our suburban garden and cuckoos were audible literally all day long during May. There is still wildlife about but it’s on a much-reduced and impoverished scale; and it’s not just England that’s changed beyond recognition – it’s everywhere. We all know it. Time and time again we see the natural world being pillaged for a few quick bucks. It’s sickening and utterly disheartening and as long as there is such a weight of human population and an economic system whose mantra is growth – and as long as there are still places left to destroy! – it will go on. And so, very sadly and very reluctantly, I am stepping down. I am lucky: I have music and other interests to soothe the pain. But the truth is nothing can bring relief to a troubled soul the way that wilderness and wildlife can; and wilderness and wildlife are all but gone. I would urge everyone who reads this to see the film, released in March this year, called “The Age of Stupid”. You could also look at the website (which is a spin-off from the film) entitled "notstupid.org." It says it all so much better than I can. What’s more, it even offers a glimmer of hope! *2007-2009 has been predicted as a short-term cooler period by many climate models. It’s attributed to the effects of the weather phenomenon known as La Niña. from Ray Hume |
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9 APRIL 2008