Climate change

There have been a number of changes to the MPs in the UK Parliament featured in the media over quite a large part of 2023.  Some of these have already taken place, but the majority are still in the offing.  I want to write here about one that has affected me more than most.  Given the subjects I have covered in blogs here over the last few years, it perhaps won’t come as a surprise that it is the announcement by Caroline Lucas that she will not stand again at the next election.  However, my reasons for this are perhaps not the ones that you might expect.

For some years, I’ve wondered if the ecological movement would benefit from some sort of “anthem”. Part of the potential value of this would be something that used music to unite, inspire and galvanise people. That sense has only increased during protests such as the school strike movement. COP26 has inspired me to re-visit this and I’ve written the following. I have tried setting it to music, but I’m not sure that I’m going to get to a point I’ll be happy enough with that to share it.

For some weeks I have been wanting to write about a very specific idea. During the Olympics and Paralympics, I was struck over and over again by the discipline needed for those involved to maintain their training regimes and compete at these delayed games, all the more so when there have been occasions in the few months prior to them happening when it was uncertain whether they would go ahead. That was at the same time as having mixed feelings at the resources given over in various ways to these events based on competing with others in order to run faster, jump higher and so on.

I’ve not managed to write many pieces over the last few months, but that hasn’t stopped me thinking about various things I want to say! I have started working on pieces on three publications of the last few months. These are the report on the Economics of Biodiversity by Partha Dasgupta, Values by Mark Carney and Bill Gates’ How to Survive a Climate Disaster.

Three weeks ago I listened to an item on the radio which has stayed with me. It was on a news broadcast, the Today programme on Radio 4. One of the presenters interviewed a marine researcher, Michelle Forney, from the University of Cornell Centre for Conservation Acoustics. She talked about making underwater recordings of whales near Juno in the south-east part of Alaska.