I wasted an hour of my life watching the Earthshot awards last night.
At least one prize should have been a case for venture capital, not charity.
Another was a foodbank. Come on! Important, yes, but not for this reason.
A third gave cover for Prince Charles to be paid to plant trees on royal estates.
The opportunity to give a prize to a project purifying water was passed over - when clean water is one of the biggest issues that we face.
A fourth was clearly a case where international aid should have been available.
Was any of this groundbreaking stuff? No.
Was it royal greenwash? Yes.
And where was the economics prize that might have gone to someone suggesting we might just need to change the way we manage resources if we are to survive? There wasn't one, because the whole theme was that we definitely didn't want to upset the status quo.
What a waste of time.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Hi Richard
It’s funny (or not) how the BBC news last week managed to get the Queen, Charles and William into their news slots regarding green issues following a visit by Chris Packham and many others to Buckingham Palace the previous Friday asking them to get their house in order and set an example.
https://archive.fo/S2yME
A link
I have to say that I was very disappointed with three of the awards.
To me the foodbank in Milan looked very similar to foodbanks elsewhere, maybe a bit more directed but hard to see how how £1,000,000 will get it established in other cities.
The hydrogen producer seemed to be a good business opportunity for someone, not a charity opportunity. Although I’m not sure how they can make it safe to produce hydrogen outside an industrial environment. I’ve worked on small water treatment plants that produced hydrogen as a by-product and meeting the flammability safety levels was a major challenge.
Costa Rica seem to have done well with their re-forestation but, unless other countries follow their lead and pay the locals to look after trees, I can’t see it doing much good. I definitely can’t see Brazil under Bolsonaro taking any notice.
That leaves the coral reef and farm waste burner, which both seemed worthy.
To paraphrase Meatloaf ‘two out of five, ain’t good’.
Agreed
I watched it too. It gave me some hope that we can sort all this mess out. I have to believe we can take action and that those with the power to lead on this, are going to do so. I expect that the Royal family, being paid phenomenal sums that they are, would stand up and say something about how our current course has to change. May be it was make believe but I think sometimes you need that to think there is something you can change. The reality is that we all can change but for a few resisting change because it damages their commercial model and they are unable to consider the investment necessary to change their model to one which does not destroy the earth. I am grateful that this was prime time BBC and that a lot of people confronted the issue and were given the hope that it is possible to avert this destruction with enough will.
Don’t underestimate the radical nature of the Costa Rica example. They hypothecate a fossil fuel tax for performance-based contracts for forest management. That needs to happen all around the globe.
Yes there was a lot wrong with it but the fact remains that it was a one hour hearts and minds advert for the need to act urgently to protect and restore the planet. That has to be a good thing.
Climate change is actually global warming.
I watched a really good documentary on Everest on Amazon recently about the Sherpas cleaning up the mountain.
Everest is melting. It’s getting more unstable and dangerous as are the other great peaks such as K2.
The biggest threat to us is water that used to be ice. There’s going to be higher seas and more rain and perhaps more pollution of clean running water in our waters system as a result.
My evidence?
Every time we build a new housing scheme, the more the site has to have on site attenuation tanks to absorb the rain fall from the guttering system. The rain water is essentially stored on site in an underground tank with an overflow system that releases the rain water slowly into the existing drainage system so that it can cope; our paved areas have to have porous paving to let the water through to the attenuation tanks below.
Currently in the town where I work, we are looking at 1/100 year flooding events + 30% as an indicator working with flood mitigation. Not long ago it 1/100 +5%, then 10%, then 15%. Will it stop at 30%?
My rural town has had FIVE 1/100 flooding events since 2002! The last one was in November 2019. And it was scary. It was so fast and caused millions of pounds of damage.
The biggest problem we are facing is water. Water helped to create us; because of our ignorance and lack of imagination, it may well be the thing that extinguishes us as well. And if not that, then certainly life as we know it.
In the future, we’ll all need to know how to swim and how to handle a boat. I kid you not.
I agree with you. We lived in York between 2000 and 2010, and had 4 1/ 100 year events in that ten years. One year there was only one main road open out of the city.
Since then there have been at least 3 more that I know of, yet there always seem to be new flood management schemes on the go.
The whole of Holderness, between York and the North Sea, around Hull, is below sea level. It’s very nice to see the dancing when they have the Humber barrier festival, but it’s much more serious than that. The barrier is to stop the Humber flooding the land around the River Hull, the same as the Foss Barrier in York is to stop the River Ouse and the Foss from meeting at high flood and flooding the area.
The photos always look very impressive, but not if you live there.
PSR it is true that water management is key to managing the impact of climate change. It has benefits as well as costs. Managing water for hydro electric and tidal power is one, rewetting our uplands and increasing carbon capture through peat formation is another. Getting back to wild flood plains in the lowlands is another. Local authorities could help by reducing the extent of hardtop gardens in built up areas. Fantastic biodiversity improvement prospects from most of these.
The royals could stop green washing and offer Sandringham for rewilding and reintroduction of White-tailed Eagles since nearby Ken Hill has bottled it.
I also empathise with the views of jenw but Holderness is a long way from being completely below sea level. It rises to 35m and less than 25% is at sea level.
Partly – Attenuation systems for new build (separated storm and foul sewerage) have been in play since the 1980s, but even then the 1/100 year storm return event was being questioned – Trying to explain to a town which had barely changed in a over a century that they’d suffered three 1/100 year events in 6 months was to say the least, “difficult”.
However, what you are neglecting is a historic problem, particularly in England where slack gradients persist, that a river was until recently viewed as having infinite capacity, much as the ocean, or the climate for that matter, and look at how that worked out.
Converting flood plains to productive land or housing merely required straightening a section of river or dredging, the river would cope, it was infinite…
Understanding rivers as finite was a slow process, computer modelling greatly assisted in identifying where a flood might arise, but also highlighted the folly of removing the natural attenuation zones which pre-existed, flood plains, bogland, etc., etc.. Add increased rainfall and you need greater attenuation.
An example of an area I came to know well which suffered periodic flooding – Having spent millions over decades trying to solve the downstream effect, the eurocent finally dropped – They installed upstream restrictions which would flood a large area of rough grazing, compensated the farmer to remove fences allowing livestock to move away and keep the area clear of bales, pollutants, etc. which might float downstream, not a single single flooding event since.
Flooding will occur, where it occurs is the only question, your attenuation tanks serve not only your locale but everyone downstream of you. Now if that could only be scaled up…