Climate change is the biggest global challenge that we face. Sea levels will rise, flooding coastal and low-lying areas and making them uninhabitable. Extreme weather events will compound this chaos. Ecosystems will be wrecked: deserts will replace existing crops, forests will turn to grassland, species will become extinct. This is the consensus. This is what we're doing to our world for our grandchildren's grandchildren to inherit.
I've heard it suggested that if the UK were to convert all of it's cars to run on vegetable oil or bio-diesel, we'd have to plant the entire area of our agricultural land to growing crops like rape, linseed (flax) and hemp... but even then, that wouldn't provide enough for our needs.
Today I did some voluntary work for York Rotters, standing behind a stall at an event in Rowntree Park, promoting home-composting and recycling. The event was my first 'Pride', organised by the local Gay and Lesbian groups. Although I consider myself 'LBGT friendly', I've never been to a Pride event. It was a small gathering, probably just a hundred or so, but it was joyous and fun, and I met several of my friends. The Rotters stall was well received and we had lots of enquiries and questions about composting, and perhaps a couple of new volunteer Rotters.
The Beijing Olympics are less than a year away and the media spotlight is focussing on China, and I've been reading some shocking things about Human Rights abuses under Jiang Zemin's Communist Party Government. Some commentators suggest boycotting the Olympics as the abuses are incompatible with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Olympic Charter. However it may be that with the Olympics happening, and the World's media there, the situation might be improved.
In my late teens and early 20's I was a regular 'paying punter' at Glastonbury Festival. Then I discovered how I could get in for free! I joined the 'Green Litter Picker Crew' and helped keep the site clean and sort recyclables from rubbish, then I worked with Network Recycling specifically on the recyclables. Although I haven't been to Glasto for years, I've been a volunteer at greener festivals ever since. I've just come back from the Big Green Gathering which is held on an organic farm in the Mendip Hills near Cheddar Gorge. For nearly a decade I've been a composter at the BGG, recycling large volumes of catering waste from the cafes using waste wood, lopped hedging and twigs, cardboard and straw, layered with tens of kilos of fruit and veg peelings and the unsold cooked food which can't be kept beyond the day it's made as there's rarely any refrigeration on site.
