Browsing: Climate Change

Image: mrhayata - Flickr

I know I’m a little premature with this one, but with the festive season over yet winter still upon us, my mind is turning to holidays. You must have noticed the travel agents’ New Year advertising campaigns trying to tempt us all with the promise of the exotic, and year on year increasing numbers of Brits are taking the pundits up on their offers, and fleeing the country searching for weather, activities and the holiday atmosphere that you just don’t get in the UK.

I’m feeling like one of the lucky ones at the moment. Rather than still having several months to wait, I shall be jetting off to foreign lands sooner than most – in only a few weeks time I shall be exploring all that India has to offer. It’s a trip I’ve been looking forward to for a while now, and although I’m sure the country has many challenges to offer, I don’t think India will fail to disappoint in terms of beauty and wonder, cultural diversity and tasty food.

In the face of such excitement in anticipation of a holiday, there is nevertheless a big issue looming… It’s all very well looking on at SkiDubai’s desert snow dome in judgement when I myself am indulging in totally unnecessary long-haul flying. Ok, so one trip to India versus 3 football-pitches of snow frozen exclusively for Dubai’s affluent skiers may not be an entirely equal comparison, but where exactly do you set your boundaries for what is, and what isn’t acceptable as a luxurious indulgence. It is possible to indulge in chocolate ethically with brands such as Green & Black’s and Divine, but is there such a thing as ethical long-haul flying? Offsetting the carbon emissions of your flight is a good place to start when journeying abroad (you can offset the carbon emissions of your shopping here at EthicalSuperstore too) but I’m not convinced that even that can entirely assuage the negative impact of aeroplane travel.

Read the rest of Ethical Adventuring and Green Getaways »

I’ve been avoiding the news of late. I realised I needed to take a serious time out from it last week when I caught myself day dreaming of launching a cheap and nourishing breakfast cereal which I’d call ‘Credit Crunch’.

Last night though, I thought I’d risk a glimpse – perhaps the sacking of Luiz Filipe Scolari by Chelsea (and let’s not forget Portsmouth’s dismissal of Tony Adams too) might provide a little colour in the monochrome news diet.

I have to say I was flabbergasted, not by (or perhaps that should be not only by) Scolari’s reported pay out, but by a report from Northern Ireland.  Predictably it involved two words, each starting with C – but this time they represented a different global threat – Climate Change.

It would seem that Environment Minister, Sammy Wilson has banned government television adverts in Northern Ireland warning of the effects of climate change.

The DUP man said he was not prepared to allow “insidious New Labour propaganda” about the impact of climate change which would have been screened on UTV.

Read the rest of Am I alone? »

Footprints by Andy_5322

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘Carbon Footprint’, and I’m pretty sure most of us will know that it would be a good thing for our planet if we could each reduce our individual footprint.

But what does that involve? How does one go about reducing something that is difficult to ascertain?

Well, having read a great article on the Times Online by eco columnist Donnachadh McCarthy, I’m pleased to see that we now have a National Carbon Footprint Day. So, on October 2^nd every year we will now be prompted to take readings of our ‘Eco High 5’s’ to calculate your carbon footprint with a view to reducing it year on year.

Head on over to the official National Carbon Footprint Day website to pledge your support and find out more. . .

(Image: Andy_5322)

The postal strike is having an impact on EthicalSuperstore.com but I worry that the real loser in this will be the environment. We’ve had to suspend our cheapest delivery rate, but generally most parcels are being delivered by our friends at Parcel Force. However, the long term implications of a weakened Royal Mail are definitely bad for the environment.

Our postie—she’s actually a young woman—drops our letters and small packets off every day at home around 9am. She walks from the delivery depot with a small sack of letters and then collects the rest of her letters from strategically located pick up points round her route. It works because all letters in the UK outside of London are still delivered by the Royal Mail. She passes every house every day.

Now imagine a world where Royal Mail is weakened to the point where they no longer deliver to every house every day. Either we’ll all be driving to the sorting office to pick our mail up – 500 houses on our postie’s route might mean 500 more journeys each day by car!!!! Alternatively, lots of new van or car based delivery schemes get launched and we all get multiple deliveries each week from multiple companies. May be slightly less impact than us all driving places but ultimately much worse than the system we have now.

Postal delivery is an environmental issue. The government—the current owner of the Royal Mail—needs to focus less on preparing to sell it and more on building the service it has to be truly world class. We have cost effective, environmentally sensitive delivery to every home in the UK – do we really want to squander it?