Neos Air Boeing 737-800W

Boeing 737-800W

Boeing 737-800W

Boeing 737-800W

Boeing 737-800W

I quite like this idea of executive travel, having a Boeing 737-800W all to myself, well almost.

Less than 20 minutes into flight, crew came through with tea, coffee, and biscuits.

Lovely spring day in the garden

garden

garden path

Hard to believe the contrast with yesterday.

Yesterday was cold, wet and miserable. What a difference a day makes. Today warm and sunny, a strong breeze blowing, but it is warm breeze. It is more like a summer’s day than spring.

Have the seasons caught up with themselves, spring bypassed and advanced to summer?

Doors and windows open to invite in the warm air and air the house. It is warmer outside than inside.

Grass mowed, more lawn repair.

A path that was bark chippings, and once grass, spiked, compost spread, grass seed grown.

If it hits 20 C, then it will be the first time in six months.

If it passes 20 C, then it will be the first time since September of last year.

Then, just as I was thinking I will sit in the garden and read a book, enjoy the spoils of my labour, dark clouds rolled in and it started to rain.

Man is fallen and will destroy the Earth

Man is fallen and will destroy the Earth

Are people good? Is humankind basically benign?

In our current belief system, which we might term liberal secular humanism, which has held sway in the West since the Second World War, and which promotes human progress and well-being, only one response is permitted: Yes, of course! Any suggestion that there might be something wrong with people as a whole, with Man as a species, is absolute anathema. But today, two circumstances come together to prompt me to pose the question once more.

The first is the ending, this week, of my 15 years as Environment Editor of The Independent. It has been a privilege beyond measure to work for so long for a wonderful newspaper which has put the environment at the heart of its view of the world. We are proud of all we have done about it, from raising the question, in 2000, of the mysterious disappearance of the house sparrow from London and other major cities – we offered a £5,000 prize for a proper scientific explanation, but the mystery remains – to devoting the whole of the front page, in 2011, to the then hardly recognised threat of neonicotinoid insecticides, now an obsession around the globe.

But there have been what you might call side effects. For if, over the past decade and a half, you have closely observed what is happening to the Earth, week in, week out, you may take a dark view of the future; and I do. The reason is that the Earth is under threat, as it has never been before, from the ever more oppressive scale of the human enterprise: from the activities of a world population which doubled from three to six billion in four short decades, between 1960 and 2000, and which, in the four decades to come, will probably increase by three billion more.

These activities are now wiping out ecosystems and species, across the world, at an ever increasing rate: the forests are chainsawed; the oceans are stripmined of their fish; the rivers, especially in the developing world, are ever more polluted; the farmland is rendered sterile of all but the monoculture crop by demented dosing with pesticides; the farmland insects and wild flowers and many of the birds have gone.

The vanishing species come from all locations and in all shapes and sizes: in South Africa last year, 668 rhinos were illegally killed for their horn, which has a soaring value in Asia because of the myth of its medicinal qualities, while in Britain in the next 10 years, the turtle dove, beloved bird, will go extinct. The trashing of the natural world is now a global phenomenon and, as the century progresses, it will combine and interact with another great human-caused threat, climate change, until the very viability of the biosphere, the thin envelope of life surrounding the Earth which supports us all, is put at risk.

People are doing this. Let’s be clear about it. It’s not some natural phenomenon, like an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. It’s the actions of Homo sapiens. What we are witnessing is a fundamental clash between the species, and the planet on which he lives, which is going to worsen steadily, and the more closely you observe it – or at least, the more closely I have observed it, over the past 15 years – the more I have thought that there is something fundamentally wrong with Homo sapiens himself. Man seems to be Earth’s problem child. We humans have always thought ourselves different in kind from other creatures, principally for our use of language and our possession of consciousness, but there is another reason for our uniqueness, which is becoming ever clearer: we are the only species capable of destroying our own home. And it looks like we will.

This is my perception, as I lay down the reins of environmental reporting. However, there is an additional motive for my raising this issue today, and that is the approach of Easter. If you were brought up a Catholic (as I was), Easter has a resonance which remains even if you have long moved away from the faith (as I have). It is the principal feast of Christianity, of course, far more significant than the much more commercialised Christmas, and it is so pivotal because it concerns Christianity’s essence, which is redemption.

In the Christian view of the world, Man is fallen, yet because of Christ’s self-sacrifice on the cross on Good Friday, Man is redeemed. You may think of the idea of The Fall as simply the story of Adam eating the forbidden fruit, but such a myth is not of itself what has gripped some of the most powerful minds in history. Rather, the idea of fallen Man gives potent expression to that prominent part of the human character which has been observed, down the ages, with horror: our terrible potential for destruction, for causing suffering to others and, indeed, now, for destroying our own home (all of which liberal secular humanism prefers not to look at). In the Christian world view, humankind is not basically benign. People are not good.

But they can be redeemed. That’s the point, the unique selling point, if you like, of Christianity; and tomorrow, Easter Sunday, is its celebration. And what ceasing to be Environment Editor of this newspaper in Easter week has put into my mind is just how many people I have also observed, over the past 15 years, fighting hard to save the natural world – because, in some way, these are the redeemers of humankind.

I still think Man will destroy the Earth. It is a pessimistic valedictory note I offer, for you cannot focus closely on what is happening and not be a pessimist. But there is more to Man, I do accept, than simply a destroyer, and the pessimism is not unmitigated: the chainsaws may outnumber them, and the chainsaws ultimately may win, but the green campaigners were there, and they fought.

– Michael McCarthy

Michael McCarthy was for 15 years the Environment Editor for The Independent. This published on Good Friday was his valedictory thoughts.

The sun is shining

the sun is shining

The sun is shining, the snow is melting, the daffodils are out, it is marginally above zero.

The first week of spring.

The cold winter weather is projected to continue for the next 2-3 weeks.

First days of spring and it is snowing

snow in spring

Two days ago it was the first day of spring, 21 March 2013.

Yesterday heavy freezing rain.

This morning I awoke to find it was snowing.

Projected, the coldest March in 50 years.

Top Story in The Daily Garden (Saturday 23 March 2012).

Allan Savory: How to green the desert and reverse climate change

“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it’s happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes — and his work so far shows — that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

De tormenta dos días más tarde

Two days later, and still strong wind, though very hot in the sun. Teide is covered in snow.

The storm started Sunday afternoon, and two days later, there is still a storm battering the island.

It was stormy last night, all through the night, and still strong winds today.

Workmen are out today repairing the storm damage.

La tormenta tropical llega a Tenerife

storm swept sea

Yesterday afternoon a tropical storm hit Tenerife.

At first very powerful gusts of wind that blew evereything over, bits falling off buildings, branches flying through the air, dust in your eyes.

During the gusts, impossible to walk, all you could do was stand still. I turned so my back was to the wind, to keep the dust out of my eyes. Something crashed behind me. I looked, a piece of the Hotel Monopol had crashed to the ground a couple of feet behind me. I popped in and let them know.

It was easy to see why there was a warning to stay indoors.

I found my window had blown out. All I could do to drag it back and force it closed.

I decided to walk down to the beach. The sea was in a very agitated state, as though it was boiling. Out to sea, the sea being whipped up, several hundred feet high. Trees uprooted.

It was hot, the temperature rising all afternoon.

Few people around. The beach being taped off as unsafe.

Out to sea, very very black. I decided to head indoors before it hit land.

That evening I was due at a concert at Abaco, a Canarian mansion house high above Puerto de la Cruz. I did not think it would be on, but yes it was.

No taxis, not answering. Those that did could not contact their taxis as radio down. I suspect mast destroyed in the wind.

Luckily managed to hire a taxi. Once up past Botanical Gardens, and taking a side road going straight up, the road strewn with debri, the taxi driving fast, keeping to the middle of the road.

Halfway through the concert the rain hit, heavy torrential rain. The sky lit up white with lightning. I had visions of Dracula, from reading The Historian.

I did wonder how the windows kept out the rain. They did not.

Same problem as earlier, no taxis. Luckily one of the staff gave me a lift. As we left, the rain has eased off.

She dropped me off near El Limón, where I had hoped to eat. El Limón was closed, as was every bar, every restaurant. No one was about, it was earily quiet, no wind. I walked through the empty streets strewn with debri.

I must have been in the eye of the storm. As I was walking along, the wind picked up again, gathering in strength by the minute.

Bad storm all night, bad storm all morning. I was tempted to go out, but warned not safe. Then tropical rain hit. Wind died down, but once the rain stopped, the wind picked up again. Looking up at the mountains, the rain sweeping in. A momentarily lull in the wind, I nipped out quick to a nearby net café.

I have known storms with stronger winds, palm trees bent double, street signs snapped in half. But they are usually at night, over by the morning. I have not know a storm last this long, nor has anyone else.

As I write, wind is picking up again, now very bad.

I wish I had brough a jumper. Quite cool sitting in net café.

RBS: Stop defrauding us, manipulating us, lying to us and trashing our climate

Oily bankers RBS AGM 2011

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) reported a £5.2 billion loss as it announced its annual results today The bank’s boss Stephen Hester is four years into his original five-year plan to bring RBS back on track – yet things don’t seem to be getting much better for the publicly owned bank. RBS blames a year of heavy fines. But let’s just remind ourselves of what these fines were:

• PPI: The bank knowingly mis-sold its customers insurance which they neither needed nor could use, over a period of years. Fine: £2.2 billion
• Libor: The bank illegally manipulated a crucial interest rate to benefit itself whilst negatively affecting mortgage payers in the UK (and elsewhere). Fine: £391 million

Bankers this year have been rewarded for doing a ‘good job’. Bonus pot: £600,000 million.

Some pretty significant figures that the bank should never have been in a position to pay.

If the RBS was really making headway to being sustainable and acting in the interest of us and its shareholders, we would surely expect a much stronger annual report, and a move towards investments only in sustainable projects.

Hester is quoted on the BBC website this morning as saying “…my job is [to] deliver an RBS that other investors want to own shares in…” This is true, but he must also remember that RBS is still owned by UK taxpayers and it is also his job to ensure that the bank is cleaned up and takes good care of our investment. Stopping defrauding us, manipulating us, lying to us and trashing our climate and environment would certainly be a good place to start. Hester has a lot of ground to cover in the final year of his plan.

– Paul Daly

Originally published by WDM.

Snowy day

snow mid-morning

Sunday there was a sprinkling of snow. By lunchtime it had gone.

4am this morning, everywhere white. By around mid-morning, roads clear, but everywhere else a thick covering of snow.

Lunchtime a second wave of snow swept in which lasted until dusk. Big snowflakes came fluttering down.

I decided not to venture out, temperature barely above freezing.