Where global meets local in the Sid Valley
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The VGS projects and blog try to ‘think globally and act locally’, as the ’60s saying goes. And also in our work with our partners, we try to do the same, sharing both ideas and practical ways ahead.
The latest edition of The Conversation’s weekly environment newsletter provides a good opportunity to reflect on both the global and local – including a look at several issues which have interested the VGS and other groups in the Sid Valley these last years:
- Veganism: Should the CAPS and SVBG social media allow strong opinions of local vegans to be voiced – even opinions which might be considered ‘extreme’?
- Meadows: Should groups encourage pastureland to be preserved in the Sid Valley, to allow for greater biodiversity?
- Wetlands and moorland; river and sea: Should these nationally-important areas in East Devon be given more prominence?
- Sid Valley Biodiversity Group | I spent a couple of hours at Seaton Wetlands yesterday and I appreciate this is not within the Sid Valley but I thought you might like to see a few of…
- The next Cafe Scientifique will take place when the River Sid Catchment Group will give a talk entitled Salmon on the Sid: is there Hope – Sidmouth Science Festival
- Climate Awareness Partnership Sidmouth (CAPS) | There has been a lot of interest locally about creating a kelp farm, restoring sea grass areas and generally building on the success of the marine protected areas in Lyme Bay
- Trees and climate: Should we be planting 15,000 trees in the Sid Valley?
- Should we be planting thousands of trees? – Vision Group for Sidmouth
- Back in 2020 and 2022, we were delighted to have children from the primary school help us plant a community orchard – Sidmouth Arboretum
- Please support them. – Sidmouth Arboretum > Petition · Save Redd’s Tree ! – Exmouth, United Kingdom · Change.org
- Past and present: “In recognising that the established view of human history can and must change, people can think radically about society, rather than following the present course out of a failure of imagination.”
- Post-carbon: Should the Sid Valley – its local government and its volunteer groups – be making greater efforts to ‘go green’?
- Plastic: Should Sidmouth – and its Festivals – be doing more to reduce microplastics?
And here’s that newsletter in full:
This is the last newsletter I will write to you, dear reader.
Imagine will still arrive in your inbox every Wednesday, but it won’t be me leading you through the latest things our experts have to say about fixing the climate. It will be my esteemed colleagues, Will and Anna.
Thanks for sticking with us, and for telling us about your experiences of our warming planet and the future you would like to see on it. I hope you’ll enjoy this summary of seven things I have learned from seven years of editing environment academics.
You’re reading the Imagine newsletter – a weekly synthesis of academic insight on solutions to climate change, brought to you by The Conversation. I’m Jack Marley, energy and environment editor. This week, we indulge the author for a bit.
1. Your body, plant-powered
In my first month, Sophie Medlin, a former lecturer in nutrition at King’s College London, wrote what would become the most-read piece I edited.
I was looking for a story about veganism. I had read that lower demand for meat and dairy would afford more land for nature, but I wondered if a transition to a vegan lifestyle would transform a person’s internal environment too.
I remembered a poster I’d seen in a GP waiting room which detailed the changes that overcome the human body minutes, hours and days after a final cigarette. I asked Medlin if she could write a similar trajectory starting from the moment someone adopts a strict plant-based diet, and her story was read nearly 1 million times.
You can expect an energy boost a few days out from forgoing foie gras, and a greater variety of bacteria living in your large intestine as weeks turn to months, Medlin explains.
“Although not proven yet, scientists believe that a high species diversity for gut bacteria could be beneficial for the whole system, in the same way that ecosystems are stronger as a result of lots of different types of species thriving,” she says.
2. A field in England
One of the most exciting scientific accounts I read while a Conversation editor was the story of one farm field in Cambridgeshire that was left to nature more than 60 years ago.
No human hand interfered with the four-hectare plot after its last barley crop was collected in 1961. Instead, scientists at the nearby Monks Wood research station hunkered down and watched to see what happened next.
Rather than let me spoil the details for you, you can read the full story here.
3. The missing military emissions
Barely a year into my job, I read about a mammoth source of world-warming emissions that defies any official accounting or accountability: the exhaust fumes of tanks, jets and destroyers in the world’s militaries.
A study published in 2019 by a team of researchers at Lancaster University, led by geographer Benjamin Neimark, found that the fuel consumption of the US military alone causes more climate damage than most countries.
The US Department of Defense is the world’s single largest institutional emitter, Neimark and his colleagues Oliver Belcher and Patrick Bigger report. Yet its relevance to climate change is seldom discussed, thanks to an exemption won by the US in 1997 that means militaries don’t need to report their emissions to the UN.
4. A drop of good news
Wetlands are described as the kidneys of the Earth for filtering the nasty stuff out of the water we discharge. They are also vast carbon sinks that help keep a lid on runaway climate change. However, they weren’t recognised as valuable ecosystems in their own right until fairly recently.
Long seen as pestilential wastes that were only good for draining and building on, wetlands were scrubbed from the map over centuries. I commissioned Bangor University wetlands expert Christian Dunn to cover a 2023 assessment of what remained globally, expecting the worst.
“Previously, it was feared that as much as 50% of our wetlands might have been wiped out,” he says. “However, the latest research suggests that the figure is actually closer to 21% — an area the size of India.”
Leaving to one side the most extensive damage in Europe and North America, and the difficulty of finding and keeping track of these habitats over time, it seems the vast majority of our marshes, mangroves, swamps and bogs – home to life as extravagantly weird as capybara and platypus – are still there for us to take better care of in future.
5. Nature’s laboratory
Hundreds of academics have weighed in on the options for halting and adapting to climate change in these weekly instalments. There is one in particular, Dhanapal Govindarajulu of the University of Manchester, who I think has excelled at putting these potential solutions in their proper historical context.
As the world considers planting trillions of trees to draw carbon down from the air and provide shelter for tormented wildlife, Govindarajulu urges us to learn from some of the first experiments in mass tree planting in 19th-century India, where British colonists replaced homes and ecosystems with plantations of poorly chosen species.
What can we learn from Earth’s troubled past to build a sustainable future? Here’s Govindarajulu, with one valuable lesson:
“Planting trees does not necessarily mean a forest is being restored,” he says.
“Determining whether local people and the environment are benefiting is a more helpful measure of success than simply scanning a forest canopy from above.”
6. The recycling bin of history
Academics pitch us interesting ideas for stories every day. One of my favourite questions posed by an author is this: What does the climate crisis mean for our conception of history and the human story?
For Amanda Power, a medieval historian at the University of Oxford, it is a deeply disturbing proposition that uproots notions of historical progress that have comforted western elites for centuries.
“Narrating a richer past would lessen the shock of discovering that we are, after all, earthbound inhabitants of the only planet where life is known to exist. It could show us that our survival is dependent on countless complicated and delicate relationships,” Power says.
And why, ultimately, does this kind of inquisition matter? Power explains:
“In recognising that the established view of human history can and must change, people can think radically about society, rather than following the present course out of a failure of imagination.”
7. Slow down…
A piece I edited just yesterday reminds me of how little I actually know about the world, and at the same time, how privileged I have been to work a job that lets me share in the insight of so many clever people.
“Winds in Earth’s atmosphere are the biggest influence on the length of each day as a result of their collisions with the land surface, particularly when they hit mountain ranges,” says astronomer James O’Donoghue of the University of Reading.
“Incredible as it may sound, wind actually slows the spin of the Earth this way.”
Post carbon 📯
Last week, I asked you to imagine you had the power to make a single, sweeping change to your country’s laws in order to address climate change. Here is what you told us.
“I would ban all new oil, gas and coal exploration and extraction,” says Kate Biggs. In particular, stop Rosebank, a vast undeveloped field in the North Sea, says Helen Estyn-Jones. And close down existing coal mines adds Barbara Dalgleish.
“I would simply mandate that all new construction and building recuperation be made with at least 50% wood from sustainably managed forests,” Manuel Collares Pereira says.
End all subsidies for meat and dairy, urges Virginia Bell, and transfer the money to plant-based food production. Rose Ann Mitchell asks that every public institution, from schools to hospitals, stop offering meat in canteens and restaurants. “This would have a massive impact,” she says. Failing that, Rose would “mandate that public transport … be subsidised to the extent that it [becomes] the cheapest way for a family of four to travel from A to B”.
Change regulations to ensure that each new building is fitted with solar panels and adequate insulation says Sylvia King. So says Rory Anderson also. Diana Jarmain concurs: “The cost would be absorbed into the cost of the building, and the occupants would gain in the long run through cheaper power.” Don’t forget batteries either – these can store the renewable electricity those panels generate for later use, Mary Whitehouse says.
Add a tax break for car park operators that install solar panels, Jay Allen says. And no more single-use packaging, says Wesley Paxton. Make all food containers returnable instead.
Implement a tax on financial transactions, or a Robin Hood tax as it is sometimes called, says Kim Altmeyer. “I would like to see Australia reinstate the carbon tax it revoked in 2010,” says Adrienne Truelove. “Fifteen wasted years!”
Next week, we’d like you to tell us how growing awareness of microplastic contamination has affected your habits with plastic.
Thanks for everything. Goodbye!
– Jack Marley, Environment commissioning editor
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Vegan diet: how your body changes from day one
More and more people are trying veganism, but how does the human body respond to losing animal products from its diet?
Monks Wood Wilderness: 60 years ago, scientists let a farm field rewild – here’s what happened
‘Will it become a wood again, how long will it take, which species will be in it?’
If the US military were a country, its carbon emissions would rank between that of Peru and Portugal.
Earth has lost one-fifth of its wetlands since 1700 – but most could still be saved
The swamp has not yet been drained everywhere.
India was a tree planting laboratory for 200 years – here are the results
Plantations of exotic trees from the mid-19th century onwards devastated Indian ecosystems.
Climate change: narrate a history beyond the ‘triumph of humanity’ to find imaginative solutions
Progress, in historical terms, has so often meant clearing places of their native inhabitants – both human and non-human.
Why on Earth is the planet’s day getting shorter?
August 5 was a whole millisecond shorter. Strap in for the full explanation.
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