Friday, September 25, 2009

Eco debt day and Team Origin

Sometimes when reading the news about the environment I get this knot in my stomach, the sort you get before an exam or key presentation.

And its not that excitement when you're confident and feel sure of acing it, but rather when fearing its all going to go horribly, horribly wrong.

Today was one of those days, as it is "Eco debt day", when we have used all the Earth's resources our planet can give us in one year and from now on we're in destruction mode, reducing what is left to hand on to our children, nephews, nieces, and one day grand-nephews and neices.

In December there will be the big Copenhagen climate change conference, and a quick look at their web site here didn't help my mood with the banner "Climate change surpases worst-case scenario". Less high on the agenda but equally important is the ongoing habitat loss.

But there are many things we can do, as the destruction can be stopped, and we should encourage all those that do their bit.

So its good to see that the UK team working towards the next America's Cup, Team Origin, has joined up with the Carbon Trust to highlight what can be done to reduce CO2 emissions.

Now if only they could find a way to reduce the role of lawyers in the cup.

But I guess we should only try to tackle the solvable problems!

2 comments:

Pat said...

Who do some enviros make conservation seem like a chore and others seem to have to try to panic citizens into some sort of action, even if it's more of a token sort of thing?

At least, sometimes, conservationists and environmentalists get on with each other decently.

JP said...

One of the problems at present is that a number of the leading environmental groups are making things worse by over-doing the hair-shirt and rejecting technology based solutions.

But they are right that things could get very bad and so we should do something, but I'm not convinced the Greenpeace organic everything low tech approach will work when the world population is hitting 7 billion.