Ingham’s W RLD
TIMING is all. Normally when experts gather to discuss global warming, the thermometer plummets and talk turns to a new Ice Age. Remember the Copenhagen Climate summit in 2009 which had a blizzard as a backdrop. But as Britain prepared for a heatwave, the Commonwealth Secretariat last week hosted an international conference on climate change.
So far scientists and politicians have limited themselves to keeping the average global temperature rise to 2C. Even this modest target is a struggle.
But the Commonwealth’s London conference was told that the world can actually reverse global warming. Better still, said American environmentalist Paul Hawken, his 100 solutions are already available.
Some will have many of you frothing at the mouth. Mr Hawken, executive officer of Project Drawdown, has wind turbines and solar panels high on his list because they generate power without the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.
But reducing food waste is common sense. The world would eat better and stop squandering finite resources. Cutting back on burgers and switching to a plant-rich diet would also make a big difference. Cattle burp out such huge volumes of greenhouse gases that if they were a nation, they’d be the world’s third biggest emitter.
Mr Hawken suggests that instead of going the whole hog – sorry – and becoming a vegetarian, we could become “reducetarians” by cutting back on meat consumption. This in turn would lead to healthier diets and less polluted ecosystems.
In his top 10 are two things we in the West take for granted: educating girls and family planning.
Educated girls are less likely to have large families, which reduces emissions by curbing population growth. These girls are also more likely to have much better lives instead of being marginalised.
Mr Hawken also likes reinventing the wheel. He says there will soon be 30-storey skyscrapers made from wood not steel.
This will lower pollution from steel mills while trees trap carbon in the atmosphere. Obviously this option only works if the forests are harvested sustainably. But there’s always a catch. For this to work, everyone needs to join in. Given President Trump’s views on climate change that seems unlikely.
In contrast to me, many of you share his doubts. But a world with cleaner agriculture, cleaner energy and better opportunities would be a healthier place even if climate change turns out to be another fad. The world does not need to go to hell in a handcart. A NOISY summer visitor has delayed breeding because it has been too dry. House martins flew in from Africa on time last month. But the dry weather put home-making on hold as each cup-shaped nest built under the eaves of buildings requires 1,000 beakfuls of mud, says the British Trust for Ornithology. SIZE matters if you’re a warbler. Garden warblers and blackcaps fill similar habitats with their wonderful songs but their wings reveal a major difference. Blackcaps have shorter wings, says the BTO’s Volunteer magazine. This points to a short migration – mainly to Spain and North Africa. But their cousins power on longer wings across the Sahara to as far away as South Africa. GREEN TIP: Water plants first thing in the morning or in the evening to reduce evaporation. FORGET T Rex. The largest animal that ever lived is the blue whale – up to 100ft long and 170 tons. US scientists tell a Royal Society journal the whales got so huge through binge eating. After the Ice Age their favourite shrimp-like food became scarcer so they gorged themselves whenever they found it and got bigger and bigger. It’s a lesson for all of us. LEOPARDS are Brits at heart – they’re very keen on tea. Away from their natural forest home, these big cats love tea plantations, a Wildlife Conservation Society study found in India. Researchers tell the journal PLOS One that leopards like the tea gardens’ dense ground cover.