As widely reported, the Scottish Government has acknowledged that its environmental target of a 75% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 is now unattainable, and has been widely condemned for it. It’s certainly easy to feel angry about this admission. But to criticise it misses three important points. Firstly, if we condemn our politicians for admissions of failure, we simply encourage them to conceal any such failings. It’s a common trick to release bad news on a day when …
Tag: conservation policy
There are species that appear… I don’t know. Slightly smug, perhaps? The ones that are good-looking and know it. Take the Arctic tern. Exquisitely-designed global wanderer, it has the sleek, graceful lines and curves of a supermodel. It’s a creature that knows you’ll hang its picture on your wall. Then there are those creatures, no less superbly designed, who leave you wondering what accident befell them when they were born. The slug. The lumpfish. Those strange species that only a …
The news in the Guardian recently that beavers are to be released in Ealing represents the ultimate comeback for a species once hunted to extinction in England. Possessor of a fine, waterproof fur and a pair of gland-like sacs near the anus which produced a substance, ‘castoreum’, used in perfumes and – wait for it – vanilla flavouring, the beaver was considered better off dead than alive, a view endorsed – and sometimes still endorsed – by farmers whose fields …
A few weeks ago, COP27, the international conference on climate change, rolled to a close and barely anyone noticed. It didn’t start well, being billed as the cop that would make people keep the promises they had made at the last one, and then failing in any meaningful way to achieve even that. As a writer I can admire fine-sounding words, but our planet needs a lot more. It needs action, and lots of it. So if that is the …
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