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Urban Forests

May 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Whether tree-lined streets, parks and open spaces, suburban or rooftop gardens, or perhaps something more unusual, trees are incredibly important in cities, and are increasingly valued as such.

They provide islands of natural ecology for birds, insects and other animals, as well as filtering the air, moderating water flows, providing street level shade, screening road noise and also reducing the urban heat island effect caused by the thermal properties of buildings and hard surfaces.

In addition, of course, they look nice, which is not a trivial issue, both due to the significant effect mature trees can have on property prices in an area of a city, but also in the promotion of general health and wellbeing. American sociobiologist Edward Wilson argues that the people are attracted to natural environments and feel happier in the presence of nature.

The presence of urban trees also have a number of more unexpected beneficial effects – average traffic speeds are lower along tree lined roads and less ‘road rage’ is also known to occur, tree dense areas typically have a greater sense of community and are often safer as a result.

There are many charities and groups promoting the beneficial effects of urban trees, and running various planting schemes; including Trees for Cities and the Government backed Big Tree Plant scheme in the UK.

Photo from The Seafarer via Flickr

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Filed Under: Ecology, Home & Design, Local Community Tagged With: , ,

Tough Day at the Office ?

May 30, 2012 By 1 Comment

We all do it sometimes don’t we.

Moaning about our job, how hard we’re working, how busy we are, how bad our boss is, how hopeless our colleagues, how useless the organisation and especially how bad our pay.

Not many jobs are perfect, it seems, and it can often be tempting to let what’s wrong dominate our thinking. After all, it’s not as if we’re working for the fun of it, we’d much rather be at home relaxing, spending time with family and friends, pursuing hobbies or other activities.

Work is all too often something we begrudgingly do in exchange for the money we need to live our lives.

Of course we don’t moan all the time, and more than ever we do realise that we’re really lucky to have a job at all. But perhaps we could spend a little more time considering exactly just how lucky we are.

It’s natural to compare our lives with those around us – work colleagues, friends, family, and increasingly TV and media celebrities, about whose lives we are increasingly familiar.

Our tendency to compare and measure ourselves against our immediate peer group, is of course normal, but not always healthy. It can easily result in a sort of ‘bubble consciousness’ – being out of touch with the rest of society. It’s partly responsible for vastly inflated board room salaries, as CEOs compare their package against that of their chums at the Institute of Directors, and for dodgy politicians who submit ‘questionable’ expenses claims because ‘everyone else seems to be at it’

Of course it also applies to the lack of aspiration and drive that can infect our worst housing estates and schools, or the societies increasing levels of material greed, as we increasingly measure our lives in terms of ‘stuff owned’.

Perhaps if we were more familiar with the bigger picture, more aware of the lives of the billions less fortunate than ourselves we might feel less hard done by, more privileged, luckier ? Every parent tells their kids ‘be thankful for what you’ve got’ – perhaps we should listen to our own advice more?

And it may well also be that our relationship with paid work may have to fundamentally change in the future.

We read a lot of speculation about peak food, peak water, peak oil or peak energy, and whether there will be enough of these scare resources to go around the seven billion of us and rising. Should we also consider whether we are at, or nearing a time of peak work ?

There are millions unemployed around the world. Not because there isn’t plenty to be done, but because no one is willing or able to pay for it to be done.

The streets might need more cleaning, the elderly more visiting, and the sick more nursing – but, as we know, all these things come at a cost, and our societies all too often seem to know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing.

Most visions of a more sustainable future for us all require the production of far fewer material things, less travel and transport, and ever more efficient use of energy and technology – it’s difficult to see how we will all make a living within our current economic model.

No doubt there will be a transition, of course, and it seems to me we would be well advised to ‘share the work out‘ a little more.

In the meantime. . .

. . . if you’re not too keen on the prospect of going to work today, the remarkable series of films below might just prompt you to reflect a little. Capturing the lives of those undertaking hard physical labour, for very little reward, in places as diverse as Nigeria, Pakistan, Ukraine and Indonesia, these films provide a tiny glimpse into the lives of others across the globe.

Have a nice day.

 

 

Photo from Dickuhne via Flickr

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Filed Under: Economics & Politics, Happiness & Wellbeing Tagged With: ,

Retreat of the Glaciers

May 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It’s often claimed by some of those skeptical of global warming and climate change that there is no evidence the world is in fact getting warmer.

There is of course a huge amount of observational data which confirms this, but in addition, you only have to look at the ‘then and now’ photos of the world’s glaciers to see that they are melting.

Glacier mass results from the accumulated balance of new snowfall, minus annual melt. While snowfall is a product of complex localised precipitation patterns, melt is almost entirely influenced by temperature. The hotter it is on average, the more ice will melt. Simple physics !

It’s a fact that the majority of the world’s glaciers are in retreat, and have been for over 150 years.

Apart from being an obvious visual indicator of global warming, this large scale loss of stored frozen fresh water is causing concern due to increasing drinking water shortages, flooding risks, and global sea level rise.

RELATED ARTICLES – Climate Through the Data Smog, Do You Believe in Climate Change ? 

Photo by via Wikicommons

Filed Under: Energy, Climate & Carbon Tagged With: ,

I Lost Everything in a Fire – and I’m Glad

May 23, 2012 By 1 Comment

Guest post by Rachel Papworth – decluttering coach and blogger at Green & Tidy, helping people all over the world declutter and create homes they love, homes that support them to lives the lives they want to live.

In 2001, Jim* moved from Bristol to Brighton to be nearer some good friends and his sister, who was ill.

As he drove down the M4 with all his belongings in a hired lorry, ready to move into the place he’d been doing up, he noticed smoke coming from the front of the van, so he pulled onto the hard shoulder and got out.

A couple of minutes later the cabin where he’d been sitting was full of smoke and flames.

The keys to the back of the lorry were in the cabin and, despite bashing at the doors, he was unable to open the lorry to pull anything out. Within a few minutes, the police arrived and told him to move away and, seemingly no time later, the whole lorry was engulfed in 60 foot flames. The M4 was closed in the direction he was travelling, as was one lane of the opposite carriageway.

In shock and not fully processing what was going on, Jim found himself “almost smiling at the situation. It seemed insane”.

Having been dropped off at the nearest tube station by the police, Jim headed for his new home with little more than the clothes on his back, his phone and the money in his pockets. He didn’t even have a front door key, though luckily he’d given one to a friend.

Over the next few days and weeks, his initial ‘crazy anger’ was compounded by the discovery that his insurance policy didn’t cover him because his belongings hadn’t been in either of his properties when they were destroyed.

Though his insurance company eventually recovered a proportion of the value of his goods from the van hire company,  for many months Jim didn’t know whether he would receive any compensation.

He had to face life with almost no possessions.

To his surprise, his fury quickly faded to being ‘pissed off’ and then gradually disappeared until, only a month later, he began to feel ‘cleansed and freed up’.

Suddenly, all the physical ties to his past had disappeared. ‘All those drawers of photos and letters that you open, see and are suddenly drawn back into the past, are gone. And then you can only move forward. You’re no longer pulled back into the past’.

We accumulate stuff as we move through life and it can be hard to part with it, even though it can weigh us down. The fire took the decision-making process out of Jim’s hands.

In an instant, he was free of physical attachments to his past.

Strangely, the fire happened at a time in Jim’s life when he was already on an emotional and spiritual journey. Personal relationships and his work were changing and he’d been studying meditation and Tai Chi, and bringing stillness into his life.

He laughs at the language he still uses to describe the fire. “I always say ‘I lost everything’. No I didn’t! I lost nothing. I lost the smallest, least important things in life. They were just possessions. I realised I don’t actually need anything. We’ve all got everything we need”.

Jim says that, before the fire, his life was restricted by him being a ‘disorganised, messy hoarder’.  With everything lying around anyhow, he couldn’t be productive.

While he has accumulated stuff since (particularly since he had children!), he didn’t seek to replace everything and is more organised now. He’s picky about what he acquires. “I’ll only buy something if I really like it and I’m never tempted to spend for the sake of it”.

He’s always happy to get rid of things. He and his family, particularly his seven year old, love to do car boot sales. Of his current possessions, the only thing he’d feel desperate to save from a fire would be the family photos stored on his laptop though he also thinks, “We all take too many photos anyway”.

When he reflects on what he lost, he can think of only four items he misses: cine film his parents took of him and his siblings when they were young; a chair of his father’s; some photographs; and a painting by his Granny. It’s the cine film he regrets losing most because, “It wasn’t mine to lose and I feel sad for my family. We used to enjoy watching it when we met up once a year and now our children won’t have that experience”.

The thought of losing all his stuff again doesn’t fill him with dread. “If you lose everything, so what?” In fact, he finds the idea liberating. “Suddenly you’re no longer responsible for all that stuff. It’s brilliant. Genius. Everyone should get rid of everything every ten years. Or maybe there should be a limit on the number of possessions each person can own,” he laughs. “If you hold onto something for years and then chuck it out, you can guarantee you’ll need it the following week. Better to get rid of it sooner and forget about it”.

Even despite losing the precious family cine film, he says that overall he’s delighted it happened. “I was lucky”.

(*Jim is a pseudonym. This blog post is based on an interview undertaken on Friday 10th February 2012).

How would you feel if this happened to you?

Maybe something similar already has – how did you feel?

Rachel Papworth runs Green and Tidy. She helps people with WAY too much stuff declutter, and create homes they love, homes that support them in the lives they want to live. Rachel is a trained coach, with a degree in psychology, and self-obsessed decluttering and organising geek, she loves the way decluttering your mind and your stuff is interlinked and the contribution decluttering makes to living a low-impact life. For a free masterclass on decluttering and more tips on having a home that supports the life you want, subscribe to her blog at Green and Tidy, or on Facebook or Twitter.

Photo by Loco Steve via Flickr

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Filed Under: Consumerism, Simple Lifestyle Tagged With: ,

Stories of Poverty from Just Down the Road

May 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Sometimes it almost seems easier to focus our attention on the poverty and problems far away, than that right on our doorstep.

Perhaps we’re uncomfortable by its proximity, or scared-off by the inevitable links with alcohol, drugs, crime and abuse. Maybe the remoteness of poverty far away in the developing world seems somehow less challenging to us than the problems of our own communities, which can seem difficult and complex.

The truth is of course that all poverty is difficult and complex to resolve, and it can be easy to forget that across the rich world there are millions of people living lives of hardship and deprivation – perhaps just a few streets away, unseen behind closed doors.

In the UK over 13 million people, live on less than 60% of the median national income level, the most commonly cited level of relative poverty, including 1.3 million children living in severe poverty. While not the absolute poverty seen in the developing world, millions of families routinely have to choose between heating their home and food, who can’t clothe their children properly, struggle with social exclusion and unemployment and all too often find themselves weighed down with debt.

For those of us living more comfortable lives, this poverty in our midst can sometimes be difficult to understand.

Listening to the stories of the poor themselves, often gives the best insight:

 

Claire – from Hull (from Barnados)

“My daughter Ruby (age 4) knows – she could see me worrying about it. I couldn’t believe it when she said ‘don’t worry mummy I won’t have a birthday present this year.’ That made me cry so much, I felt so guilty for not being able to give them more.”

Claire lives with her four children, aged 18 to 4, who don’t have the same opportunities as many others, sometimes missing out on birthday presents, the right school uniform or school trips.

 

Denise – from Birmingham (from the Joseph Roundtree Foundation)

Denise is a single parent with two children, who works 16 hours a week. Due to a delay in her payment one week, she found herself with no money at all left to give her children one Monday morning so they could have food at school. Denise knew she had £3 left in her bank account, but that the local cash machine would only pay out multiples of £10.

Denise had to phone her Mum and ask her to bring over some bus fare so that Denise could get the bus to the nearest branch of the bank, and withdraw her £3, so she could give her children (who were still waiting to go to school) £1 each for lunch.

 

Anthony - from Tyne and Wear (from the BBC)

“I just don’t know what the future holds for us as a family”

“Two years ago my wife was diagnosed with myeloma cancer. It meant I had to give up my job to look after her. At the time I was paying £40 per month dual fuel, then it went up, the company told me I would have to go to £80 pounds per month. I have recently received another letter saying I now need to pay £115 per month, from my £220 per month carer’s allowance. Needless to say my savings have disappeared over the last two years.

The better news is my wife is in remission and she will return to her part-time job at the local school. We do not know yet how we will pay the bills. In the last couple of months my gas, water, electric, media services, TV Licence and life and home insurances have escalated – and now my mortgage, but my carer’s allowance has not changed!”

 

Ultimately eradicating poverty, whether globally or locally, will require a significant change to our systems and structures, but in the meantime there are many national or local groups already working to make a real difference, and transform the lives of those most in need . . .

. . . you might want to consider lending them your support.

Shelter, End Child Poverty, The Joseph Rountree Foundation, Christians Against Poverty,  Foodbank, Action Aid.

RELATED ARTICLES – Cold Cold Wind, Food Banks, 6 Ideas to Change What’s Outside Your Front Door

Filed Under: Local Community, Poverty & Aid Tagged With: , ,
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