We've got to keep tackling climate change

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. We do this in a bid to be less polluting and tackle climate change while at the same time keeping a global outlook. Forgive me please for worrying about climate change - whoever gets voted into the White House on Tuesday 8 November 2016. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

Steve Malkin, founder and CEO of The Planet Mark

There's this man. Nicholas Stern. He's an economist and 10 years ago he produced The Stern Report (2006) which warned that climate change was going to cause huge social and financial costs. Stern is now an extremely sprightly looking 70 but unfortunately he's clear that his 10-year ago warning has not been acted on in the way he expected.  "It's worse than I had feared," he tells Robin McKie in the weekend Observer. (06/11/16)

Over the past 10 years sustainability services have crept on to the high street - from juice bars,
food waste campaigns, charges for plastic bags and even repair and reuse shop, but it hasn't stopped
carbon levels going up far beyond the level Stern advised had to be the cut off point. 

Thinking back on my life over the past 10 years I haven't exponentially increased my environmental footprint. But I certainly haven't reduced it much either. 

• I've made just one long plane journey (to the other side of the world in 2011 where my family and I stayed for four months), but that's the only flight. I haven't bought a car or used one much. (I can hear Tim Smit calling me a po-faced do-gooder, but luckily this blog's readers' cannot!).
• This year so far I've only rented a car for 2 hours and that was to go to the recycling centre.
• But I haven't improved our house's eco-efficiency for a few years now - and i am a far less fierce opponent in the Cold War battle raged over the thermostat by my husband and I than i was in the year Stern's Report came out.
• And frankly I haven't done much bigger picture stuff either. My street isn't using less carbon, nor is my daughter's school, the university where I teach or the city where I live, London.

I don't think my suck-it-and-see (aka head in the sand) attitude towards climate change is unusual. For the past few years the climate has made headlines - think extreme weather, unseasonal and violent flooding, the big Californian/Australian drought - but it hasn't inspired corresponding action. As PM David Cameron promised to be green and yet managed to  cut support for solar panels on people's homes; kill the Green Deal which helped people insulate old homes and got rid of green building standards for new homes. All would have fitted in fine to an austerity budget - who knows why they were snuffed out.

The only glimmer of hope is the Paris Agreement - ratified in November 2015 and now, a year on, signed and sealed. It's aim is to get the world reducing their carbon emissions to a safe - or effective level. But now Nicholas Stern says, "I cannot say that I am confident it will happen".  It is all very depressing. So, it was with some curiosity that I went to an event recently celebrating a range of businesses' efforts to be more sustainable via The Planet Mark - a certification system that gives participants incentives to cut their carbon emissions - which was held at the sassy Hospital Club. 

The Planet Mark
The Planet Mark is an idea created by founder and CEO Steve Malkin just three years ago. During The Planet Mark sustainability week (this November) various great and good shared their learning, and on the night I attended it was all about the ways sustainability changes you and your business.

Sir Tim Smit from the Eden Project at The Planet Mark 3rd anniversary

You'll find this at the Lost gardens of Helligan,
close to the Eden Project.

Charismatic boss of Cornwall's Eden Project (a place you absolutely must go), Sir Tim Smit gave a rabble-rousing speech about doing good at the same time as being a capitalist. Tim is smart and funny and woos the new generation of concerned citizens just as effectively as he has done their elder brothers and sisters. This time he looks like he's having more fun though.

Steve Malkin encouraged the audience - predominantly suit-wearers - to go on the Hothouse training that the Eden Project has created in a bid to transform the way business leaders think, react and lead. He urged us to "infect five people" with the sustainability bug. A nice challenge...

Matthew Owen from Cool Earth speaking at The Planet Mark 3rd anniversary.

Cool Earth
And Cool Earth's Matthew Owen talked about the need for a new way to save the rainforest because the old methods weren't working at all. Cool Earth likes to save the rainforest a village at a time by working with the forests' inhabitants. His talk captivated my teenage daughter who is living away from home for the first time and has clearly been starved of eco-bunny conversation. Matthew is an amazing speaker and Cool Earth appears to be doing what it wants - saving rainforest - very successfully in Peru, Congo and even PNG. Saving rainforest isn't just good for those villagers, it's also good for reducing CO2 levels.

Summing up
The Planet Mark is quite a new certification system -  its oldest projects are just three years. As a result I don't know that much about it - and after involvment with organic certification and the Forest Stewardship Council I am surprised that any set up can secure immediate accreditation just because you have a commitment to cut your carbon emissions. But the people in the room are big influencers - including engineers responsible for surfacing runways, building roads and other infrastructure.  To get people behind cutting carbon, dealing with climate change or even tackling sustainability (that old Rio phrase) you have to win their hearts, minds and possibly pockets. These guys definitely are good at doing that.

My daughters in Cornwall
contemplating big plants (a
few years ago).

I don't think it is possible to create the world we need by doing business as usual - especially if that business keeps hopping on to planes, demanding new runways and evading tax. But if business won't change - or certainly won't change enough for Stern to have confidence in it - then efforts to cut carbon have to be the next best approach. Climate change is a huge problem - one no individual can solve on their own. But schemes like The Planet Mark help empower individuals to make changes in their work and life that my mean the world is left a little bit of a better place. And that is enough for me to applaud this fascinating attempt to get businesses cutting carbon.

Besides I love a challenge: perhaps using some of The Planet Mark ideas in my home might mean I could get back on track with my own sustainability mission? The answer to that will be in another post.

But as Sir Tim pointed out - it makes sense to learn to communicate what we know better. 

For most of my working life I've written about saving the rainforest and, frankly, tragically, it hasn't done much to save it. Cool Earth claim to have taken a new direction for saving the rainforest. So when it comes to climate change another method of making a bigger difference might also be to improve the message, perhaps by using the tips in climate campaigner George Marshall's most recent book, Don't Even Think About It. 

Whatever you are doing to raise awareness about climate change and sustainability - and however you are doing it  I wish you the very best of luck. If Stern is right, we certainly need it.

In praise of microadventures - in Cookham

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. We do this in a bid to be less polluting and tackle climate change while at the same time keeping a global outlook. This post takes my family to a pub-crammed village famous for inspiring artist Stanley Spencer and Wind in the Willows author Kenneth Grahame. It may be Berkshire, but for some art lovers it could be as satisfying a day trip as heading to Paris.

Stick den in Quarry Wood. Clearly kids enjoy playing out around Cookham.

Big adventures are fun, but they are often hard to organise, and can be expensive. Of course you don’t have to cycle the Alps to have an adventure. You can have them in the UK, but as so much of British outdoor life is weather dependent getting a party together (especially of mixed ages) to do something on a set day you can all make can be easily spoilt by grey skies, a stiff breeze and a downpour.

And so micro adventures were born.

The name appears to come from Alastair Humphries, see his website here. 

Mistletoe seems to decorate a tree
by the Thames Path.

Instead of going on mega trips occasionally - he was 24 when he decided to ride around the world by bike (which took four years!) - he goes on little ones, often & usually camps out. I love the concept of often. I need my adventure quotient topped up, ideally outside. But for me one exciting walk a week is enough, but I also try to keep bigger adventures on the go in case I lose inspiration. At the moment my family is finishing off the New River Walk (approx. 30miles from Hertfordshire to London along a stream that is neither new, nor a river). We just do a short stage when we fancy. I’m also planning to walk a lot more of the Thames Path.

Perhaps a micro adventure can just be going somewhere different, or going somewhere you know well and really exploring it in a different way?

Alastair’s website is all kids in sleeping bags roughing it without tents – you can do that in a garden too, it doesn’t have to be a super glamorous overseas location. His current challenge is to get people to commit to spending one night a month under the stars for a year. It’s a lovely idea and you’d learn so much from it. I'm thinking about it... but rather suspect that I won't.

Alastair is super creative (he funds his blog by asking people to shout him a coffee – the £2.50s add up and as a result he’s got a fab site). His adventures are incredibly varied and I am sure would be happy to spend a day climbing a tree to really develop a sense of what that particular oak is really like, and which little critters and birds visit it.

A sunken (or green) lane crossing the woods on the Berks/Bucks border.

My micro-adventures tend to focus on taking the dog for a walk in the woods. There is nothing I like better. Although if you can throw in an art gallery and a nice cosy pub I’ll be extra happy. So visiting Cookham in Berkshire (the train from London goes to Maidenhead, then you change for the 10 min ride to Cookham) was perfect.

I followed a 7-mile walk through Quarry Wood and up steep Winter Hill then down a chalk hillside for a last one and a half mile stroll along the River Thames back to Cookham and the Stanley Spencer art gallery.

One of the houses Stanley Spencer lived and worked in, in Cookham.

Cookham, or “village in heaven” as the crabby but talented Stanley Spencer called it. His art is full of portraits of the locals and local scenes. I love the way flowers twine themselves into his pictures and the majority are making Cookham the ultimate destination.

In the Stanley Spencer gallery - it's a good use of an old chapel.

To improve a micro-adventure it helps if there are options for all your party. So my husband, Pete, went on the Stanley Spencer guided walk around the village, my teen daughter turned up late for a quick tour of the gallery and then met me and Pete in the pub. We stayed on for tapas and another cheeky drink while she took the earlier train back to London for a David Bowie tribute gig…

Kenneth Grahame's home - now a prep school - has a lovely Dutch gable.

My family wanted to talk about Spencer - his art and wives. I managed that, and was also happy to talk over my route which had included a quick detour to see the house that Wind in the Willows author Kenneth Grahame lived in while writing the book. Behind is Winter Hill’s thick wood, very obviously the model for his book’s scary Wild Wood - home of Badger and those evil weasels who go on to take over Toad Hall. The house is now a prep school, Herries.

There are at least six pubs in Cookham, and all seemed to serve food (there's also the Teapot Tea shop in the high street which had delicious looking cakes). We tried the lovely old Bel & the Dragon, an old coaching inn. But a glass of white wine cost £9!! So for the next round we went to the Old Swan Uppers where for £7.50 I got a half of good beer, an even better glass of wine and a packet of crisps. Both were dog friendly, and both had lovely staff and roaring fires.

• Walk route was in Country Walks near London by Christopher Somerville. I used the 1994 edition, but this links to a much newer version. Somerville is my favourite walk guide -his routes are great because you don't have to have your nose in the book. It does help if you can bring an OS map too though.