No 1 in Sustainability and Climate Change
At Earth and Leaf we are passionate about Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change.
Do we Grow the Right Food in the UK? The fact I am asking this questions tells you the likely answer. A traditional British diet used to comprise a lot of bread, potatoes, root vegetables, meat, eggs and a limited amount of green vegetables. Sugar was a treat having originally been used as a preservative, but grew massively in consumption. This diet was developed as a result of the British Isles geography and consequently the climate. This still forms the basis for our current agricultural production, yet whilst our food tastes and climate are changing, our agriculture is not. The UK produces about 62% of the food it consumes, but only 53% of the fresh vegetables. The rest comes from...
An Urgent Rescue Plan for Our Shared World – First Steps We need international agreement here and this will be impossible with the current president of the USA in power. There are a handful of other leaders who will be problematical too, in Argentina and Russia for example. Very few countries are net Carbon absorbers, they are Suriname, Bhutan, Gabon and Panama. All are heavily forested with mature rainforest. Modernise UK Sheep Farming End large scale Beef Farming End Dairy Farming with Cows Establish a World Just Transition Authority at the United Nations Establish a World Just Transition Authority at the United Nations Establish a World Just Transition Authority at the United Nations Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing...
One Man can Save the Amazon (but he can also destroy it) The one man who can save the Amazon does not need to be named, we all know, you know who he is. When we started this project we vowed that we would be apolitical, this has proved almost impossible largely because of that same one man. The underlying issue is Soya. Tariffs that have been applied to China mean that Soya sold from the USA to China has dramatically increased in price with a 50% tariff. As a consequence China now buys all its Soya from Brazil. Brazil doesn’t produce enough Soya so it needs land and needs it fast. That resource is the Amazon Rainforest and the...
It is early August 2025 and the news and hot weather reminds me of the boiling frog concept in relation to global warming. The news has been full recently of angry people who are unable to go on holiday due to an air traffic control failure. Interesting. Next, officials are talking about expanding Heathrow airport. I’m concerned. Then the news concerned itself with falling birth rates being bad for the economy. Surely a good thing for the planet. This is a manifestation of the boiling frog concept. In 1976, I was concerned about our environment. I started out by working on my uncle’s farm (pictured above). In 1976 there were 36 occupied swallows nests in the barns and buildings. The...
About five years ago I had a discussion on with a local dairy farmer about feeding the world or saving the planet, our final chance. Which must we do first? Save the planet was and still is my answer and scientifically the correct answer, his was the opposite, biased of course in support of his industry. Since then things have changed, the Science has improved (of course, that’s what science does by definition) and the problems we face from climate change are far worse than we thought, even just five years ago. We need farmers who think. Is Anyone Listening? If we don’t take immediate and far reaching action we wont be able to grow food in anywhere near the...
This is the sad sad end of an ancient tree in Rushden and it is the completely wrong solution. This solution sets an awful example to our children and grand children. This is the sad end of an ancient Beech tree and cutting it down is completely the wrong solution. No doubt parts that can be salvaged will be burned as firewood compounding the error. If unsafe in a public park care should be taken for public safety by fencing it off and putting up a warning sign. Even judicial lopping of dangerous limbs is great but leave them where they fall. An Unnecessarily Abrupt End of an Ancient Tree This tree had another fifty to one hundred years to...