Eco Blog - St. George's Berlin

  Heat kills people. This medical fact is well known, and older people are more at risk than younger. In economically well-to-do countries such as the United States, people retreat to their air-conditioned homes,  even though air-conditioning contributes to global warming and ultimately makes the problem worse. Utilities pleaded with people to turn down their air-conditioners  in order to protect the power grid. Protecting the environment is rarely part of the rhetoric. In Germany as in the UK, many people do not have air-conditioning, since it is traditionally unnecessary. The wealthy can afford it. Increasingly some feel it is a luxury that they cannot to do without, even if it makes the real problem noticeably worse. The Guardian reported on 12 June 2022 that: “A study in  the Lancet last year  suggested that 740,000 deaths in India a year could already be attributed to global heating.” ( LINK ) Most people in India cannot afford air-conditioning, and cannot ...

 Fridays for the Future is alive and well in Berlin. Here are some links for people who might want to participate: https://fridaysforfuture.berlin/ https://t.me/FridaysForFutureChat Some information is only available via Telegram. Please support Fridays for the Future for the sake of God's creation.

 On 6 July the European Union will decide whether to declare nuclear power and natural gas to be sustainable energy sources. An argument can be made, that they a could serve as interim sources in order to eliminate  coal and oil, but declaring them as “sustainable“ stretches the definition of the word. The declaration means that nuclear power and natural gas will get funds that ought to go to genuinely sustainable energy options. Here is a LINK to further information and form to express your concerns. 

Greenpeace UK warns: “  Shell wants to blast extremely loud shockwaves into the Wild Coast of South Africa, a fragile and beautiful ecosystem that is a vital whale breeding ground.  Each shockwave is louder than a space shuttle launch, and local whales, dolphins, sharks and turtles will be subjected to them every 10 seconds, for five months, in whale mating season.“  Here is a link to the Greenpeace UK petition: LINK Please help to preserve God’s creation.

  The EU commission want to define natural gas and nuclear power as sustainable, which would allow EU governments to keep on using them.  The WWF is planning to present a petition to the German government to prevent this, and need need 25 000 signatures by the end of today. ( LINK ).  Please sign if you can.

 Damian Carrington wrote an article in the Guardian on 3 June 2022 entitled "Car tyres produce vastly more particle pollution than exhausts, tests show;  Toxic particles from tyre wear almost 2,000 times worse than from exhausts as weight of cars increases." ( LINK ) The importance of this article is not merely that cars produce even more pollution, but that electric autos are also not pollution-free. He goes on to write: " The tests also revealed that tyres produce more than 1tn ultrafine particles for each kilometre driven, meaning particles smaller than 23 nanometres. These are also emitted from exhausts and are of special concern to health, as their size means they can enter organs via the bloodstream. Particles below 23nm are hard to measure and are not currently regulated in either the EU or US."  Eliminating the most toxic tires is one possibility, but the overall data is striking: "Used tyres produced 36 milligrams of particles each kilometre, 1,850 tim...

  An article in the Reuters newsfeed by Leah Douglas on" Food, farming and forestry must be transformed to curb global warming, U.N." says: " Protecting forests, changing diets, and altering farming methods could contribute around a quarter of the greenhouse gas cuts needed to avert the worst impacts of climate change, according to the United Nations' climate panel." ( LINK )  Protecting forests is a long term issue in Germany as well as in the UK. Of course it is not just European forests that need protection, but also those in Brazil and the Congo and elsewhere. It seems easy to persuade governments to sanction countries for invasions, but even restricting entrepreneurs within our countries from funding the destruction of forests seems to be challenging. Banks and pension companies will listen if enough people put pressure on them to fund environmentally  responsible projects. The personal decision to change diets should be easier, even though changing habits ...