Posts Tagged ecology

The National Trust is to celebrate reaching a 3.5 million-membership landmark by changing its focus. No longer will it just look after the buildings and artefacts that constitute our national heritage. Now it will “advise people how to adapt their lifestyles to climate change and challenge government to be more ecologically aware.” How is it beginning? By throwing its weight behind opposition against the expansion of Stansted airport.
As it so happens, there are a number of simple things that the National Trust could initiate in order to reduce its own ‘carbon footprint’, if indeed that is to be considered a genuine priority. The most obvious would be to eliminate the farming of animals on all its land. Since, according to the currently popular theory of anthropogenic climate change, world meat consumption is a large contributor to global warming, this would mean the National Trust would reduce its own contribution to climate change and be taking a principled stand for other landowners to follow. Indeed, they could set aside their land not for carbon inefficient British agriculture but to grow more forests to act as carbon sinks. Whether the National Trust will commit do doing this remains to be seen.

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