Underwater by 2050? Later this year Glasgow will host the annual United Nation
Climate Challenge COP26 Meeting of World Leaders (UN Climate Change Conference,
UK 2020). The timing and venue are appropriate since Scotland was one of the
first countries in the world to acknowledge the global climate emergency and
has since introduced the most ambitious target, to be carbon neutral by 2045,
five Read More…
The Fashion Scene of St Andrews and Interview with Emma Walsh, Sustainable Style St Andrews In February, St Andrews, the little town by the sea, turns in to a fashion hotspot on a global scale. Whether you are a student or briefly visiting, you can indulge in any of four fashion shows – Charity Fashion Show (FS), Dont Walk, Catwalk and VS 2020 Urban – as well as a number of smaller eventsRead More…
Scotland is famed for many things which include golf, castles, grouse moors, salmon, whisky, clans, haggis, tartan, bagpipes, green energy and, yes, oil and gas. All of these contribute to the national economy in a variety of ways, but with the Climate Emergency, the last two mentioned, oil and gas, are coming under the spotlight more critically. From the 1800’s Scotland’s coal industry was eRead More…
Working in Transition University of St Andrews, our job is to try and persuade folk to get out of cars and walk and cycle more, to improve their health and well-being using recycled bikes (eg. Bike Pool), to eat locally produced food instead of consuming imported food with high carbon miles (eg. Edible Campus), and despite Landfill Tax, to try and prevent items being trashed like tools (eg. Tool Read More…
Hi all! My name is Hanna and I’m a new volunteer with Transition. I was inspired recently after attending one of Transition’s “Climate Conversation” sessions. Climate Conversations is a group-facilitated discussion about climate change, and I highly recommend attending one! You can find out more here. During the Climate Conversation that I attended, one of the topics discussed was Read More…
Thank you to all 132 people who completed our Sept 2019 survey. This data is extremely useful in helping to direct our work and demonstrate to funders what people want. As a result Transition has submmit 2 bids to the Climate Challenge Fund: Local Food focusess on growing and food networks and we partner with the St Andrews Botanic Garden on this. The second bid is in partnership with the StRead More…
Can World agriculture, fisheries, aquaculture and forestry sustain burgeoning populations without habitat destruction, deforestation or species/biodiversity loss? In the late 18th century Thomas Malthus wrote ‘The power of the population is so superior to the power of the Earth to produce substance for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.’ (Wolchover,Read More…
With another couple of car-free days coming up for St Andrews in August, I have been pondering what my ideal city would look like. We all, I’m sure, harbour thoughts and ideas of what an ideal city would look like; would it be cycle friendly, car-free with leafy parks, a good public transport system and wide boulevard pavements with street art and street markets and ready access to good retail Read More…
Background The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio led to three Conventions a year later on Climate Change, Biological Diversity and Desertification Prevention (UN). Biodiversity can be defined as the variety of life on Earth, from the genes, species, communities, to ecosystems and processes that enable life to persist over time (SANBI). The main objectives of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) were tRead More…
By TransitionStA volunteer- Isabelle Low A Passivhaus in Fife – photo by Fiona Drummond I was prompted to write this piece by an article in the Sunday Times by Dominic Lawson, saying (accurately) that anything that we did in the UK would change only 1% at most of global emissions, most of which are produced by the USA and China. I agree with his data; I disagree fundamentally with his coRead More…
Pets have co-evolved with mankind for thousands of years. Domestic dogs were thought to have evolved from domesticated grey wolves in the Middle East around 15 000 years ago. Archaeological evidence shows dog bones together with human bones from 14700 years ago, but new evidence from a 35000 year old Siberian wolf bone suggests an earlier date of between 27 and 40000 years ago after the last Ice Read More…
With increasing evidence and media coverage on Climate Change and Global Warming brought on by anthropogenically produced CO2 in our atmosphere, we are well aware of the problems associated with the carbon economy, which is based on coal, oil and gas. But with what do we replace it? Electric power is great, but it is mostly still generated by burning hydrocarbons. If we could duplicate and harnesRead More…
