141 Madeira Consorcio meeting 16.3.2024
Mar 17, 2024 at 11:59 am | Posted in Posts | Leave a commentTags: climate change, Funchal, lyn stoler, Madeira, madeira consorcio, sustainability
We met in the Gallery and saw
Eco-anxiety to Climate Optimism | Lyn Stoler |
Other good talks:
We WILL Fix Climate Change! Animation
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The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it | Katharine Hayhoe
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3 Ways Your Money Can Fight Climate Change | Veronica Chau | TED
Lyn Stoler spoke about Eco-Anxiety and how to combat it. Some of the numbers she came up sounded unreal.
Maybe we should rather use the term “sustainability”. H & J already practise this in their Quinta B. (Wash-balls for the laundry, refilled soap etc for guest rooms, cleaning with self-made products based on lemon and vinegar,… H made a Blog entry about it (www.madeira-time.com in German).
The Anglican Holy Trinity Church has a gold certificate for sustainability from the home administration in the UK. They even have an “ecological” person to watch over things. The wafers are made of flour and water. Our suggestion: Add a bit of sugar, and more people will come to church…
Germany is seen to be able to reach 50% use of alternative energy sources by 2030. The underestimate their progression.
S. and her brother started a permaculture system on their land in Neves. As part of it, they want to install moisture nets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_collection) to collect moisture from the clouds /fog to water the plots. This is being already done in many South American countries in high areas with low water supplies. The water in Neves will contain more salt; they will see how it goes. Our suggestion: make a report about it, also for publication in www.madeira-weekly.com , and we will visit Neves with the group once the project is more advanced.
Lots of initiatives – reason for optimism!
The result of climate change on the island: More and more, the Pombo Trocaz and blackbirds are descending from the mountains to Funchal. Sea weed arriving on the beach in Porto Santo causes increased breeding of mosquitos which by now, can bring diseases (Madeira had four imported cases of Dengue recently.)
Bad news: Our wind turbine pylons are corroding with time; one already fell over. But they will be replaced, they bring money.
The water from the source in Porto Santo cannot be sold anymore, it now contains too much salt. The tap water in Funchal is drinkable, the water in Canico de Baixo tastes awful
Cl. said that we probably reached the 1.5% heating threshold in 2023. The ocean water seems to heat up faster than the air. The scientists do not know what this means. The AMOC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturning_circulation) may be breaking down soon, until 2030, or earlier. In this case, it would get very cold in the UK, but Madeira would not be affected that much.
Sustainability: houses with flat roofs should be painted white, to reflect the heat, or have solar panels or be greened. Rivers need bigger floodplains.
There are already initiatives which supply solar cookers to poor regions in the Third World. Hopefully, people there have something to cook.
South Africa is erecting a border fence to Mozambique; they are trying to stop the people from that country to come to SA as climate refuges.
Cl. said that they stopped using solar panels on their house in SA because they would be stolen. M.J. said that in his last Church in the UK, the lead from the roof was stolen once. In Funchal recently somebody stole copper from a place. How do the thieves sell it? They couldn’t get it through the airport, it is probably shipped to the mainland by boat to be sold there.
Cl. said that AI may come up with way to fight climate change that we do not envision yet.
Burial: The Farsi have Towers of Silance (https://iranparadise.com/zoroastrian-towers-of-silence/) where bodies are deposited. The bones which are picked clean by vultures are then buried later. UGH
Anyway: we should not talk of “climate change” but “sustainability”, and every citizen can do his small part.
122 Madeira Consorcio Meeting 23.10.2021
Oct 24, 2021 at 3:12 pm | Posted in Posts | Leave a commentTags: climate change, Consorcio, Madeira, nature, Portugal
We met in the Gallery as usual and watched this talk:
The Talk is about the fact that we define Nature too narrowly as a system that hasn’t been touched by humans. Nature can include reforested and replanted areas; new ecosystems develop in such areas as well. Weed is not necessarily bad.
C. said that Cistercian and Franciscan monks in the middle age, who farmed large spaces of land for the church, were instructed to leave a third of the land “wild”
In Germany, the farmers are instructed to leave the side-lines of their fields untamed so that wild plants can grow there and provide at least a small space for insects and other wildlife to settle there.
Rewilding:
Here is a link with more information:
In Portugal, a space on Vale do Côa is supposed to be re-wilded
https://rewilding-portugal.com/pt/oeste-iberico/
It makes no sense to cut trees into shapes, just because we find it better. Trees should grow unhindered in the shape they need to be in.
Apple trees should be used to grow apples for juice, if they cannot be eaten. This potential should not go to wasted even if the product is a bit more expensive.
The other issue the speaker has is that children like to have wild nature to touch it and be in it. They have a right to find such spaces, not to be confined to State parks where they cannot interact with nature because it has to be protected. If humans interact with nature, they do so as a part of nature.
The Plumbago at the entrance of the Gallery is such a “wild space”.
There used to be many partridges on the island as well as rabbits and ferrets. They used to be hunted. Now, rabbits were re-introduced in the forest, only in order to be fodder for hunting…
Invasive species can be bad (the eucalyptus seeds are bad, and the trees grab too much water) but they also may very well turn out to become a blessing later (medicinal plants, protection for trees against specific insect threats etc).
Climate Change:
The 2021 COP – United Nations Climate Change Conference – will take place on Oct 31 in Glasgow. Avaaz will certainly ask for signatures or donations to pressure World Leaders to do something useful about the problem (I will forward the Avaaz message to you when it comes around, Ursula)
Russia and China didn’t get the message yet but more and more industry leaders are talking about strategies that respect nature and include it in their development of new products.
It will come down that we’ll have to curtail our personal footprint as much as possible. Medium distance flights within a country, for example, will have to be forbidden.
Other stuff:
Portugal got some refugees from Afghanistan, the female musicians from Zohra orchestra. There is a link to one of their concerts:
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