Earth Day 50 years on: we need a bridge over troubled water

by pennyurquhart | Apr 22, 2020 | climate change, climate change and health, environment, Uncategorized

  Wednesday, April 22nd, 1970, was a cloudy day in New York City, with a high of 64 degrees Fahrenheit. On that day in South Africa, the Nationalist Party led by B. J. Vorster had just trounced the far-right Verkrampte Herstigte Nasionale Party– the HNP – in a...

Can we still bend the curve on global emissions, while we flatline the coronavirus?

by pennyurquhart | Apr 3, 2020 | climate change, climate change and health, Featured, green economy, Uncategorized

Dominant and rampant, the coronavirus has conquered the fickle news cycle and is now whipping it up to ever-greater speeds. I have doubled my normal screen time but can barely keep up with shifting live feeds. How many cases now? Who is locked down, how, and where?...

Beira. Sofala. Manica. Gone, gone, gone.

by pennyurquhart | Mar 26, 2019 | climate change, climate change and health, Uncategorized

Late in the night on 14th March 2019, Cyclone Idai surged off the warm Indian Ocean and over the coastline of central Mozambique. Whipping up winds of 175 km/h, the cyclone, possibly the biggest in the region since 2000, roared across the coastal plain, picking up...

Camille Parmesan Part 2: Seeing a healthy ecosystem, alive and vibrant, helps me to be a happier person

by pennyurquhart | Jan 29, 2019 | climate change, climate conversations, environment, Uncategorized

This is Part 2 of my conversation with evolutionary and behavioural biologist Professor Camille Parmesan, of Plymouth University and the SETE/CNRS Ecology Centre in Moulis, France, in which Camille talks about the moments when she realised how severely climate change...

COP 24: A little tale about a big meeting in a small coal-mining region in Poland

by pennyurquhart | Dec 12, 2018 | climate change, COP 24, Uncategorized

We are now rolling into the second week of this year’s big climate change gathering, COP 24, being held in Katowice, Poland. If you are following the news – and able to detect the reporting beneath the high drama of Brexit – you know that things are a little rocky at...

Ani Tsondru Part 2: we are all strands of the immense tapestry of life

by pennyurquhart | Jul 26, 2018 | climate change, climate conversations, environment, Uncategorized

Part 2 of my conversation on climate with Ani Tsondru, Buddhist nun in the Tibetan tradition, continues her story after she had spent more than seven years in closed retreat in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Spain. Tsondru describes how the lack of a supportive...