This is how to put a price on nature. If landowners and developers want to build houses in beautiful, open countryside, they must compensate for the loss of habitat and wildlife by providing a piece of land of equal or greater size nearby, then pay to manage and enhance it so it becomes as ecologically… Continue reading
Browsing Category Environment
King willow still leads the batting in 21st Century cricket
The summer’s test cricket programme is underway, and the purest form of the game, with the reassuring sponsorship of Waitrose, reasserts itself against those many upstart versions. But whether they play test cricket or T20, cricketers turn to essential and traditional tools, the most important of which is the bat. Older readers will recall the… Continue reading →
Wild Highlands life in a year of changing weather
A Bird’s Eye View of a Highland Year, by John Lister-Kaye. Canon Gate, £14.99 hardback, £12.99 e-book. Any preconceptions I might have had that this would be the standard “Year in the life of” nature book were summarily dispelled on page 3 of the preface. John Lister-Kaye has run the study centre at Aigas in the… Continue reading →
Fine electric bus, but Milton Keynes cannot match Europe’s public transport
The latest easyJet magazine extols Milton Keynes. It is certainly a city of energy and achievement, and it deserves to be recognised as a pleasant place to live and work, just 30 minutes by fast train to London, even if it doesn’t have many interesting conventional tourism features. It is in a good central position… Continue reading →
Tidal lagoon in Swansea could power 100,000 homes
This blog was first published in the spring of 2013. Swansea has its second chance to lead the world. Will it take it? 206 years ago the city launched the world’s first passenger railway. This week (April 8, 2013) a consortium announced a £10m “investment offering” to fund its proposal to build a “tidal lagoon”… Continue reading →
Is Swansea’s tidal lagoon the new pinup renewable scheme?
It was the pinup renewable energy project of the early 2000s, a barrage across the mighty Severn estuary. Second highest tides in the world, providing enough clean, green power to provide 5% of the UK’s energy needs. And a new 11 mile (15 km) road and rail link between England and Wales as well. The… Continue reading →