Exoteric environmentalism

My name is James Bonner, and I live in Glasgow, Scotland. I blog about my passion and main work interest: how environmental issues affect people, wildlife and the planet. I also specifically post about cycling and urban planning. There's more about me and my work at my website: www.couchtocairn.com and on twitter @jamesbonner82. If you'd like to speak about my work interests and projects, including on potential collaborations, email me at [email protected]. My other tumblr blogs: www.everywhereisnowhere.tumblr.com- photos of Scotland and beyond; www.interconnectednomad.tumblr.com- my cycling experiences; www.porridgeofknowledge.tumblr.com- throwaway blog about everything.

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Cycling to art: Glasgow’s Mural Trail 

I really enjoy discovering sites, exhibitions and examples of art and culture when I visit other places. It is also something I like to do in and around my own city and country. I find that my bike, which I use just as a regular means of travel, for sport and fitness, as well as for holidays and exploring, is a great way to access and experience art, both at home and abroad.

From wee day trips in Glasgow, to further afield in Scotland, and to multi-day tours in the Lowland countries, I’ve used my bike to access some great art and culture over a number of years.

One of Glasgow’s most recent additions to its rich art and culture is the city’s Mural Trail (see the council provided guide map and information here)- a  growing body of contemporary street art commissions around the city centre adorning various buildings and public spaces. 

With a number of the artworks featuring figures and stories associated with the city- from saints such as St. Enoch and St. Mungo, to architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh and comedian Billy Connolly- the murals are increasingly being recognised as a notable part of Glasgow’s artistic and cultural fabric. It really brings a smile to my face when I see a group of people, or an individual, stopping to take a picture or just admire one of the artworks. 

Importantly, for me, is that the best- and really only way to be able to appreciate the trail- is through ‘human level’ travel modes like walking and cycling. The murals are in relatively close proximity, a number of which are situated down alleyways and lanes, and so do not suit being visited by car. They are public art pieces best accessed by human forms of mobility.  

Last Saturday, the 22nd of September, was international car free day. Cities and places around the world closed off major streets and thoroughfares to cars and other motorised traffic, and opened them up to people and human powered mobility to take over. In Glasgow, Kelvin Way- a road in the city’s west end- took part. But while these single day events can be useful for demonstrating the benefits of human focused streets, they can sometimes pigeonhole sustainable mobility into to exclusive one off ‘events’. ‘Nice days’ that we have every so often when the wee people get a chance to have their fun, before the cars and other traffic return to take over as (what’s become) normal... 

I decided to take the chance to do the trail on my bike (with some examples of the murals, as well as some maps of my notepad planning and Strava route, in the images above) in addition to attending the festivities at Kelvin Way. Cycling the route was a really good way of accessing the murals. However, at the same time, I took note and made observations of some of the challenges of regularly having to mix with busy traffic to move between each artwork. Thinking to other places in which I have visited, not least ‘cycling heaven’ that is the Netherlands, I can only imagine how much more appealing and accessible the trail would be in a Glasgow city centre with better cycling infrastructure...   

Providing for human forms of mobility, such as cycling, is something that should be facilitated and prioritised in towns and cities. There are a range of sustainability benefits from designing and providing for sustainable mobility that can be incorporated into the everyday lives of people in towns and cities. Accessing art and culture is one such less obvious manifestation of this- and the Glasgow Mural Trail is both an example of the possibilities for accessing art by sustainable mobility, but furthermore a pointer to the vital improvements that are needed in the city.   

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“Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth...”

Images from article ‘Humans just 0.01% of all life but have destroyed 83% of wild mammals – study’ in the Guardian.

See previous Guardian graphics on the decimation of wildlife ‘The Last Legs’. (posted 3 years ago- and, where I understand we are now down from 5 to 2 Northern White Rhinos in that period...) 

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We generally think of ‘accounts’ as a set of financial transactions in a set period of time relating to a business or other organisation. However, here is an example of an account in a quite different format and style. The life of my favourite nearby tree, in a compilation of images taken over the first/last quarter of the year (like financial accounts are made up to)- from January to April 2018. (With the seasons being circular, not linear, whether it is the first or last quarter doesn’t really made sense...)

This, for me, is an example of how alternative sets of accounts can be developed to describe a place, or something within a place, over a period of time- but conveyed in a non-financial and non-quantified manner. We do not have to reduce nature to a financial figure to ‘capture’ its value- and any such financial valuation would miss what, for me, this set of images begins to describe. Indeed, there are many ways in which something, such as this tree, could be be conveyed in an account. 

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Reported here in the Atlantic, a new piece in nature journal indicates that in the last 3 years, half of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has died from coral bleaching. Human driven climate change is behind this.

There are a number of ways to talk and consider this- the causes, the impacts, who is responsible, what can be done (if anything), what does this signal for the future (there and other places), etc...

But, at a very human level, we should pause to consider how does this make us feel emotionally.

I have a nephew who is just 3. In his short lifetime half of the planet’s single largest living organism has died. That makes me very sad- and is not the world that I, and I am sure for many of us, want for our children to grow up in.

Image via Climate Signals

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Capacity of a street and poverty of place traps- cartoons by Ian Lockwood

This essentially comes down to design choices- and a decision on what type of urban environments we want. Without being too binary (ok- being quite binary...): Places for our communities and children. Places for cars.

And, again, this is not something that shifting to the touted panacea of electric vehicles is going to change. But, in many ways, just perpetuate...

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The latest information from UNEP shows that 80% of urban citizens breathe unsafe levels of air pollution. This is not just an environmental problem, but a very real social and health crisis- and is present across the world. And its root cause is one that it shares with the climate change problem- the burning of fossil fuels in various forms and situations.  

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As England considers the implementation of a bottle and can return scheme, in line with a number of other countries, this brilliant little cartoon by the Telegraph’s cartoonist ‘Matt’ gives some perspective on the wider issue of ocean plastic.

The bottle return scheme is a definite positive move, but are we moving too slowly and incrementally on this- and what for the impacts that have already been created?...

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Losing Lake Chad- another example of disappearing bodies of water across our planet

In previous posts I’ve highlighted the cases of drying up lakes in Asia and South America- the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan/Uzbekistan, and Lake Poopó in Bolivia (and, again, on the latter here).

This recent article from UNEP highlights the case of Lake Chad, on the border of Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad in Africa, that is suffering from a very similar story to these other examples. A significant loss in the lake’s extent (90% over the last 60 years) as a consequence of drought, overuse and climate change impacts has furthermore lead to the numerous intertwined social-ecological problems of water scarcity, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, food security, employment, displacement...

Local and regional cases from across the planet, but that point towards the very real impacts of climate change (that both drives, and is driven by, numerous other social and environmental issues) on our planet now- and in the context of the most fundamental of all resources for life: water.

(Notable these 3 case, plus some others, are depicted in this visual piece from the Guardian: The lakes of the world are disappearing- in pictures.)

Images: 

Top left- Lake Chad location from USGS

Top right- Kuri cattle breed, threatened with extinction from the drying lake- from UNEP article

Bottom- satellite images over time shoeing the fluctuation in water levels of Lake Chad over time from Les clionautes

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It’s heartening to note the significant change, of awareness at least, in the UK in the last few months towards the ‘plastic issue’. This is not to say we have, in any way, got around to dealing with it appropriately (or, importantly, many other similar environmental issues- not least, as I have regularly blogged about, the somewhat visually hidden problem of toxic air quality).

Nonetheless, this little infographic is a useful guide to some of the things that individuals can undertake towards this issue- and, thinking about it, so many of these are notably more commonplace in the UK even within a period of the last year. 

Of them all, number 7- slow down and dine [or coffee] in- is for me particularly significant. Stopping, sitting down in (or even better, outside) a cafe and enjoying being in a place and the food/drink you are having is valuable on many fronts. And designing our urban centres and communities in a way that allows for such positive experiences in central to placemaking and good urban design.      

Image from www.lessplastic.co.uk

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The term ‘ecosystem services’ can be problematic. Its performativity as being anthropocentric and managerialist, in which nature is reduced to a collection of services existing to serve humanity, is a very important issue to understand and consider. (What is more, in this case, the metaphor of ‘building blocks’ also infers a couple of other problematic ideas- that nature is inert and lifeless like blocks of dead wood, and that ‘mankind’ (also noting the unnecessary gendered term used in this image) sits atop (and separate) from the rest of nature (humans are natural after all...).)

Nonetheless, the fundamental point of the infographic is important. We, as humans, and our society (and by extension our economy) are intrinsically dependent on healthy and functioning ecosystems, which are underpinned by biodiversity. However, such biodiversity levels are drastically falling in places across the planet- undermining the ecosystems which they support.   

Image via United Nations Decade on Biodiversity

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Bitcoin and the embedded energy in a virtual currency

The Bitcoin cyrpto-currency has been discussed and mooted as a form or virtual currency that can potentially disrupt and democratise our current financial system- a system that is understood as being implicitly linked to our unsustainable global economy and at the root of environmental degradation and destruction.

However, recent stories have highlighted the significant energy consumption that is required to support the Bitcoin network- at a stage towards the close of 2017 as being comparable to that of the entire country of Ireland- while having local impacts such as in Iceland where it is overtaking domestic energy consumption. Seemingly (but unclear to what extent) connected to the value of the of Bitcoin, the rise of the currency looks to increasingly demand more and more energy. What is more, as this The Conversation article about Bitcoin in Puerto Rico highlights, places may be used as tax havens for the crypto-currency without offering any benefit to local people. 

The digiconomist site, in particular, provides some interesting information on the potential relative electricity consumption of the network. (At the time of writing, Bitcoin is, according to the digiconomist source, using a rate of 50 TWh per year- the equivalent electricity of the entire country of Portugal...) Bitcoin’s (and other cyrpto-currencies) huge demand on electricity is clearly at odds with the ideas of it being a disruptive technology that can unsettle our unsustainable financial and economic system and force the changes that are necessary to develop an economy that serves society and operates within environmental limits.   

One of the best views I have read recently is that by environmental anthropologist and political ecologist Professor Sian Sullivan from Bath Spa University in her recent blog  Nature 3.0 – Will blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies save the planet?- a piece that she summarises with the words:

Can new cryptocurrencies finance projects with positive environmental impacts, whilst unlocking ‘the $120 trillion natural capital market’? Mining cryptocurrencies through appealing to environmental concerns seems more consistent with speculative tendencies in an era of financialised neoliberalism, than attuned with practices of environmental care and equitable distribution of value. 

Image sources- Ireland and bitcoins: wirexapp.com. The rise of the Botcoin energy consumption: digiconomist.net

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On our economic system and connection to nature- Cartoon Ralph says it simply and most effectively...

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In addition to sketches of memorable places from around the world, these are a couple from places closer to my home in Glasgow, Scotland- the beautiful Hill House designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Helensburgh, and the UNESCO heritage site of New Lanark.

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A few more sketches of memorable images, and I find buildings or structures as/in places of worship particularly interesting to draw. These are of Lake Bled in Slovenia, Borganes and Vik in Iceland, and near Ulan-Ude in Russia.  

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Taking time to sketch some photographs of places visited is often a good way of reflecting on why they specifically retain in your memory. Here are views from 3 European cities (Ljubljana in Slovenia, Venice in Italy, and Gent in Belgium) that I remember fondly being in, and with a common focus on their canals and rivers.

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Green and fun- between Strathclyde and St Andrews Universities by train and bike...   

It was a beautiful clear few days in early February, and I had signed up for an event at St Andrews University to learn about some of the techniques and uses of ethnographic writing in academic research (a method of studying people and cultures from the point of view and context of a specific group or individual).

An approach mostly used by anthropologists and sociologists, it’s perhaps not one generally associated with accounting research. However, I suppose it indicates the interdisciplinary nature of my work, and where I hope to potentially consider the use of such techniques in my sustainability accounting research on water access in rural communities in Malawi.

I thought it would be nice to use some alternative and more sustainable means of transport to travel from my institution, Strathclyde University in Glasgow, to the event at St Andrews on the Scottish east coast- and, of course, in which I could incorporate my trusty bike. Understanding there were a couple of routes I could take, I had booked my bike on a train to Dundee (the need to book a bike on Scottish trains is variable depending on the route- it’s always best to check ahead) on the day before the course. A light flurry of sleet overnight in Glasgow had clearly been heavier out with the city, and a fresh blanket of snow covering the countryside and mountains, coloured by some late afternoon sunlight, is a bonus to a train trip in Scotland at this time of year. Alighting at Dundee I had the choice to then cycle the 25 km to St Andrews, or take a connecting train to Leuchars and pedal the shorter 10 km to the town.

With the sun fading, and keen for the chance to spend a little time in Dundee, I opted for the latter. Leaving my bike at the station, I walked along to the newly built V&A museum on the waterfront- which was looking especially handsome in the late sunshine as it awaits its opening later this year. One stop on the train across the Tay bridge (the road bridge can be cycled over) to Leuchars is a signposted and traffic-free cycle route (a combination of separate cycle paths and shared pedestrian and cycle pavements). Away from the road traffic this is a safe route to the town (but bike lights are nonetheless necessary if cycling at this time of year!).

After staying in the town overnight, a crisp cold morning was an ideal opportunity to make use of having my bike with me, and I pedalled down to the old harbour before heading for breakfast and then to the university via the ‘Home of Golf’s’ famous ‘Old Course’.

Following a full day of insightful sessions at the workshop, I could reflect on how I could potentially incorporate some ethnographically inspired research into my own work as I cycled back to Leuchars to catch an alternative train route via Edinburgh back to Glasgow. In doing so I met a fellow attendee from the day’s event at the station (I had managed to travel the 10 km to the train station quicker than her connection via bus from the town), and highlighting another benefit of travelling by public transport, we got the chance to talk about the course in relation to our individual research and work (Furthermore, we experience a lovely moment where 3 swans flew alongside our train as we travelled along a valley...)

However, connecting at Edinburgh did highlight one the issues with travelling by bike and train in Scotland. With our train having only 3 rather than 6 carriages as expected, capacity was tight for passengers and what is normally pretty restricted availability for bikes was further limited. While I got my bike on, other cyclists really struggled to board, and at least one individual had to be turned away. Arriving in Glasgow I then had the short cycle home- and had made it from the university in St Andrews to my house in under 3 hours. Not only had I undertaken a more sustainable means of travel that aligned with my institution and department’s recent increased commitment to sustainability practice by staff and students, but I had enjoyed what also had been a fun and memorable experience.

Images:

Top left: The impressive V&A museum in Dundee, to open later this year...

Top right: Pretty standard bike accommodation on trains in Scotland  

Bottom left: A beautiful sunset to cycle from Leuchars to St Andrews

Bottom right: Morning sunshine on the Old Course 

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A good sustainability related cartoon I saw this week, and one I’d happily add to some of my other favourites.

Furthermore, a colleague that I shared it with made an observation that I had missed, in some potential word play here. In business the idea of ‘return’ is something that we attempt to maximise (such as a ‘return on investment), and, as such, exceeding the point of NO return would be the objective...