Tag Archives: green

The Importance of Green Spaces in a Locked Down World

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Image Credit: Mariia Honcharova, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped

Back to nature: Norwegians sustain increased recreational use of urban green space months after the COVID-19 outbreak (2021) Venter et al., Landscape and Urban Planning, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2021.104175

The Crux

Getting out and spending time in green spaces can have a number of benefits for people, which have been recently shown to include benefits for mental health. It can also foster a connection with nature, which can improve our relationship with the natural world going forward.

When the COVID pandemic hit last year, people all across the world were forced into lockdown. Yet in many places, getting out and spending time in nature was still an option. So did people in these areas increase their use of green spaces during the pandemic? And was this maintained after lockdown?

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5 Stages of Grief and the Australian Wildfires

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Image Credit: Bert Knottenbeld, CC BY-SA 2.0, Image Cropped

In case you’ve been living under a rock (in which case, stay there, there’s probably less smoke), you’ll know by now that Australia has experienced wildfires over the last couple of months that dwarf what California and the Amazon went through last year.

The Australian bush fires have been widely covered in the media, but let’s do a quick summary of the stats^. Earlier this week, approximately 73,000 square kilometres – around the size of Belgium and the Netherlands combined – have been burnt and over a billion mammals, birds and reptiles have likely been killed. Tragically, 24 people have died as of Monday, three of whom were volunteer firefighters.

So how has the nation – and the world – reacted? The spectrum has been vast, making analysing the reaction no easy task. So today I wanted to have a look at Australia’s (and in a sense the world’s) ongoing reaction to the Australian bushfires as per the Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief.

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Idealism and Environmentalism: The Green New Deal

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American politicians Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey, champions of the controversial environmentalist bill, the Green New Deal (Image Credit: Senate Democrats, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped)

If you’ve lost track of what’s going on in US politics (very excusable), you might have missed out on yet another issue that is dividing people. I’m not talking about the Mueller report, or gun legislation, or health care. I’m talking about the Green New Deal, named after the New Deal, a compilation of programs and projects that gave Americans jobs after the Great Depression and built quite a lot of infrastructure. The newest “Green” version is meant to do the same following the Great Recession that America has been suffering the aftershocks of since late last decade. An initiative sponsored by Democrats, the Green New Deal has come under fire from both sides for a wide range of reasons. While the movement for action against climate change is a global phenomenon, I am going to give a brief synopsis of what the Green New Deal represents in the US, and why it has been the subject of so much controversy.

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Rasmus Hansson: The Intricacies of Environmental Politics

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Rasmus Hansson, former leader of the Norwegian Green Party and the Norwegian WWF (Image Credit: Miljøpartiet de Grønne, CC BY-SA 2.0, Image Cropped)

Environmental politics is a tricky business. We live in a world where environmental crises are at the forefront of the news cycle, and in which science is simultaneously becoming the subject of distrust. So it makes sense that at this point, politics should be adapting and evolving as science does.

So when Rasmus Hansson stopped by NTNU last month, Sam Perrin and I took the chance to sit down with him and see whether this was the case. Rasmus studied polar bears at NTNU in the 70s, before later becoming the leader of the World Wildlife Fund in Norway and then of the Norwegian Green party. We spoke with Rasmus about the transition from conservation to politics, the clash of ideologies and the future of environmental politics.

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Does the Individual’s Fight For Sustainability Matter?

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Plastic manufacturers and fossil fuel corporations seem to be responsible for the majority of the environment’s problems. So can individual choices make a difference? (Image Credit: Jnzsl’s Photo, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped)

There seems to be a pattern of thought currently floating around regarding sustainable living. How recent it is, I’m not sure exactly. But the take home message goes something like this:

It makes no difference whether an individual tries to live sustainably, big corporations are the ones making all the difference anyway.

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