Talk on Laudato Si

In November I gave a talk at St John's in Bath on the relevance and importance of Laudato Si - the Pope's encyclical on the environment.  I was asked to give an overview of the text as the world's leaders gathered to discuss their response to climate change in Paris.

Laudato Si talk by Mary Colwell

Sex On Earth - A Review

Sex On Earth - A Celebration of Animal Reproduction by Jules Howard

This is a very enjoyable read.  Many books about natural history fall into one of two camps.  They can be rather dry and anoraky, a bit more like train spotting manuals for geeks rather than written from a place of joy. Or, they can stray into Posers Corner and try too hard to be meaningful and clever - too arty - conjuring contorted associations and mystical images and far too often they seem mournful and somewhat tortured.  These are of course extremes, but not many fall easily into the middle section of factual and fun. This book does, and that is what I like about it so much, natural history could do with some more humour and irreverence.

Sex On Earth is written for anyone who likes animals, who is interested in how life carries on and isn't too squeamish about terminology.  Spanning the intimate encounters from mites to pandas, racehorses to ducks the private bits of the animal world are put on full show.  Your head will reel at the diversity of appendages males have developed and the physiological tricks a female's body can employ.  You will never dismiss a mite again as boring and you will look more tenderly upon the jackdaws blocking up your chimney.

Jules laces his text with personal insights about science and scientists which are sensitive and intelligent. He really likes and admires the range of academics he interviews and who let him peek into their weird world of observing and analysing animal sex.  Does Dr Chris Wilson really have a hand knitted rotifer on his desk?  Does Sharon Flint, the caddisfly genitalia expert, really look like a gothic princess?  Jules laments the passing of the hands-on skills of naturalists of old and the lack of contact with nature that is so talked about today.  If only children knew more about the mating strategies of sticklebacks and slugs they would not need a smart phone to amuse them.  He is saddened by the progress of science which looks like it might render as obsolete those who possess the manual dexterity to prize apart the genitalia of insects under a microscope.   A shame to lose such people, the odd bods who find the minutiae of life infinitely fascinating.

This book could only be written by someone who loves nature in all its strangeness, grossness and beauty.   Jules really does love life, the pages smile at you and ask you to come on in and be amazed at the extraordinary ordinary creatures that pepper our daily lives. Slugs and fruit flies, dogs and ducks may be unremarkable fare but their sex lives are far from ordinary.

There are many interesting observations about science, such as the seeming obsession with male sexual organs and by comparison the little interest in female ones.  Why?  Will that change as the gender balance in scientists gradually shifts to being more female?

There is a frank and explicit discussion on the sex supremos -bonobo chimps - the porn stars of the animal kingdom - but Jules sensibly pulls short of going on to talk about us. So many have done so in the past and it is a cheap trick. Each species is unique and comparisons are hollow.

Jules is a fine scientist and a skilled writer.  Sex is a fun topic under his pen.  If I have one quibble Jules - I HATE the phrase ""to knock her up" but that is my only quibble and a personal one.  Have a good time reading this and I guarantee the world will seem sexier and more intriguing when you do.

Climate Change Science

Deforestation in Brazil

The inevitable backlash against climate change is gathering pace. First we had the revelations about exaggeration and bias in research on climate science from the University of East Anglia, then the disappointment of Copenhagen and now even more pressure on UEA about withholding emails and contravening the freedom of information act. Suddenly a cloud of suspicion is cast over all the science that so many have taken to be the incontrovertible evidence that the earth is warming and we are heading for disaster. The widely perceived failure of Copenhagen showed that the governments of the world could not agree on something they all say is of vital importance - so maybe it isn't? Perhaps the whole thing is hyped up?

Ever since I began to think about environmental issues I have worried about the intense concentration on a single issue, big as it is. Concern for global warming has taken such a precedence that it has dominated environmental news and the concerns of government and civil society alike. It is as if climate change=the environment.

Obviously a change in behaviour such as recycling and so on is excellent in many ways because our profligate western lifestyle has to change - but there is a huge negative side to seeing care for the earth as a single issue based on how much CO2 we emit.

A total consensus on any single concern is rare, but when that issue involves changing the economy, the balance between north and south and a huge shift in industrial and domestic energy use, then it is bound to create division. Vested interests become a driving force, camps for and against vie for column inches and attention and every aspect of the issue comes under scrutiny. And when the outcome of a warming earth is portrayed as utter catastrophe then those of us in the middle will, not surprisingly, find comfort in any doubts raised.

The main problem now is that because climate change is "the environment" it will become very much more difficult to raise concerns for other environmental issues if it is dismissed as mass fraud.

This was all so inevitable and all very depressing.

I don't know about the University of East Anglia and what it did and didn't do, but hopefully the legal process will sort that out. If it acted improperly then I hope those culprits are punished. But what I dread is that the dust thrown into the air about climate change will turn people away from the wider picture - that we misuse the earth on many levels, not just the amount of CO2 we produce - and that we have to change to put right what is going wrong.

Over fishing isn't to do with climate change, destroying habitats, degrading soils, pulling down forests to replace them with monoculture isn't to do with climate change. Putting pollutants in the fresh water systems and the oceans isn't climate change and building dams across most of the rivers of the world isn't climate change. Building on greenbelt, pulling down hedgerows, using large amounts of pesticides, concreting over wetlands isn't climate change. All of these do immense harm, wipe out species and degrade our earth. The effect of continuing to ravage the earth will be lack of fresh water for all, difficulty in producing food, a depleted ocean (and therefore fish to eat) and unknown problems with access to new medicines. We will not be able to pollinate plants or cleanse water - or carry out the many other "eco-system services" that we take for granted and that are provided free of charge by the earth.

E.O Wilson, the great Harvard biologist, talks about the evolution of the earth seeing the end of the age of the fish, then the end of the age of the reptiles and now we are now coming to the end of the age of mammals and entering the age of loneliness. We will live in an impoverished world where only humans relying on science and technology and a few scavengers will survive.

There is so much to care about and so much we have to do to change our perception of what the earth is for. Even if the climate change scientists have exaggerated, even if glaciers take a hundred years to melt not fifty and so on, we still have to change our lifestyles, reduce our consumption and undergo a dramatic change of heart, because all environmental issues depend on us reducing our assault on the ecosystems and resources of the earth.

And as for unscrupulous science - there have always been unscrupulous scientists, as we have seen with the MMR fiasco, but simply because some are charlatans doesn't make all medical research suspect and wrong. It is the same for climate change science.

I hope we won't be put off course by this worry over East Anglia and I hope we keep our eye firmly on the ball. Concern for the earth is not just acting on climate change, it is much, much more than that.