by simon-b » Fri Nov 27, 2020 6:02 pm
To stay on topic, what is not deniable are the devastating effects climate events can have on hillwalking regions. Eg. the storms of late 2015 and early 2016 which caused the A591 in the Lake District and A93 in the East Highlands to collapse. Storms which also caused road bridges and walkers' footbridges to be washed away.
However, there is reason for debate when it comes to ways to tackle climate change, including those that affect hillwalking. Current technology makes all electric cars less suitable than traditional vehicles for long journeys in and to rural locations. Hopefully this technology will improve, but it has a long way to go in just 10 years. In the meantime, a strong school of thought says the environmental cost of scrapping an old traditional car plus producing a new electric one outweighs the environmental cost of running a petrol car. So I'll be running my 2016 Fabia as long as it continues to serve me.
Another issue relates to grazing animals on the hills, and consumption of meat and dairy in general. Maybe a worldwide reduction in meat production would cut carbon levels, but this does not mean a one-rule-fits-all for every part of the world. My daughter is a vegan, and I used to be vegetarian, now mainly pescatarian, so I respect each individual's choice of diet. But should people living in a place such as Great Britain really cut their consumption of home produced meat, dairy, eggs etc.significantly? There are complex issues here. The increased trend towards plant based diets in Great Britain, Europe, North America etc. has pushed up the prices of foods such as Ecuadorian quinoa and Kenyan avocados in the countries where they are grown, pricing local people out of their traditional staples. In South America, some populations who traditionally ate a lot of plant food have ended up finding it more affordable to live on meat based junk food. So an increase in vegetarianism and veganism in more affluent countries could be unwittingly contributing to increased rain forest destruction in South America. And talking of junk food, we are now being bombarded with aggressive advertising asking us to "save the planet" by consuming ultra processed plant burgers, sausages, nougats, 'milk' and so on. A healthy diet is a balanced diet, with the emphasis on natural, unprocessed or only moderately processed food and drinks. And from a variety of sources, both plant and animal. So eliminating ruminating animals from the British landscape would not necessarily cure the world's climate crisis or promote good health in the British population.
