Words About Things

The forthcoming Climate Change Conference has created a renewed interest in the effects our actions are having on our planet. Whilst some still doubt the link between pollution and Global Warming most of us are in agreement that something needs to change. We are lucky enough to live in a developed country with all of the lifestyle benefits which that entails. Unfortunately we must stop and consider the effects our lifestyles have on the future of the planet.

For live updates about the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference see the #cop15 Twitterwall.

Just making changes to our day to day lives isn’t enough of course, changes need to be made across the board. Despite this we can make changes to our day to day lives which, when repeated and copied by others will have a larger impact than we might first think. The climate change Copenhagen Conference is hoping to achieve world wide change particularly amongst the most polluting countries. It an also have the effect of making us more aware of what we can do as individuals.

The Guardian have created a Carbon Footprint calculator as part of their coverage of the Copenhagen conference. Whilst it is difficult to use and probably wildly inaccurate it does give you an idea of what small changes could reduce your output. You can adjust the sliders and see how your overall total is effected. you can also look at the US average and wonder what exactly they are doing over there!

Helena Christensen was one of the most recognizable supermodels of the 1990′s, she stared in the video for Wicked Game by Chris Isaak and was a Victoria’s Secret Angel. Now she has turned her hand to photography in order to document the effects of climate change in Peru. Her latest exhibitions is called Meltdown and focuses on the farmers and Alpaca herders of  the Peruvian alps.

Helena’s mother is Peruvian so she was keen to show how the environment in Peru is being effected by the pollution from more developed countries. She wants to highlight the effects of climate change on farming communities  as she feels that it is easy to get caught up in the scientific side of climate change and overlook the impact on individuals. she says the the effects of global warming are already visible in Peru:

In some pictures you can see a bit of snow but these were mountains that were, until 10-20 years ago, entirely covered. We saw firsthand how the rivers are drying out, and it’s raining less frequently so the sources of income the local farmers and alpaca herders have been living on for generations cannot be relied on.

An exhibition of Helena Christensen’s photographs will be shown at the Proud Gallery in London from November the 23rd. The exhibition has been organised by Oxfam who are trying to highlight the effects global warming in advance of the Climate Change talks in Copenhagen. The Copenhagen climate summit will be attended by delegates from 192 countries with the aim of establishing a new global treaty on climate change.

For more information on the exhibition see Oxfam’s Climate change page or the Proud gallery‘s website.

A recent study of  avian specimens in Australia has found that various species are becoming smaller over time. The research, which was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, shows that successive generations of birds have smaller wingspans.

Birds which live in warmer regions around the equator tend to be smaller than their counterparts in cooler regions. This helps the birds to conserve heat but now it appears that climate change has begun to have an effect on wingspans. As temperatures rise the average size of birds, such as the fairy-wren, is reducing.

“We show for the first time that the size of birds have changed geographically with rising temperatures. Birds of a size once found near Brisbane now occur near Sydney – seven degrees further south… Our study is important because it shows a generalized response to some major environmental change over the last 100 years, probably global warming.”

Dr Janet Gardner, of the Australian National University in Canberra

More details here.