The United Nations COP 29 meeting is taking place right now in Azerbaijan. As usual, it seems that the systemic change we need to see from countries right around the world takes place at the pace of a glacier. In fact it seems like the glaciers are melting away faster than we can react to them doing so!

​This is the fourth year in a row that all the snow in Scotland has melted away, including The Sphynx, the snow patch on Braeriach in the Cairngorms, which was considered to be permanent until just 20 years ago. Ian Cameron, the snow patch expert, says "it has now melted completely since the 1700s in the following years: 1933, 1959, 1996, 2003, 2006, 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024." This is only 11 times that the snow patch has melted away and six of those times were in the last 8 years.

There is no doubt that over the last 24 years of running our small guiding company, we have seen huge changes in seasonal conditions due to climate change. For many years it was easy to oversee these changes due to the inherent variability of the weather in Scotland. We've always had good winters and bad winters, dry summers and (more often) wet summers. But, even taking into account this natural variability and the short nature of our memories, it is absolutely clear that man made climate change is having an impact on all of us now.

What is less clear is what we should do about it. Several decades ago, big oil companies successfully shifted the emphasis onto us individuals, coming up with the term Carbon Footprint to make the discussion more about what we can do as individuals rather than what governments and oil companies should do.  In fact, by far the biggest levers we have to enact systemic change are voting and donating to effective climate charities.

Doing our recycling and changing to LED light bulbs will have very little impact on anything. If we were to follow the top three most effective lifestyle choices and we gave up a car, switched to a plant based diet and didn’t take a transatlantic flight, we would save approximately 6.2 tons of carbon per year. The average UK carbon emission per person is around 10 tons per year, so this would be a significant saving.

All of these actions are great initiatives and set a positive example for a better future, but they are far less effective than what can be achieved through legislation driven by governments that are willing to place the environment high enough on their agendas, helped by really effective charities.

This was all new to me before I went on a workshop delivered by Jennifer Stretton of Mieux Donner. Jen lives in Chamonix and works as an international mountain leader. She spends her summers guiding hikes in the Alps and her winters guiding ski trips in Finland. In conversations with her groups, she realised that the majority of people care deeply about climate change, but the situation seems so vast and hopeless that it causes anxiety and paralysis. 

This led her to take action and she founded Mieux Donner alongside Romain Barbe, in order to educate people about the most effective actions they can take to not only reduce their own carbon footprint, but make a huge positive difference in the world.
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There are concrete, evidence based actions we can all take to reduce our carbon footprint, but the issue is there’s a lot of conflicting information online leading to a huge mismatch between what most people think is effective, and what’s actually effective:

In her blog "​How to turn your climate anxiety into action" Jen says that the most effective action we can take is to donate to one of the six most effective charities that she lists. 

As an example, one of the most effective climate charities, The Clean Air Task Force worked closely with the European Commission to pass the landmark EU Methane Regulation last year. It’s estimated that regulations like this could achieve a huge 30% reduction in emissions from the oil and gas industry.

Another example of a highly effective charity is The Good Food Institute, who promote the development of plant based and lab grown meats. Alternative proteins are a particularly promising way of addressing climate change because livestock farming is responsible for around 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

In comparison to traditional carbon offsets which have little independent oversight, the most effective climate charities have been rigorously vetted by the world’s leading independent charity evaluators. Both Clean Air Task Force and the Good Food Institute for example have been independently evaluated by Giving Green to avoid 1 ton of carbon for every euro donated to them.

To put this into context, if you were to donate 170 euros a month to Clean Air Task Force or The Good Food Institute, your donation would mitigate more than 2000 tons of carbon in the atmosphere, equivalent to:

• Growing 60,000 trees for a year
• Avoiding 1,500 transatlantic flights
• 500 people going car free for a year

So, forget about carbon offsets, donate to these charities instead and vote with environmental sustainability at the forefront of who you vote for. The most effective associations in the field of climate change stand out for their ability to generate significant impacts thanks to their strategic approach. They prioritize political and technological interventions, creating powerful levers for reducing global emissions. Their approach is based on in-depth research and collaboration with various stakeholders to maximize results.

You can donate now! Click here.

Join Protect Our Winters and SEND IT for climate! 

The UK government committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, but even according to their own climate change committee we’re not on track, and this affects everyone.

The next elected UK government must make policy commitments that get us back on track to net zero. Policy commitments start with party manifestos, and you have the power to influence those manifestos!

We need the entire UK outdoor community to send a virtual postcard to stand up for the places we love! POW have taken care of the hard part - POW’s postcard outlines the policy commitments needed to get us back on track to net zero. All you need to do is fill in the blank sections. 

Send a digital postcard and get the UK back on track to net zero.

Want to send a physical card? Pick one up from select Ellis Brigham shops and we’ll send them for you.

Send a postcard and get the UK back on track to net zero 👇

https://protectourwinters.uk/send-it
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Mountain Guiding and the Climate Emergency

Members of the British Association of Mountain Guides have the privilege of climbing and skiing in mountains all around the world. With the highest worldwide mountaineering qualification, we enable others to get the most out of these beautiful places.

The increasingly obvious effects of climate breakdown are very apparent to us. We see them first hand in the shorter winters with less reliable snow cover for skiing and ice climbing in the UK and in Europe, and in the shrinking glaciers and very hot conditions now found in the Alps in summer.

Mountains are our passion and our workplace, but it can be difficult to know what action to take to help protect them. So the British Association of Mountain Guides is delighted to announce its partnership with Protect Our Winters.

Protect Our Winters helps passionate outdoor people become effective climate advocates to achieve systemic solutions to climate change, protecting our world today and for future generations.

Through Carbon Literacy Training we will gain a better understanding of the climate crisis. Accredited by the UN-recognised Carbon Literacy Project, these courses are tailored to the outdoors community, making them super relevant to us.

We will influence decision makers by supporting Protect Our Winters campaigns. Campaigns focus on renewable energy, electric transportation, green finance, and a managed decline of fossil fuel extraction.

​Protect Our Winters and British Association of Mountain Guides have the passion, information, and resources to make a difference now.

Sitting here in Fort William, looking out of my window at rain falling on the summit of Ben Nevis in the middle of February makes me very sad. When I moved to Fort William 27 years ago we had some very snowy winters and some very poor winters for climbing and skiing. But even the poor winters back then were nothing like we have been experiencing in the last few years. Climate change is certainly making a very clear impact on the volume of snow we get as well as the depth and duration of the thaw periods. 

For the entire time I have lived here I have enjoyed very regular days out in the mountains that surround Fort William, and especially Ben Nevis. When I first moved here I did not intend to stay here for good. It was a means to an end, a place that I needed to live to get the winter climbing experience that I needed to gain the British Mountain Guide qualification. I was close to moving to the Alps, to France or Switzerland, or even to Canada. However, having lived here for a few years and thinking about where I wanted to raise my family, Louise and I decided that we should stay. We had already developed a real connection with the community and the landscape here, and we did not want to lose this.

Over the years since, my connection with the landscape of Lochaber has strengthened to such an extent that I care very deeply about it. I cherish my time in the mountains and wild places of Lochaber, I have a relationship with them and I am learning how the natural systems work. I also notice the changing seasons every year, and the changes between the years. There is no doubt that change is happening.

It is very difficult for each of us to recognise long term changes when the weather and ground conditions have always been so variable and changeable. For many years I said that it is impossible for us to see any long term climate changes because our memories are short. This is still true but the changes are now so obvious that it is hard to miss them. In addition we have very good weather data from stations on Aonach Mor (within Nevis Range ski area) which show the same conclusions. We get occasional updates through the  SAIS Lochaber Blog including this one from a couple of week ago - https://lochaberblog.sais.gov.uk/2023/01/a-wet-thaw/

Of course we also have just about every climate scientist on the planet telling us that climate change is happening at an alarming rate and that we must do everything we can to slow it down. Last year 2.1m people in Pakistan were left homeless because of floods that covered 10% to 12% of the land area of Pakistan. The floods affected 33m people. Imagine half the population of the UK being affected by floods all at the same time and you will get an idea of the scale of the crisis they faced due to heavier than usual monsoons and greater glacier melting due to climate change.

Here in the UK (and in the rest of Europe and North Africa) we experienced a record breaking heatwave with the highest temperature record of 40.3°C being measured on 19th July. It was declared a National Emergency after a red warning was put in place by the Met Office.

Just a few days ago, Shell reported record annual profits after energy prices surged last year following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Profits hit $39.9bn (£32.2bn) in 2022, double the previous year's total and the highest in its 115-year history. All of the oil companies plan to spend millions of dollars every single day from 2021 to 2030 on new oil and gas projects which will release 646 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions.

​The global carbon budget for having a 50% chance of keeping under 1.5°C rise is 500 billion tonnes.

Norwegian oil giant @Equinor just announced record profits of £62,000,000,000. That’s more than double what they made last year and the highest EVER in Equinor’s entire history. Despite Equinor’s green rhetoric, this very same company wants to develop an oil field that will create as much emissions as the 28 poorest countries do in a year. If Rosebank is approved, Equinor and partners are set to receive more than £500 million in tax breaks from the UK government to develop the field.

So, if the oil companies continue with their plans, we will far exceed the CO2 emissions we need to keep under to maintain some kind of limit on climate change just by themselves. This does not include all the other emissions of CO2 we produce in other ways.

So, what can we do?

The first thing to do is to learn the facts about the problem. Recently, I did a Carbon Literacy Course delivered by Protect Our Winters and I highly recommend it. Carbon Literacy Training is designed to give anyone an awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities, and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions on an individual, community and organisational basis. From a position of knowledge we can act and discuss the issue far better. I now understand what my personal emissions are, where they come from and how I can reduce them.

Next up, think about your banking, savings and investments. While we are out climbing and skiing, our savings and investments (in our banks and pension funds) are possibly going towards oil and gas projects. You need to check if your money is being used for projects that you are happy with. Have a look at Bank On Our Future to find out more. Changing bank is easy and free, and using a different bank will have little impact on your life but it could have a great impact on our future.

Then think about checking whether your local council has its pensions invested in the right place. Despite 75% of local UK councils declaring a climate crisis, they collectively hold investments of nearly £10 billion in fossil fuel funds. The money that’s meant to be securing our future, is destroying it. But you can change that by writing to your council and asking them to change this. Have a look at the Protect Our Winters Divest The Dirt Campaign.

This was first posted in February 2021 but it's exactly the same now.

​While I was out for a walk recently I was talking about how helpless I feel about being able to do something about our impact on the planet. I feel like I can't do anything meaningful to help reverse human impact on climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, plastic waste and extreme weather events. Our climate emergency seems like such a huge problem it is difficult to see how anything I can do on a personal level will change anything. Why do I bother trying to recycle plastic when there are huge floating islands of it in the oceans and when supermarkets are increasing their plastic usage, not decreasing it. It seems like all the power to change things for the better lies with big corporations and governments. What difference can I make against such a massive problem? 

With COP27 in full swing and dire warnings (again) about our lack of action to tackle the climate crisis, it's hard to know what to do that will make any difference. But, there are things we can do, and we should do everything we can, even if it is just to say to ourselves, honestly, that we tried.

First of all, let's talk about it. Make it normal to talk about issues of climate change, pollution and our impact on the planet, as well as ideas of what we can do to help turn the tide. It is a big and scary subject and it is easy to fall into very depressing conversations about the most recent evidence of our destruction of the environment. So, let's talk about what we can do, share ideas and knowledge, make it normal to want to become sustainable as a population, and as individuals. One person's effort is tiny in the big scheme of things, but when everyone makes the same effort the change is huge.

​Connect with nature. Not just a walk in the woods on a Sunday afternoon listening to a podcast. I mean make a real connection with nature. Doing stuff in nature like biking and climbing is very good but still might not create a real connection. Slow down, look at the details, study how they change through time, note when the snowdrops burst up through the ground, when the daffodils bloom, how many bees you see. Even in an urban setting, there are trees to become friends with, "weeds" (AKA wild flowers) that grow in the most unlikely places pushing their way through tarmac and cracks in the concrete. Learn about habitats, land usage and management. Ideally, grow stuff. Growing your own vegetables is a fantastic way to create a real connection with nature and has the additional benefit of reducing food miles. You can grow herbs on a windowsill, tomatoes on a balcony, potatoes in bags. You don't need very much space at all, but if you do have some garden space make the most of it. The value of garden and green spaces has been highlighted through lockdown so let's maintain that and nurture them.

The impact of global climate change and our impact on the planet is seen through nature and our open spaces, as well as changes in weather, especially in extreme weather events. To be able to see these changes and feel how they might impact us on a personal level, we need to have a personal connection with nature and our landscape. It's not surprising that we, as a population, have become completely disconnected with nature when modern lives deliver everything we need and everything we want at a touch of a screen. It's natural to want to make lives easier for us, but ultimately it is not healthy. Our disconnect with nature is a fundamental problem that needs to be tackled. ​

Change banks. Many mainstream banks continue to invest in unsustainable industries such as oil and coal. Barclays and HSBC have collectively invested over £149 billion in coal, gas, oil, tar sands and fracking since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015, making them the 7th and 12th worst banks in the world respectively, and the two worst in Europe, for financing climate change. By moving our banking to an ethical bank, and writing to tell the banks why we are moving, we can demonstrate what our priorities are and change what investment there is available for different industries. Once you have changed banks (with a seven day switch guarantee) there is little or no impact on you other than knowing that your savings are being put to good use.  Have a look at bankonourfuture.org/

Stop wasting food. Each year, one third of food produced in the world goes to waste, and it is responsible for 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions. This is a stunning statistic and one that horrifies me and puzzles me in equal measure. In my house, we buy what we need and eat it all. There is very little food waste at all, and the peelings and food scraps we do get rid of go into a compost bin and into the vegetable patch. Reducing how much food we waste would have a huge impact on the greenhouse gas emissions we are each responsible for. Research conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organizaton of the United Nations from 2013 estimates that if food waste was a country, then it would be the third highest emitter of GHG emissions. Each year, we waste 1.3 gigatons of edible food and this releases 3.3 gigatons of CO2 equivalent (without taking into account land use change). Buy what you need and make use of produce about to be thrown out if you can. Try this - https://toogoodtogo.org/en/

​Eat less meat and be happy to pay more for good quality, locally sourced meat. Check where your fruit and vegetables come from to eat produce grown closer to home, and eat fruit and vegetables that are in season. In Fort William we are lucky enough to be able to buy venison from Jahama Highland Estates and all sorts of produce from local crofts through Food Lochaber. Do some research, you might have similar producers near you - https://www.farminguk.com/ - but remember that local doesn't always mean better. It's hard enough trying to work out what to eat to stay healthy, never mind trying to work out what to eat to keep the planet healthy. Soil is currently being destroyed 10 times faster than it is being created. The UK has lost 84% of its fertile topsoil since 1850, with the erosion continuing at a rate of 1cm to 3cm a year. It's a huge subject and there are no single, straightforward answers. If you want to learn (a huge amount) about it have a look at the Sustainable Food Trust. ‘Kiss the Ground’, currently streaming on Netflix, has huge relevance for the massive environmental and health problems we face today and gives a nicely balanced view on food production. It's a really engaging film, easy to watch, and is highly recommended.

Hire kit and don't fall victim to fashion. If you ski for a week or two each year, do you really need to own a full set of ski gear? Would that cupboard in your house be more useful to you if it didn't have all that stuff in it doing nothing for 50 weeks of the year? It's the same with winter climbing gear. It also makes a lot of sense to travel with fewer bags and kit. And just think about whether we actually need a new jacket in this year's colours when last year's jacket is still working well. https://www.scottishmountainhire.co.uk/

These are all pretty easy things to do that have little impact on your daily life. You can be an eco-warrior without having to look like one! But that's the point, isn't it? We all have to do our bit, it's mainstream, it's normal. Doing something to help the human race live sustainably on this planet is something we all need to do. We can't rely on other people to do it for us. We all need to do our bit.