Better Planet
Education’s Blog

Yesterday the World Meterological Organisation (WMO) announced that levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) were at the highest level ever recorded during 2012. Last year there were 393.1 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere, an increase of 2.2ppm on 2011 and 141% of the atmospheric CO2 level in the year 1750, when CO2 was at 278 ppm.

Arctic ice volumes were at a new low this winter. The European Space Agency's radar satellite, Cryosat has been observing the volume of the ice in the Arctic for the last three years. It estimated that there was a little under 15,000 cubic kilometres of ice in March/April 2013, when the ice is at its thickest. This is less than half the amount of ice there would have been just 30 years ago. The ice was thinner than usual this year, and thickness is more important than just the area the ice covers, which previously has been the measure used.

The World's largest solar boat has recently docked in London. The MS Tûranor Planetsolar is 35 metres long, is up to 24 metres wide when its solar panels are fully extended and weighs in at 100 tonnes. It can hold a crew of up to nine people and is powered by twin 60kW electric engines, which are capable of propelling the vessel to speeds of up to 14 knots (26 kmh, 16 mph). With its panels fully extended, it has 512 square metres of solar panels, which are capable of generating 1,000 Watts per square metre.

Still higher radiation readings have now been discovered at Fukushima. Levels of 2,200 millisieverts have now been recorded at ground level near some of the water storage tanks surpassing the 1,800 Millisievert levels recorded on Saturday.

The Japanese government has today announced that it will be contributing around £300M to build a wall of frozen earth around the damaged and leaky nuclear plant at Fukushima. The idea, which has never been tested, is that massive metal cooling rods will be sunk deep into the earth surrounding the plant and that these will freeze the soil in a ring around the plant, which will prevent any radiactive water, currently leaking at a rate of about 300 tonnes a day from leaching into the groundwater or indeed into the sea.

I have been watching developments at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan with increasing horror, but not much surprise over the last couple of weeks. Radioactive water had been discovered leaking from at least one of the water storage tanks that are gradually increasing in number around the reactor. The water is used to cool the fuel rods in the reactor, at a rate of 400 tonnes per day. Once it has come into contact with the fuel rods, it is highly radioactive and needs to be stored for processing to remove some of the more dangerous elements. So more and more water storage tanks are being built and there are now around 1,000 on the site.

Sustainable travel is a big concern for many of us. We often choose to live some distance from where we go to work or school. Whilst a century ago, people thought nothing of a five mile walk to work, nowadays, we just don't have enough spare time to do all that walking. There's always so much going on and we're in too much of a hurry.

As of yesterday, all fuel sold at forecourts in the UK has to contain 5% biofuel, thanks to an EU Directive. Good news for the environment? On the face of it, yes. When we burn biofuels, it is carbon that was absorbed from the atmosphere by the crops used to make the biofuel that gets released back into the atmosphere. So, carbon neutral fuel, yes? Well, no actually. You see, you also have to take into account the use of fertilisers and farm machinery when the crops are growing and the refining process needed to create the fuels. And even more importantly, to make room to grow more biofuels, rainforests have already been destroyed and peatlands drained.

When we look for the best ways to protect are environment, the answers are often complicated. Take for example the electric car. On the face of it, an electric car would seem to be far less polluting than a petrol or diesel one. After all, the car itself produces zero emissions, so it must be better, right? Well, in terms of direct emissions from the car, yes it is.

I was at a screening at the House of Commons today of model and actress Lily Cole's new film ‘Lily Cole's Amazon Adventure', which will be shown on Sky Arts 1 later this month. It's a great film, featuring some beautiful and highly evocative camerawork and a thought provoking narration from Lily herself. A big feature of the film are the people who live in the rainforest and who are learning how to make the forests worth more to them standing than they are when cut down. Living sustainably in the rainforest is now something that the Brazilian government , working with organisations like WWF is trying to promote.

Now this could be something very special. A small British company based in Stockton-on-Tees is producing petrol refined from the carbon dioxide and water vapour that's naturally present in the air. They haven't got much of the stuff so far – only five litres – but they reckon they can have a commercial-scale plant producing a tonne of fuel per day up and running within two years.

I was really saddened today to hear about the death of Terry Nutkins, one of YPTE's Presidents, who I have known for many years. I remember some highly amusing lunches that I had with Terry, accompanied by the great Johnny Morris, Terry's co-presenter on Animal Magic and an amazing ambassador for animals. Terry loved life and had a great sense of humour. He and Johnny in the same room meant that anyone else there was going to be spending a lot of time laughing.

We had a fabulous day at London Zoo on 20 June with around 100 children who were representing the four Regional Champion schools in the Total Green School Awards 2012. The schools were: English Martyrs RC Primary School, from Long Eaton in Derbyshire; Turners Hill C of E Primary School from Turners Hill, near Crawley; Castle Park Primary School from Caldicot, Monmouthshire and Longhaven Primary School from Longhaven, Aberdeenshire.

It has been a bit quiet here at the YPTE blog for a few weeks. Well, here's why: At the start of May, most of YPTE's staff team were involved with an Environmental Discovery Course for 54 Year 5 children from St Thomas of Canterbury RC Primary School, Guildford. I think it's the 23rd consecutive year that the school has been coming away with us and believe it or not, I instructed on the very first one and most of the others since! The weather could have been kinder to us, but the children had a great time (as did the adults!) and learned a great deal about the natural world and about the importance of heritage and history in the environment too.

I've been reading today about a new book, ‘Prosperity without Growth', which has been written by economist Tim Jackson, who is Economics Commissioner for the Sustainable Development Commission. It sounds full of really interesting ideas about today's society and how we need to change. He argues that our government and media are fixated by economic growth and by rises on the stock markets. If our economy isn't growing, the perception is that we're getting less prosperous, and that's bad. If stocks and shares are low, pension funds do less well, meaning that we have less prosperous pensioners, and that's bad too.

Supermarket chain Sainsbury's is launching a new line in loo roll. The cardboard tube inside is having its diameter reduced from 123mm to 112mm, but the number of sheets on the roll will remain the same at 240 and both the cardboard and the paper are Forest Stewardship Council certified, meaning that they are coming from sustainably managed sources. The impact of the new slimline rolls is a big reduction in CO2 emissions, which is achieved by using less cardboard, less packaging and through reduced transportation costs. More of the slimline rolls will fit on a truck, so less HGV journeys will be needed to transport them.

Some great news today for the environment. Sales of low emission cars are growing in the UK. In fact, almost 47% of new cars sold in 2011 emitted less than 130 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre travelled. To give an idea of how much of an improvement that is, in 2007 just 10.6% of new cars sold emitted less than 130g CO2.

There has been a trend in recent years to outsource certain elements of UK businesses to operations overseas. Customer call centres are perhaps the most notorious example. Worryingly, it seems that UK consumers have been doing the same, but with the things they buy and the result has been that our carbon dioxide emissions are effectively being outsourced too.

It would seem that fracking (the hydraulic fracture of shale rock to recover shale gas) is to be permitted in the countryside near Blackpool in the northwest of England after all. A review of the fracking operations, which caused two earthquakes in Lancashire of Magnitudes 2.3 and 1.5 has concluded that further earthquakes are quite likely, but that they will be of a magnitude too small to cause damage on the surface and would be very unlikley to produce an earthquake in excess of Magnitude 3. If I were living in that area, I don't think I'd find that expert assessment particularly reassuring.

Did you know that the Young People's Trust for the Environment had its 30th birthday a couple of days ago? We were so busy we nearly forgot! That's 30 years of inspiring young people to look after our world and take an active role in protecting our planet for the future.

Last week, Edinburgh Zoo's giant pandas, who are, on loan from China failed to mate, despite or perhaps because of much anticipation and interest from the UK's media. Yang Guang (male) and Tian Tian (female) showed only a passing interest in each other when they were put into the same enclosure, despite the fact that Tian Tian was on heat.

The noise from our cars, factories, shops and services is drowning out some important singing in the bird world, a new study shows. We often hear bird song when we're outdoors, sometimes those birds are telling others to keep off their patch, but sometimes they're just looking for a new partner - something that is becoming quite a challenge in urban areas!