About Me

I have followed and participated in the environment movement my whole life in many different ways. From early "campaigns" with the Young Ornithologist Club, of which I was member, in primary school against discarding fishing tackle and stealing eggs from nests through to marching for climate justice at COP26 in Glasgow.

Much has changed and evolved over this time, with some successes but more, much more, still to be done. There have been successes with ozone depleting chemicals, with whaling, and with deforestation and conservations in many locales. Many of these issues are important in their own right but secondary to climate change and its effects. The need to tackle climate change has been evident to me for at least a quarter of a century, possibly longer. I recall the discussions following the Kyoto protocol, in particular around the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gasses at the time, the United States. The US's failure to ratify the agreement set us back decades, but we can't lay all the blame there.

This was in the days before Facebook and Twitter. It was more difficult to reach a large audience. We had bulletin boards, mailing lists, Geocities and Yahoo Groups. For a while it was much easier to reach out to a wide audience, but between the algorithms serving content and the deluge of AI slop the challenge is now being heard over the noise. I started this blog back in 2011 to try and collate and critique things that were going on in the environment and sustainability space. I wanted to share my perspective and applying critical thinking to (hopefully) avoid some of the pitfalls. At the time many of the issues were extremely polarised, with vocal climate change deniers dominating areas of public discourse and a perceived need to provide false equivalence to different positions.

Important media outlets such as the BBC would portray climate change as a matter of debate with equal balance given to the vast evidence of human caused climate change and to the vested interests of those wanting to maintain the status quo. This meant there was little room for debate on the actions being taken to support decarbonising our societies. What I mean by this is that criticism of a single proposed solution was often misconstrued as denialism.

Greenwashing could go unchallenged and unintended adverse side effects were ignored. For example greater use of biofuels displacing fossil fuels but causing deforestation and habitat loss or conservation of one species to the detriment to another. In addition to this, some proposals or solutions are quite emotive, leading to arguments with little basis in the science.

I haven't updated the blog so much in the last few years. Life sometimes gets in the way. This is a good thing. I have been spending time with family and time outdoors. Since COVID arrived with enforced lockdowns, time spent on the computer was work and I needed to get away for long walks or rides.

In the early 2020s I truly thought we had turned a corner. Net zero targets were mainstream. National governments, local governments, industry bodies and large corporations were all declaring a Climate Emergency. I was encouraged by adoption of climate and biodiversity friendly initiatives in my own industry and focused on this for a few years.

Unfortunately this ran into quicksand when Russia invaded Ukraine and commitments have quietly been delayed, diluted or dropped altogether. It didn't all happen at once but quietly piece by piece. Now we have political figures at supposedly opposite ends of the spectrum pushing back against Net Zero, for example Nigel Farage and Tony Blair.

This has given me motivation to post again, although likely only occasionally with everything else going on in my life. Currently, I am reviewing the old posts. Some, I feel, have stood up well while others are dated and irrelevant now. Some would benefit from being updated and re-posted, which may happen in the coming weeks along with new content. New pages are being added to cover the main themes of the blog, linking to key posts:

Energy and Climate Change: which Renewable Energy technologies work, what is coming, evaluation of new technologies and how they can mitigate climate change.
Transportation: we all need to be somewhere sometime and it is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions as well as a critical source of pollution. There is also an important socio-economic side to sustainable transport.
Sustainability: a catch all to cover sustainable use of resources such as water, soil and materials to make stuff, recycling, circularity, pollution and habitat conservation.
Nature Stories: shared experiences of time outdoors in nature, walking, hiking, camping, cycling or just taking photographs.

In the meantime, I hope you find the posts informative and thought provoking. I am open minded and welcome your thoughts, positive or negative.

As before, I'm keen to connect with others active in this space. I had been active on Twitter (@EcoWarriorMe) but I have really gone off it since it became the x social media platform. I am newly on Blue-sky: https://bsky.app/profile/ew-me.bsky.social

EWM, June 2026