Milborne Port Climate and Nature Action 

A stitch (or a letter) in time…

Globally; in the UK, and individually, we are not cutting greenhouse gas emissions anything like as fast as is now necessary nor, in the UK, are we adapting and preparing ourselves for the chaotic impacts of climate change. Nobody likes change and disruption but experts warn it will be nothing compared to the impact, difficulty and unnecessarily crippling costs of delaying further. Climate change will place pressure on all our supply chains and put our food, medicines, goods and services at risk. As the UK moves away from fossil fuels, we’ll need more electricity for our heating, lighting and transport and power cuts because of extreme weather will be more harmful.

Although climate change is a defining challenge for every government, the government’s independent Committee on Climate Change reported recently “there is only limited evidence of the present UK Government taking it sufficiently seriously; both on reducing UK emissions and adapting to impacts from global climate change”. So why is this the case? And what can we do about it? Has the Prime Minister heard from you?!  And you? And you?! To help the future, email our Prime Minister and our MP requesting they take the climate crisis sufficiently seriously and act fully on the advice of the CCC, their independent advisors. https://email.number10.gov.uk 

david.warburton.mp@parliament.uk

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/25372/david_warburton/somerton_and_frome/divisions?policy=1030

What’s not to like? We will benefit considerably and in a number of ways by acting now to tackle and adapt to climate change. Our country needs investment in low-carbon technologies and means of adapting to climate change; the UK could be leading new and expanding global markets. UK businesses have opportunities to gain competitive advantage as they shift to the future zero-carbon basis required in the UK and the world.

In a world where, in the future, the financial cost of emitting greenhouse gases becomes high, action taken now to reduce emissions will save enormously on those costs (as well as reducing the costs of damage from climate chaos). Inadequate action, in other words, is doubly costly.

Not only will action now reduce the number of climate refugees and conflicts but it will also lessen the risks of flooding, infrastructure failure and increasingly costly food, and in so doing the UK will be supporting global efforts to fulfil climate commitments and combat climate change.

Everyone’s health will benefit from a healthy natural environment, more greenspace, reduced air pollution, greater peace and quiet, more active travel and a shift to healthier plant-based diets.

Many measures make great sense even without climate change to consider: reducing dangerous levels of air pollution; reducing water use; adapting homes to keep cool in the summer; protecting biodiversity and habitats, increasing greenspace to reduce the risk from flooding and heatwaves whilst also improving our mental well-being.

What can we do? Grow creepers up our walls to shade them; fit shutters on south-facing windows; minimize heat-absorbing, flood-worsening hard standing of any kind around our homes (grow grass or plant shrubs in tubs to remove the heat instead); let hedgerows grow taller and wider; allow some trees to grow uncut; urge councils to grow more trees along our streets and plant more in our own gardens. Trees soften the impact of heavy rain and their roots help take water into the soil. Such measures will help offset the hazards of increasingly extreme rainfall – with steep hills and a river through the village, everyone who is not without a garden can help prepare our community.

Verges  Many front lawns, areas of roadside verge and banks in the village have been uncut and their wildflowers look beautiful as well as being vital for wildlife! When you do mow later in the summer / autumn remember to remove the clippings to keep fertility low (this benefits wild flowers).

Protecting the river  Himalayan Balsam is an invasive plant that has spread around the country and can choke streams and rivers, causing bank erosion and smothering our wild flowers – not only beautiful but also essential for wildlife. If you adjoin the river Gascoigne, please look out for it and pull it up before it has a chance to flower this year. This web-page ahs a photo and more details: https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discover-wild-plants-nature/plant-fungi-species/himalayan-balsam  Please contact us if you need help.

New dates for your diary

With the kind permission of the owner: a geology walk on Sunday 11^th July pm led by Geoffrey Rowland and a butterfly / nature walk on Sunday 18^th July pm led by Nigel Spring.  Please email to book in case we need to limit numbers, and for details to be sent to you nearer the time.

2021 Progress Report to Parliament

milborneportclimateaction@gmail.com    https://network23.org/milbornecan/

Milborne Port Climate and Nature Action  June 2021

Understanding climate change & the future is in our power

• When we dig up and burn fossil fuels, we are wrapping a blanket of carbon pollution around the earth. This pollution blanket is trapping heat in our atmosphere that would otherwise escape back out to space.
• That trapped heat causes more damaging downpours and droughts that wipe out farmers’ crops. It powers stronger hurricanes and storms that devastate our coasts. It means hotter temperatures that fuel wildfires and cause crippling heat waves. It causes sea level to rise, which will flood millions of homes.
• As for the science, 99 percent of climate scientists agree: it’s real, it’s human-caused, it’s serious, and there are solutions that will benefit us all. The faster we cut our carbon pollution, the better off we’ll all be.
• The climate has changed in the past but what’s different is that the rate of change now, over a few decades, is unprecedented and too fast for most of life on earth to adapt.

The good news is that as the climate crisis is man-made so each of us has the power to address it.

What a lot of people still don’t understand – and need to, as soon as possible – is that we humans are the biggest source of uncertainty in determining how serious climate change becomes. Collapse is not a foregone conclusion. We are the problem. That means we can be the solution. What happens is down to each and every one of us. The International Panel on Climate Change didn’t say we had 12 years, 11 years, 9 years to act – it said “every action matters; every choice matters”.

So, yes, there’s lot to do but it can be done. Some recent good climate news:

• US to develop 30GW offshore wind by 2030
• Biden to commit $85b to public transit, $80b for rail, $174b to EVs
• China to make world’s no.1 steel industry green
• Japan to end support of coal power exports
• South Africa ups 2030 emissions target 28%
• Greece shuts down 1.2GW coal plants
• US to align tax policy with climate goals
• Sweden’s Polestar to build world’s 1st carbon-neutral car
• US considers 50% emissions cut by 2030, Japan 40%

During WWII, we acted collectively for the common good. People gave up years of their lives or lost their lives to fight for the future, food was rationed, everyone contributed. The challenge now is far greater but involves far less. In fact, the necessary changes will lead to a fairer, cleaner, greener, healthier world with nature restored.

We’re becoming part of the solution by cutting our greenhouse gas emissions: eating far less meat and dairy, flying and driving far less or not at all, buying fewer things: reduce, reuse, repair, recycle. Whatever you can afford to do, we hope you’ll join us in doing it. Insulating your house, installing a heat pump or swapping to an electric car too expensive? Then lobby our PM and our MP too to play their large part by stopping pouring money into a fossil-fueled world and to do far more to support clean, green power instead.

We are each responsible for the future. What will we say to our children?

We will be starting our hedge survey in June. Do get in touch if you’d like to help.

It’s been a really tough spring for wildlife. Please help all you can and leave wild plants to flower and set seed until July if you can – to provide food for butterflies, bees, birds, hedgehogs, bats. Will there be blackberries and sloes this autumn for us? Please be aware that children enjoy nature and many people take great solace from it and are upset, for example, by seeing needless verge cutting with all the resulting loss of wildlife. Please avoid using pesticides and watch out for nesting mammals, especially hedgehogs which don’t flee from danger. Thank you.

milborneportclimateaction@gmail.com    https://network23.org/milbornecan/ And find our page on Facebook: Milborne Port Climate and Nature

Milborne Port Climate and Nature Action 

Let it grow! No Mow May!

Did you know thatwild plants, rather than garden ones, are needed to enable many insects and invertebrates to breed and overwinter, as well as for pollen and nectar? It’s been inspiring to see so many front gardens and verges in the village resplendent with the sunshine-coloured flowers of spring – not just a joy to people out on their walks and a lifeline for bees and other insects but for all the birds and other species, including hedgehogs, that feed on those insects too. 

What a difference we can make!

“It’s up to every one of us to help preserve our planet for the future” said David Attenborough. As a human being living on this unique planet, you are already the perfect person to care about climate change and our natural environment, and when a community works together, that difference can really show, and give a real sense of agency, achievement and community spirit.

Postponed to Thursday 6th May at 7.30pm, you can register for the Launch and Q&A of the

Milborne Port and Sherborne Solar Streets scheme at www.SolarStreets.co.uk/MPS  (There was an error in last month’s link but these new details will work!). Email  your questions any time  to  Info@SolarStreets.co.uk. The webpage also has contact details for questions at any time, or if you want panels now.

It’s vital that we provide for nature throughout the year in our gardens & roadside verges

Why? 97% of wildflower meadows have been lost (through ploughing or fertilizing) in recent years – and many younger people may not have experienced their beauty – but we can each manage some or a part of our gardens and support the management of roadside verges (unploughed relicts) and garden grasslands for the benefit of wildlife and people. People need nature for their mental well-being; research has shown this for a fact; especially with all the lockdowns people have realized their need to be able to enjoy nature – birds, bees, butterflies and wildflowers – close to home. We all love to see swallows in the summer, and hear bird song around us; but remember that birds are vanishing as wild flowers disappear and insect numbers plummet. Let’s roll our sleeves up! Or rather, do less in the garden!

How?

• Please stop poisoning wildlife! Pesticides and herbicides are putting bees, birds, hedgehogs, butterflies, beetles, frogs, dragonflies and more at risk.

• Cut and Collect! Collect up your mowings to bring fertility down and stop courser grasses outgrowing and smothering wild flowers; you will then be able to mow less and less often. (In Dorset, verge cuts have come down from 12 x per annum to an astonishing 2-3 x.) Wild plants then have more time and chance to flower and set seed – benefitting pollinating insects and all the wildlife that depends on these insects. And you have more time to put your feet up!

• Join in No Mow May, a nationwide campaign to leave all or a part of your lawn uncut in May to prolong the spring flowering period; it’s incredibly beneficial. Aim, best of all, to reach the point over a few years through Cut and Collect where the fertility is sufficiently low in part or all of your lawn for wild plants to be left to flower till the usual hay cutting time in July. You can achieve a cared-for look by keeping a path cut through larger areas, and cutting round the edges.  https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discover-wild-plants-nature/no-mow-may

Photo credit: Matt Pitts, Plantlife

• Let it Grow – mow less often throughout the season to let wild plants flower and help stop the loss of nature.

• If you must use a strimmer, please do check carefully for hedgehogs first. Their response to danger is to curl up in a prickly ball; not flee. If anyone finds an injured hedgehog, please contact the local hedgehog rescue in Hazelbury Bryan on 01258 818266.

We are delighted that Milborne Port PC’s Planning and Environment Committee has supported our request to reduce the costs of verge management and increase biodiversity with Cut and Collect and No Mow May. This is in keeping with Britain in Bloom, as one of the three areas that judges focus on is environmental responsibility, looking for evidence there is a commitment to environmental issues including conservation, maintaining wildlife’s natural habitats, and improving pollination. Three roadside grassland areas that the Parish Council are responsible for managing will not be cut in May. These are the area on the A30 corner of Bathwell Lane; the triangle in Rosemary Street, and the area of grass at the end of Springfield Road opposite the Recreation Ground.

There is a great appetite for more nature. Across the country, the edges of playing fields, sports grounds, churchyards and so on are being managed to enable wild flowers to thrive again., whilst cutting costs. Let’s do all we can to bring more flowers and wildlife back into everyday life in Milborne Port! Please leave the verges outside your property uncut for the summer for wildlife and people to enjoy.

New! Find us on Facebook where you can find tips on helping nature thrive and combating climate change. (And, fingers crossed, follow the fortunes of Max the hedgehog if his current absence is temporary and due to him being busy finding a mate, and not to him having come to any harm).

Action on the climate and ecological emergencies is still possible; our future is, to a great extent, still in our hands. Time to act!

Milborne Port Climate and Nature Action and EuCAN volunteers joined forces and spent a great day on East Hill beginning to open up grassland habitat for the uncommon butterflies and plants which live there, with the agreement of the landowner. We hope the wildlife and walkers alike will enjoy the benefits.

The Solar Streets scheme is coming to Milborne Port! Details of the scheme and how to register for the launch presentation on the 15th of April 2021, are here:

Click here to register for the Solar Streets Zoom Launch