We met in the Gallery and saw “Eco-anxiety to Climate Optimism”
Lyn Stoler spoke about Eco-Anxiety and how to combat it. Some of the numbers she came up sounded unreal.
Maybe we should rather use the term “sustainability”. Two of our members already practise this in their B & B (Wash-balls for the laundry, refilled soap etc for guest rooms, cleaning with self-made products based on lemon and vinegar,… Blog entry about it: www.madeira-time.com (in German).
The Anglican Holy Trinity Church has a gold certificate for sustainability from the home administration in the UK. They even have an “ecological” person to watch over things. The wafers are made of flour and water. Our suggestion: Add a bit of sugar, and more people will come to church…
Germany is seen to be able to reach 50% use of alternative energy sources by 2030. They underestimate their progression.
S. and her brother started a perma-culture system on their land in Neves. As part of it, they want to install moisture nets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_collection) to collect moisture from the clouds /fog to water the plots. This is being already done in many South American countries in high areas with low water supplies. The water in Neves will contain more salt; they will see how it goes.
Lots of initiatives – reason for optimism!
The result of climate change on the island: More and more, the Pombo Trocaz and blackbirds are descending from the mountains to Funchal. Sea weed arriving on the beach in Porto Santo causes increased breeding of mosquitos which by now, can bring diseases (Madeira had four imported cases of Dengue recently.)
Bad news: Our wind turbine pylons are corroding with time; one already fell over. But they will be replaced, they bring money.
The water from the source in Porto Santo cannot be sold anymore, it now contains too much salt. The tap water in Funchal is drinkable, the water in Canico de Baixo tastes awful
We probably reached the 1.5% heating threshold in 2023. The ocean water seems to heat up faster than the air. The scientists do not know what this means. The AMOC
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturning_circulation)
may be breaking down soon, until 2030, or earlier. In this case, it would get very cold in the UK, but Madeira would not be affected that much.
Sustainability: houses with flat roofs should be painted white, to reflect the heat, or have solar panels or be greened. Rivers need bigger floodplains.
There are already initiatives which supply solar cookers to poor regions in the Third World. Hopefully, people there have something to cook.
South Africa is erecting a border fence to Mozambique; they are trying to stop the people from that country to come to SA as climate refuges.
In Funchal recently somebody stole copper from a place. How do the thieves sell it? They couldn’t get it through the airport, it is probably shipped to the mainland by boat to be sold there.
AI may come up with way to fight climate change that we do not envision yet.
Burial: The Farsi have Towers of Silence (https://iranparadise.com/zoroastrian-towers-of-silence/) where bodies are deposited. The bones which are picked clean by vultures are then buried later. UGH
Anyway: we should not talk of “climate change” but “sustainability”, and every citizen can do his small part.
Ursula Hahn
Info at madeira-weekly.com
