Amid the excitement of the World Cup it is easy to forget that international sporting spectacles as large as the FIFA World Cup in South Africa have significant environmental impacts. The media has tended to focus our attention to controversies surrounding the World Cup such the banning of the vuvuzela, predicting final contenders, and more serious concerns such as the inequalities that plague South Africa. However, the media has been quick to turn a blind eye to the carbon footprint of the World Cup. How ‘climate-friendly’ is the World Cup? According to the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), the FIFA World Cup in South Africa is undeniably ‘green’. Three days before the kick-off, UNEP issued a press release highlighting its major initiatives to reduce the carbon emissions of the World Cup. The initiative is a result of a partnership between the Global Environment Facility (GEF), UNEP, and the South African Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA).

From the Western media, you may not have known that a historic climate change conference was held last week in Bolivia. Hard on the heels of the failure in Copenhagen, Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, proposed the people’s conference as a counterpoint to the pessimism and big power politics in Denmark.

Over 30,000 people attended the conference and met in 17 + 1 working groups to hash out a people’s agreement. Along with a proposed universal declaration for the rights of Mother Earth, enormous energy and spirit is being unleashed in the Global South to bear on the existential threats facing the human species, something to keep in mind in the complacent North that is sleepwalking through the unfolding disaster.

And despite the predictable and almost deliberate media blackout, it is again the South that is taking the lead, and amongst them, the poorest of the poor.

Last week, IRIS attended the Climate Wise Women (CW2) to listen to the experiences of three women from the Global South who are already living with the impacts of climate change. After the failure of COP15 to reach a binding accord, a group of women from the Global South, began a worldwide speaking tour. Their objective is share their stories and to spur climate action at the grassroots level. This well put together public speaking tour offers an alternative narrative on how climate change affects women and families.  Ulamila Kurai Wragg from the Cook Islands focused on how traditional knowledge, inheritance structures, and livelihoods are changing forever.  The community has found that traditional crops can no longer flourish, fish have migrated away from the shores near home, and local water reserves are now saline. Ulamila’s family has adapted by changing crops, by collecting rain water whenever possible, and by walking to fishing grounds on the other side of the Island.

This morning’s episode of CBC’s ‘The Current’ featured the sounds of birds singing in West London. A newsworthy event, since no one knows if the birds sing everyday. On most days, the songs are drowned out by the ever present droning of jet engines overhead. Local residents interviewed commented both on how nice the sounds of nature are, and how refreshing silence can be in the city. A radical idea: nature is part of the city and contributes to our well being. Elsewhere, the British Navy has sent ships to take stranded travelers home; others have taken trains home. And for those whose travel plans have been canceled, they are opting to go local by taking trips to the countryside.  A radical idea: we can relax close to home, and we can move across Europe by train, boat, and not plane.  Business is adapting as well, with the grounding of employees on their way to meetings, conferences, and presentations, business is replacing travel with video conferencing.  Another radical idea: business people do not have to fly for every meeting abroad.  Perhaps the Icelandic volcano was fortuitous for climate politics, because without any advocacy from environmentalists, people have found alternative ways for moving, consuming, and conducting business.

This morning, the novelist, Rui Umezawa, who is a neighbour and who kindly reads my blogs, asked me why I have been so inactive on the blogging front. “Too busy”, I yelled across the garden fences. This term I have been teaching BIOLOGY 2010, the Plants course, which I taught from 1991-97, before powerpoint and course websites. So, while all of those life cycles are forever burned into my brain, chalk and talk, as we call that style of lecturing, is, in science, pretty much gone the way of the dodo. I have had to create Keynote and Powerpoint lectures and to learn “moodle” which is the most comprehensive electronic classroom software that I have ever seen. This open source software has replaced the way that I previously accessed my course websites – namely through the very nice, and now retired Biology Department Lecturer who functioned as our webmaster.