Dr. Pete Jeffs 🐴’s Post

In memory of this little bird. In my own corner of the wood, today the swan family came to say hello as I returned to the boat where I live. And yet we live between life and death. One of the horses I help to look after has had colic for the past four days. I learned about this today. I stopped what I was doing and sat for Reiki, prayer and Fire Ceremony. Tonight this horse is with one of her helpers. I will sit again, later in the night, and send what healing I can from afar. This journey of life is a journey with death, as Joe Brewer so truly shares, in a post which touches me deeply. We can be so strong, and yet, we are so fragile. Each one of us. Aho!

Astonishing Full Moon in Aries, rising over the marina... Beautiful! Full Moon wishes to all as we begin this new lunar cycle with the Full Moon at 24° Aries conjunct Chiron.

Tesco has apparently struck a deal to buy enough solar power to run 144 of its large supermarkets, buying almost two-thirds of the entire electricity output from the Cleve Hill solar park in Kent. The £450m solar park is being built on farmland near Faversham by Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a London-based firm that invests in renewable and low-carbon energy in the US, UK and Australia. The site will provide Tesco with up to 10% of its UK electricity demand over 15 years. Tesco said the amount of clean energy generated would be enough to power 144 of its large stores for a year. Cleve Hill, on the north Kent coast, is a solar and battery storage project that will have a capacity of 373 megawatts. Construction began early last year and it is expected to be up and running by the start of next year. Tesco said it was the UK’s largest corporate power purchase deal for a solar farm. Ken Murphy, Tesco’s chief executive, hailed the deal as a “significant step” in its journey towards carbon neutrality across its business by 2035. The site will feature more than 560,000 solar panels – some as tall as buses – and energy storage infrastructure. The French state-owned utility EDF will provide power balancing services. +++ Something immediately rings alarm bells. Tesco has been one of the many companies to profit from the "cost-of-living-crisis". And here we find them taking over farmland near Faversham by Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a London-based firm that invests in renewable and low-carbon energy in the US, UK and Australia. If this renewable energy was going to families and homes, I would feel easier. Something does not sit right. And so I read on... and here is the core. Tesco’s move comes a day after Google signed a deal to buy energy from a fleet of mini nuclear reactors to generate the power needed for the rise in use of artificial intelligence. The US tech corporation has ordered six or seven small nuclear reactors from California’s Kairos Power, with the first due to be completed by 2030 and the remainder by 2035. Last month, Microsoft struck a deal for a nuclear reactor to power its expanding AI operations. However, the Three Mile Island site in Pennsylvania was the location of the most serious nuclear meltdown and radiation leak in US history in March 1979 and has been in a decommissioning phase. The reactor will be reactivated after its owners, Constellation Energy, signed a 20-year power purchase agreement to supply Microsoft’s energy-hungry datacentres. So here we can see what the future holds. Companies like Google and Tesco and Microsoft are now shoring up the renewables and nuclear sectors, to supply their own insatiable demands for electricity. We should have seen it coming. Finally, here it is. +++ https://lnkd.in/eRY2n8wY

“The sea does not belong to despots,” Jules Verne wrote in 1869 in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. “Upon its surface men can still exercise unjust laws, fight, tear one another to pieces, and be carried away with terrestrial horrors. But at 30 feet below its level, their reign ceases, their influence is quenched, and their power disappears.” Now, more than 150 years later, geopolitics experts are warning that Verne’s final sentiment, expressed as it was through the character of Captain Nemo, was wrong. From seabeds and sea caves to sea canyons, underwater ridges, seamounts, sea knolls and reefs, academics say countries around the world are using the politics of nationalism to permanently stamp their mark on the topography of the ocean. +++ Klaus Dodds, professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London, says that countries today are engaged in a “scramble for the oceans”. “There’s more and more ocean grabbing going on in the world, because countries have been given legal permission to do that.” “When we give a name to an object, we claim it. And we claim not only the surface. We claim the territory and all of its resources,” says Basik. “From an economic perspective nations are thinking about the potential [of the features]: how can we use this?” Basik, who first outlined his thesis in the geography journal Area, fears that countries will one day mine these features for minerals or other economic assets whose power or value is not yet known. “The first step is the symbolic claim, and after that, we’re talking about commodification of the ocean and resources in the ocean.” Countries must [currently] petition the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), an intergovernmental body based in Monaco with 100 member states, for the right to name the features in internationally recognised nautical charts and documents. +++ During the 20th century, just 17 names for bathyonyms were proposed on average each year, Basik’s research shows. But since 2000, countries have proposed 95 names on average a year – and recently this trend has strengthened, with more than 1,000 names put forward since 2016. Basik’s research reveals that Japan is the most zealous proposer of names for seabed objects in the world: it is responsible for naming 615 bathyonyms, followed by the US (560), France (346), Russia (313), New Zealand (308) and China (261). Dodds says that, in part, this rush to name areas of the seabed has been stimulated by coastal states trying to extend their sovereign rights, which really revolve around potential mineral resources in the sea. +++ So, what's in a name? The implications of this drive to name the seabed should be obvious. In the week of the Blue Earth Summit, we should be attentive of the power-grabs now taking place at the bottom of the Oceans. https://lnkd.in/enDekS6C

Supermarkets should be banned from selling fresh produce such as bananas, apples and potatoes in plastic packaging so we can go back to shopping “like our nan”, according to the influential anti-waste charity Wrap. It is calling for the government to ban packaging on 21 fruit and vegetables sold in supermarkets, including salad tomatoes, carrots and avocados, by 2030. After weighing up the other options – including new taxes or subsidies – Wrap said a government ban would be the most effective way to break a cycle that contributes to UK households throwing away nearly 100bn pieces of plastic packaging a year and results in huge amounts of food waste. Faced with the same plastic problem, other countries such as France have already passed laws banning packaging on many fresh products. Harriet Lamb, Wrap’s chief executive, conceded “this will be hard” for British shoppers schooled to buy fruit and veg in packets, adding that any ban would be “one of the biggest changes in the retail landscape in a while”. In 2018, UK supermarkets and food companies signed up to voluntary targets to cut plastic packaging. The goals of the UK Plastics Pact – led by Wrap, whose work helps shape government policy on sustainability matters – included the target that 50% of uncut fruit and veg be sold loose by the end of the decade. The call for a ban suggests this target will not be met without government intervention, with Wrap calling for a formal consultation. +++ Beyond removing 100bn pieces of plastic packaging a year in Britain alone – a huge part of which will end up in "landfill" we have the question of toxicity linked to plastic packaging. I highly recommend you listen to an episode of the Great Simplificiation with toxicology scientist Dr. Jane Muncke who joins Nate Hagens to discuss the current state of food production and the effects of ultra processed foods and their packaging on our health. Over the last century processed food has taken over our supermarkets and our diets, and at the same time the containers they’re sold in have evolved as well - to be more eye-catching and keep food ‘good’ for longer. But what have we sacrificed in exchange for efficiency, ease, and convenience? How do the chemicals used in packaging and processing transfer into the food we eat and subsequently end up in our bodies? Will switching away from these toxic food practices require more local food supply chains - and correspondingly simpler diets and lifestyles? https://lnkd.in/efm4jbyP #ShopLikeOurNan +++ https://lnkd.in/esZqeZTN

There may be an opportunity to see Comet C/2023 A3 this evening, shortly after sunset. The sun is conjunct Mercury, Venus is an "evening star" and will be above the horizon just after sunset. The sky is still likely to be very bright, but if there is a clear sky, definitely worth taking a peek...

Act in service of life! So writes Joe Brewer in a recent message here on Linkedin. What does this mean? I am reminded of a song that was released many years ago. Opus! I bet you know the one... Na-na, na-na-na, Na-na, na-na-na... When we all give the power, we all give the best Every minute of an hour, don't think about the rest Then you all get the power, you all get the best And everyone gives everything, and every song Everybody sings Then it's life... Listened to this song so many years ago, and I listen again. I hear the animals in the wildwood, and my allies, buzzard, red kite, heron, kingfisher, swan, and mouse in the mousewood... #LifeIsLife.

An inspiring announcement from Cain Blythe on the "Ecotide" Collective. One of the many things Ecosulis has been holding in its vision is combining inland and shoreline ecosystem regeneration. The announcement of this new collaboration is of the utmost importance.

Act in Service to Life! Aho! Thank you for these photos, Joe Brewer. Amazing!

It begins each day at nightfall. As the light disappears, billions of zooplankton, crustaceans and other marine organisms rise to the ocean surface to feed on microscopic algae, returning to the depths at sunrise. The waste from this frenzy – Earth’s largest migration of creatures – sinks to the ocean floor, removing millions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere each year. This activity is one of thousands of natural processes that regulate the Earth’s climate. Together, the planet’s oceans, forests, soils and other natural carbon sinks absorb about half of all human emissions. But as the Earth heats up, scientists are increasingly concerned that those crucial processes are breaking down. In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed. The final result was that forest, plants and soil – as a net category – absorbed almost no carbon. There are warning signs at sea, too. Greenland’s glaciers and Arctic ice sheets are melting faster than expected, which is disrupting the Gulf Stream ocean current and slows the rate at which oceans absorb carbon. For the algae-eating zooplankton, melting sea ice is exposing them to more sunlight – a shift scientists say could keep them in the depths for longer, disrupting the vertical migration that stores carbon on the ocean floor. +++ “We’re seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s systems. We’re seeing massive cracks on land – terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability,” Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told an event at New York Climate Week in September. “Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end,” he said. +++ Johan Rockström spoke eloquently and movingly about this on a recent "Great Simplification" podcast with Nate Hagens. If you haven't listen to it. Do. Link to podcast: https://lnkd.in/eEwrEtPq +++ Many think we have now run out of time. We now enter #PhaseTwo. And so it is. https://lnkd.in/enrHY36d