With the population climbing well above 60 million and planners eating away at the sacred green-belts, isn’t Britain slowly becoming one great urban sprawl? Will the English Lake District, the Welsh Hills and Scottish Highlands soon be the last great open spaces?
Well! I thought so until the DT’s Mark Easton asked much the same question and got this intriguing answer:
Boadicea's Chariot 
The source is: http://www.scottlogic.co.uk/blog/graham/2012/07/uk-habitats/
Interesting, Janus. I saw a television programme some years ago which showed exactly the same! I suppose if you live in an urban sprawl it’s sometimes difficult to believe how much countryside there is!
You only have to fly from London to somewhere like Edinburgh to see how much of the country is still green. This does not mean that urban sprawl should be allowed to continue unchecked, of course, but there is still scope for expansion.
It appears it may even be possible to get useful energy out of the wind without multitudes of ghastly ground based windmills. What the devices mentioned here might do to the jet stream, and hence the weather is anyone’s guess though!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9384455/Nasa-scientists-develop-flying-wind-farms.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Lots of greenery around here. Also lots of other unmentionables; perhaps it is thanks to them that there is still so much greenery 😉
On a more serious note, I do wonder how much of the flooding is due to urbanisation and concrete patios etc. The more greenery; the more trees there are, and consequently the more earth you have to soak up excess water.
Well, there’s the answer – move everybody down into the gray bit – we’d finish up with a population density around half that of Hong Kong 🙂
On the flying windmills, schemes like this have been mooted many times before…what would be the weight of the cable… ?
Thta would rather depend on the voltage used to transfer the power to the ground.
‘If broad habitats were clustered’
But they aren’t, which is precisely the point. Regrettably urbanisation has been allowed to spread virtually everywhere degrading the environment to a point that much of the landscape has become sterile. Flora and fauna have either been eradicated, become extinct or are marooned on smaller and smaller islands with commensurate genetic restriction.
I am aware that most of humanity are far too human centric and really are not frightfully concerned about the natural world, as long as it looks all right for the occasional sojourn from towns and politicians can pack in a few million more wogs who don’t belong here. All’s right with the world so to speak.
I truly believe people get exactly what they deserve in this department. The breakdown of the food chain in the wild environment is already coming home to roost with bees and CCD. Eight out of ten food crops need to be fertilised by pollinators. Enough said!
There is dreadful pressure on water supplies in the UK from greed of the foreign owned companies, far too much extraction from rivers and far too little capital injection into building reservoirs. So a few fish die, so what?
Fracking- cheap energy for a while, for your info, fracking tends to be in sedimentary areas, so do aquifers!
Just wait till benzene contaminated water comes out of your taps and start seeing the birth defects! Already happening here in Ohio, the populace were assured that water tables could not be contaminated, well they were wrong, they can be.
Soil degradation, the continual use of chemicals on soil degrade the soil’s ability to cluster in particles, net result, the soil dries out much faster in dry periods, cannot ‘wick’ water up or allow quick drainage either. It becomes inert and forms a hard pan necessitating deeper and deeper ploughing. When dry rainfall runs off laterally causing flooding it can no longer absorb rain thus the aquifers are not replenished. What did they do? Grubbed up the hedges to grab a bit more land to make up for lost production depriving the land of natural barriers to retain water and killing off the natural creatures that made those hedges home. Very bright!
I could go on for another foot or so with human practises that are wrecking the country. There is one question, how long do you think it can go on for? In due course the whole damned thing will implode and the only way to get it back will be to allow it to all lay fallow for decades, if ever. You do the maths on feeding the population then!
This articles is an attempt to defraud the ignorant into thinking all is just fine, I wonder who paid him sufficient to generate such tripe. If our country had a brain cell between them they would slam the door shut, remove child subsidies and initiate a programme to restore habitat forthwith with a mandatory scheme for all unemployed and young people to participate.
Oh dear!
Araminta, you forget, I do not have a dog in the race, it is your grandchildren who are going to thank you, not mine!
Oh dear for them.
It never fails to amaze me that people have children and do not seem to take any serious notice of the environment they are leaving for their descendants.
Sowing and reaping comes to mind.
I have long thought that our world will meet its “Armageddon” with a whimper rather than a bang.
Quite right, Tina, yes, whatever!
No, I don’t forget; I just take a different view of things.
CO, I note that none of your NW American clouds have silver linings and one man’s poison is another man’s poison down your way. Life’s a bitch obviously.
Not for me personally Janus, but I see too much perpetrated in the name of progress, profit, greed and plain stupidity and always they who pay the price are the poor, the undereducated, the plain thick and those that ought to know better but believe that some wonderful new technology will come along to save the situation.
I don’t think it will, simple as that, seemingly everything invented currently is just rehashes of electronic gismos that won’t do a damn thing for anyone to put food on the table long term.
This area wasn’t settled until the 1920s, hence we are underpopulated and an agricultural area, with State planning for it to remain so, not that that is of any significance to me personally, but just for the record!
It has also turned to Summer, now a steady 80 F.
Life is a bitch for far too many people these days and it isn’t going to get any better.
CO, you may be right but even considering my own little snapshots of the world over the last 69 years I believe that life for very many people is better than it would have been 50 years ago. So I prefer to see the thread her as eveidence of a glass half full!
There are far too many golf courses. Now I’d keep the trees and the roughs as these places are home to wildlife but I would concrete over the fairways and greens. Let’s fire up the cement mixers right away.
I have to agree with you Janus: that life for many people is better than it would have been 50 years ago – but at what price?
Life could have been even better for many more if there were not this constant demand by Governments and Big Business for Growth, More Growth and Even More Growth at the expense of the Planet on which we are all dependent.
We cannot continue to grow our population and reduce the resources of the planet and expect to provide a “Good Life” for everyone – so I’m also in agreement with Christina that it really is time, if not past the time, when we should start conserving and caring for the Earth.
You wicked and ironic beast, JW! 🙂
I’m in total agreement with Boadicea’s last para.
Hello Bilby, good to see you around. The trouble with golfers is they spend most of their time in the rough so I wouldn’t be able to cement them up. 🙂
🙂
You teaser, JW!
JW, you missed a chance with the Trump course in N. Britain. The dunes are doomed!