Inspiration from the lifestyle of a climate scientist

I found it really interesting to read the recent article How I stave off despair as a climate scientist by Prof. Dave Reay of Edinburgh University. In it, he describes how he has tried to reduce his family's carbon footprint by investing in 'solar panels, super-insulated homes and electric cars', and avoiding air travel.

Now he and his family are taking a brave and big step, by buying a parcel of land in Scotland, and working towards his goal to pare down to a 'zero emissions' lifestyle at the very minimum, and ultimately to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by planting native trees.

This undertaking will likely yield new insights into how people can live a 'zero emissions' life and capture carbon from the atmosphere by tree planting. Furthermore, since he teaches many bright students at the University, he says 'hopefully, my students can magnify its impact — learn from our trials and errors and help to take such carbon-management expertise global'.

In the long term, he says that: 'We’ve long known that reaching "net zero" globally will require our emissions to plummet, but that some emissions are unavoidable. Worldwide, this will necessitate large increases in tree planting, soil enhancement and other such carbon-capture strategies.'

Let us applaud his work and wish him well with this great undertaking.

And we can all learn from this, by trying to aim ourselves for 'zero emissions', and by planting as many trees as we can in our local environement, as well as supporting charities that manage wild and woodland areas of the world.