Climate change is driven by a myriad of our personal and corporate behaviours. We can change our consumption habits today. We can start to recycle waste today. We can use the power of our choices, and the money we put behind them, to alter corporate behaviours today. We can act to speed up the use of renewable energy and slow down carbon emissions today.
The Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden sits in a beautiful hidden wrinkle on the western edge of the Witwatersrand’s 56km quartzite reef. Despite the ugly encroachments of suburbia, pushing up against its hillside boundaries, and rich people’s houses perched ostentatiously on cliff-tops, the garden itself has preserved its beauty, biodiversity and its peace.
Verreaux’s Eagle (Black Eagle, Aquila verreauxii) at Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden, Gauteng, South Africa. (Photo: Derek Keats)
That two black eagles still live in the ancient cliffs there, free, frequently surfing on rising wind thermals, mostly unnoticed, is itself a small miracle. I saw them again last week.
But what has inspired me mostly on recent visits was the young children who are taken to play there. Accompanied by parents, or grandparents, their joie de vivre is palpable; their wonder at the…
