City

One week I'll get around to checking the Mono Monday theme before I take my day's pictures, rather than seeing how that theme might be realised through images I've already gathered.

So my take on the theme of environment is the city.  The city is the environment where most of live and consume. Urban areas put the biggest drain on energy and resources, but are therefore also the places where we innovate and find smarter ways of living. Cities are also full of wildness, as my butterfly monitoring throughout the area covered by this view can arrest to.  

Or perhaps you'd be more convinced had I panned down slightly and captured the solar panel clad roof of our BREEAM Outstanding rated sustainable student village? Which would have neatly  juxtapositioned against the carbon hungry chimneys that dot the landscape.

Or if it's Environmental History you're after, how about  that structure on the hill, once the largest silk mill in the world.  A symbol for the globalisation of production and consumption that fuelled the rise in anthropogenic emissions which we're only now recognising the consequences of.

Yes, I love the wild and the countryside, but it's the city which is the front line in environmentalism.

Forgive me this précis of fragments of my Environmental Issues 101 course, as taught 1993-2003.