Show your love for nature this Valentine's Day

This is a guest blog by Andre Farrar, RSPB Planning and Strategy Manager.

Crazy weather has always been with us – floods and droughts, cold snaps and heat waves, wind and storms ... it’s the patterns over time that count and those are now showing more clearly than ever before that our climate is changing. At one extreme the grievous impact of the latest floods in the North of England at the other unseasonably early spring flowers all point to the things we love, the places we cherish, the nature that inspires us are being affected by climate change.

(Want to know more about how climate change works and how it impacts the UK and beyond? The Met Office has some handy guides, see here and here, and they recently announced that 2015 was the hottest year on record.)

Last year, the world came together in Paris and a plan emerged that gives hope that together, across the world, our Governments and peoples will tackle the threat of runaway global warming and keep our home, our fragile planet, within the bounds of a temperature rise that minimises (though cannot avoid) impact.  As with any plan – its value is only demonstrated if it is implemented and that will mean we must hold our leaders to account and ensure that the optimism of Paris is not wasted.

We’ve been at the heart of campaigning for a future safe from the worst impact of damaging climate change because it directly affects the things we love. For each half a degree rise in temperature more species are condemned to extinction – so it matters for all life on earth as it matters directly to us.

And our natural world is an asset in helping us to adapt to the changes that are here now and that will continue to affect us in the future. Resilient and healthy landscapes are better able to cope with the extremes our weather throws at us.

In the wake of the Paris conference, The Climate Coalition, which includes the RSPB, is once again turning red hearts green this Valentine’s Day to spread the word that we can change the world if enough of us show we care.  In honour of the occasion Michael Morpurgo has written a love letter from a grandfather to his grand-daughter, all about his hopes for her future. 

This has been turned into a beautiful film starring Jeremy Irons and Maxine Peake. You can see the film and add your name in support here.