Welcome to RCEL's blogsite

Welcome to Reading Christian Ecology Link's blogsite

"For the Church of the 21st century, good ecology is not an optional extra but a matter of justice. It is therefore central to what it means to be a Christian"
Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Thorium . . . and cycling

There's a very interesting piece in this week's Church Times on thorium - a more plentiful and safer nuclear fuel that was apparently not developed because it is harder to weaponise than uranium. China are currently leading research on it.

In more local news - Greater Reading's Cycling Challenge 2013 has begun, encouraging businesses to get more people to cycle to work for this month.

Tuesday 7 May 2013

Wild Play

Quite a few friends on facebook posted a link to an extract from Jay Griffith's new book, 
Kith: the Riddle of the Childscape. The book was also the subject of yesterday's very interesting Start the Week.

Responses to the posting inevitably talked about excessive fear of stranger danger and more realistic fears of road danger in letting children play wild. I realised one of my inhibitions is not fear of the very tiny minority of strangers who could want to harm a child, but of the very large number of people afraid to help or take any responsibility for other people's children, like the crowd of visitors to Reading museum who simply parted to allow my escapee two year old to run out into the road (through doors that would not have opened were it not for their adult presence activating the sensors). Nonetheless, I believe she is absolutely right that we have to find a way to let our children spend time unsupervised in the wild.