(1/16) For over 1000 years, people from all over Europe have walked through Spain to Santiago de Compostela. This summer, I followed in the footsteps of millions but with an extra challenge:

Spain has been facing the driest conditions for at least 1200 years.
(2/16) Follow this #Water story thread for #WWWeek.

#WorldWaterWeek #ad #climatecrisis #drought
(3/16) I needed a break from my usual focus on the climate and water crises, so I took five weeks to hike more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the French Pyrenees to the northwest of Spain.

I wanted to focus on my health, the beauty of nature, and people I would meet.
(4/16) But unfortunately, we no longer have the luxury of only thinking about the climate and water crises when we feel like it. In fact, for most of my hike, extreme weather impacted my experience in ways unheard of in the more than 1000-year-old pilgrimage tradition.
(5/16) The Camino Francés, the “French Way” and the most famous of the routes to Santiago, starts on day one with the most challenging phase: crossing the Pyrenees via the legendary Napoleon Route. Unfortunately, it was also day one of a heatwave. Imagine: it was only mid-June.
(6/16) I’ll never forget how exhausted I was when I arrived after two days on the other side of the Pyrenees in the lovely small town of Zuberi (see photo). I must have looked so worn out by the extreme heat that the hostel owner spontaneously carried my backpack upstairs for me.
(7/16) The next day I walked to Pamplona, the city I had wanted to visit since I read Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” in my student days. And what a feast it was.

But again: the reality of a hot world caught up with me: I couldn’t continue because of the forest fires.
(8/16) Extreme heat and drought had caused forest fires along the route, and all pilgrims were stopped by the police.

The next day, I skipped 95 kilometers to the first village from where we were allowed to walk again.

(Photo taken from the car window in a burned area)
(9/16) I spoke to eye-witnesses who had been only a day ahead of me. They had run for their lives to escape the fire. Having been surrounded by three sides, they had run to a nearby town and escaped unharmed but shaken by the experience.
(10/16) Weeks later, I entered Galicia after crossing the Meseta, already known as a flat, hot, and dry area in average years. I had been warned of the steep climb that awaited me, but nobody had warned me that the second steepest climate coincided with a second heatwave.
(11/16) And the second heatwave was soon followed by more forest fires. Imagine waking up at night with smoke in the bedroom; it was so bad that I slept with the N95 mask I carried for that other crisis, the pandemic.
(12/16) During five weeks in Spain, before the height of the summer season, I have been an eye-witness to climate change. I have seen dry rivers, the drought affecting agriculture, and heat affecting all aspects of life.
(13/16) But I have also seen the human ingenuity to deal with these effects, like in updated versions of generations-old knowledge about preserving and distributing precious water sources.
(14/16) We have to work on preventing the climate crisis from getting worse than it already is, but we can’t ignore that we have to adapt to the new realities. It is a task for all of us.

You can be a role model for water and climate action.
(15/16) But increasingly, companies take up their responsibility too. For example, I work with @SuntoryGlobal because I believe they are exemplary. After all, they return only clean water to nature and protect forests that nurture groundwater.
(16/16) So @SuntoryGlobal is a company that contributes to healthy water circulation in nature. In other words, they recognize that water sustainability is the most critical issue in their business activity.

I hope you take a moment to watch this video:

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More from @Alex_Verbeek

Nov 29, 2021
🌎

1. With just 34 days left in 2021, our countdown by week in the last 52 days of the year brings us to week 18, the first week of May.

I just searched for the environmental news of that week, which was all profoundly disturbing.

🧵 Start of a thread

#environment #news
🌎

2. To give you an impression of the news in such an average week that makes me worried about our future, let's make a quick tour around the planet.

🧵

theplanet.substack.com/p/how-to-effec…
🌎

3. China now accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the world's developed nations combined.

China accounted for 27% of global emissions. The U.S., the second-biggest emitter, contributed 11%, and India 6.6%.

🧵

theplanet.substack.com/p/how-to-effec…
Read 12 tweets
Nov 22, 2021
🌎

1. How to start a Substack newsletter

Looking back at an exciting journey.

“I knew about newsletters from the early days of digitalization, some 30 years ago, when we all started with our first email accounts; likely your Hotmail address.”

🧵 A thread

➡️ RT

@SubstackInc
🌎

2. Do you follow the daily journey of this year's events in the last 52 days of 2021? We are in Week 15, which started on March 12.

Today’s story begins at precisely the spot where I am sitting now. I remember reading my first Substack newsletter.

🧵theplanet.substack.com/p/how-to-start…
🌎

3. Since hotmail, and Internet cafés, we moved on, got our Facebook accounts, then other social media, and the joy of having that virtual world in your smartphone apps.

But then, quite recently, there was suddenly the revival of the newsletter.

🧵
theplanet.substack.com/p/how-to-start…
Read 8 tweets
Nov 20, 2021
🌎

1. The world's oldest known wild bird is a Laysan Albatros.

She is called Wisdom, because of her age and surviving many current threads like fish-lines, climate change, and plastic pollution. 

This is her. Isn’t she beautiful?

🧵Start of a thread
🌎

2. While I work on this thread (with more albatrosses videos), you could subscribe for The Planet newsletter.

You will like it if you are interested in #nature and #wildlife.

🧵This thread continues

theplanet.substack.com/subscribe
🌎

3. Wisdom was probably born around 1951. Five years later, in 1956, the young albatross, got a red ankle band with the number Z333.

By now, that albatross, Wisdom, has become famous as the world's oldest known wild bird. 

#birds #nature #wildlife
Read 13 tweets
Nov 2, 2021
🌎

1. For all readers who don't warm to the idea of future palm-fringed beaches in the Arctic, I wrote an explainer about COP26, climate change, and why we need to do more.

🧵 The start of a thread.

➡️ RT

#COP26 #climate #ClimateCrisis
🌎

2/12. Current policies set us on track to about 2.7°C or 2.9°C of warming by the end of this century, a disastrous cause to a world where you don't want your children to live.

🧵

#COP26Glasgow #news #environment

theplanet.substack.com/p/cop26-a-meet…
🌎

3/12. This graph from Our World in Data shows the global average temperature relative to the average of the period between 1961 and 1990.

These changes are almost all caused by human behavior, especially the burning of fossil fuels and land (ab)use.

🧵

#ClimateAction
Read 12 tweets
Oct 31, 2021
🎃

1. Starting COP26 on Halloween, a festival for the dead, doesn't give much hope.

➡️ RT

🧵 The start of a thread on #history, #Halloween, #leadership, #nature, #climate, and #COP26 Image
🎃

2. Traditions can alienate you if you don't feel part of it. So in my efforts to blend in with the Canadians, I searched the internet to explain #Halloween and found that we have to go back into history as I so often do in The Planet newsletter.

🧵
theplanet.substack.com/p/starting-cop…
🎃

3. There was not much of #Halloween celebration in colonial New England, where rigid Protestant beliefs prevented frivolously celebrating, especially of traditions with some doubtful pre-Christian fingerprints all over it.

🧵

theplanet.substack.com/p/starting-cop…
Read 11 tweets
Oct 23, 2021
🌎

1. I’m fascinated by the beauty of nature and enjoy learning more every day. Look for instance at these mushrooms realising millions of microscopic spores to propagate.

🧵 A thread about the beauty of planet earth, our only home.

#nature #science
🌎

2. That’s right, it’s our only home. That means we have to be extra careful, we don’t have a spare.

When it heats up, or loses it’s complex ecosystems, we will all be in trouble.

NASA took this photo of the dark side of the moon from 1 million miles away.

🧵

#climate
🌎

3. If you care about the beauty of nature and follow issues like climate change, read The Planet.

Subscribe, and start your day with this newsletter, it really needs your support. 🙏

🧵This thread continues with more videos.

theplanet.substack.com/subscribe
Read 6 tweets

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