Hundreds of homes have been destroyed. At least ten people have died. At ten oclock, well have a full round up of the days news. First, coronavirus your stories. Welcome to coronavirus your stories, a programme about how covid 19 is changing lives around the world. Im Philippa Thomas and this week we are looking at nature and climate. How our Natural Environment can help us as individuals in times like this and also the personal story of two activists who want the Global Pandemic to throw more light on the Global Climate emergency. Later we will hear from ireland about one way of turning to nature in stressful times with growing interest in the traditional practices of forest medicine like forest bathing. And from sweden, how health based architecture can help us now to redesign the spaces around us, try to stay healthy and be more resilient to infection. But first, how is the covid 19 pandemic changing climate activism . We have the personal story of two campaigners on either side of the atlantic. Shante wolfe is the National Field directorfor sunrise, a Youth Led Movement in the United States fighting to tackle the environmental crisis. She says the pandemic has shone a light on the most vulnerable in society who are most at risk from the effect of Climate Change. And in london, todd smith is an Airline Pilot turned frontline activist with Extinction Rebellion. He feels the pandemic makes it more urgent than ever to rethink the worlds Climate Policies and act before it is too late. But what brought these campaigners to the climate cause and how have they been changed by the covid 19 pandemic . We spoke first to shante wolfe of sunrise in birmingham, alabama. She said, perhaps surprisingly, she does not feel the pandemic has shifted attention away from the Global Climate emergency. Honestly i think the issue of millions on unemployment right now searching forjobs and millions losing Health Insurance at the height of terrible fire seasons in california and a terrible Hurricane Season in the south has made an emphasis on Climate Change now more than ever in the pandemic. Weve have had to to figure out in several ways how we can accommodate the most vulnerable of our population in this pandemic, for example, most of the time in the summer everywhere you go in the United States there are cooling shelters that people can go to. How can you have a cooling shelter and adhere to cdc guidelines so that folks dont catch the virus because they are congregated together . On the flipside of that you have Hurricane Season where at lake charles in louisiana, constituents there are currently suffering from a category 4 hurricane thatjust hit, so you have thousands of people who are displaced in the middle of a pandemic and that causes us to ask ourselves how can we treat those who are suffering . You may have seen several times that those in our country who are called essential workers have been held up as heroes but how can we move past reverence to justice for those who are very vulnerable in these moments . So i think now more than ever the issue of climate in this pandemic is important. Is that what you thought when we first went into lockdown, when the pandemic first hit . I dont think so and i think that lack of engaging how serious this was prompted both a sense of having to buckle down a little harder and it forced the hand of collaboration and activism in a way we have never seen because now that we are suffering from outstanding rates of death and positive cases, we have had to figure out how we can make sure that the show goes on because we also have a very important election season in the middle of this pandemic. I think we were all, we all underestimated it to a certain degree, i will admit that, yes. When you say you had to figure out how the show goes on, how have you had to change your tactics . What many of us associate with Climate Action is huge Mass Gatherings and making your presence felt by the numbers. That is more dangerous now. It absolutely is more dangerous. However, what we found out is that at the height of the uprising. So in the middle of the pandemic we also saw, you know, people taking to the streets for various causes because there is a lot going on in america right now, for better orfor worse. So what we decided to do at sunrise is create multiple tiers of engagement so that people could feel comfortable engaging in our actions safely. For example, a real barrier we had to participation was that before the pandemic we had planned for pretty large scale outdoor earth day actions. Now that most folks are in lockdown we have to figure out how to create socially distanced options for people to engage in and we came up with this idea called wide awa kes. This is one tier where if you want to still go out we provide ppe and the necessary things for feeling safe and people go to their respective legislator or representatives homes at the crack of sunrise to alert them that, hey, millions of people in this world right now are currently having to decide between insulin or paying their bills. They have to decide between going outside or being displaced due to other things outside of their control that the pandemic has coerced. Let me bring this back to the personal. On this programme we are looking at how covid i9 has changed things for us. When you talk to your own family and friends about what you do, it must be more challenging in a time of covid. I think there are two truths to that answer. It is challenging to talk about climate in an time it is challenging to talk about climate when my family wakes up in the first thing is how are we going to provide and put food on the table for my mom, for my sister, for my Little Sisters baby who was brought into this world in the middle of a pandemic and an uprising. These are the things that people are thinking about so, like i said earlier, it was up to me to talk to my mom on how are these things are interconnected how is climate and a better quality of life and poverty all connected . And we have seen examples of that. With our Hurricane Season i have family members and Close Friends in louisiana right now that are displaced and currently forced out of quarantine because their homes were ransacked by the latest hurricane that came through. So when we talk about climate, we talk about it from a sense of environmentaljustice because true climate activism does achieve justice for everyone and when we talk about it from that lens, my family is a lot more receptive on our zoom calls on the weekend and my mom always tells me im a tree hugger but she has progressed from saying im a tree hugger to saying i am someone who is actually fighting on behalf of something that can drastically change the course of our next decade for the better. Shante wolfe in alabama. Like shante, todd smith, of Extinction Rebellion says his own experience pushed him towards climate activism. But his personal story is rather different. As a former Airline Pilot for thomas cook i spent seven years learning to be a pilot and i grew up in a working class family. My dad, a builder, told me to do a job i would enjoy and a few years into the industry, unfortunately about 2. 5 years ago i had my medical revoked due to a diagnosis of lyme disease which has become much more prevalent in the uk due to warm summers and milder winters. That was a wake up call for me and gave me a moment to reflect and at the time i had off work we saw the rise of Extinction Rebellion in london and i was compelled to try and understand why people were taking to the streets in masses, people from all walks of society and i really made it my mission to understand the science. I wanted to get involved in Extinction Rebellion, i was fully behind their cause but i was conflicted about my career choice and the implications of me joining a Movement Like xr. So four months ago with the covid lockdown, that was just the final straw for me. We realised our human vulnerabilities and that was the beginning of myjourney and the last four months or so i have now made this my lifes work, really. I am doing it seven days a week. How do people within the Climate Action movement react to you as a former Airline Pilot . You spent years with an industry that contributes a lot to emissions. Absolutely. From day one when i very first joined an xr meeting i was welcomed from the beginning. At the time i was still flying as well and we welcome people from all sectors. There is no blaming and shaming in Extinction Rebellion and we really need to be working with workers in carbon heavy industries and promoting the relief from the government to transition to a lower carbon sector, so we really need those lower carbon sectorjobs to be created. Workers in carbon heavy industry should be re educated to transition to lower carbon. In the Airline Industry alone we can see up to 70,000 Airline Workers lose theirjobs this year, caused by the Economic Foundation due to covid. We really need to be supporting these workers and creating the jobs in the green sector. Todd, if i can come back to you on how you are campaigning. You are there and there are crowds campaigning and protesting about the urgency of Climate Action and yet this is a time when we are not meant to be gathering in crowds. Are you changing tactics . We are taking all the recommended precautions, social distancing, use of masks and we feel the time to act is now. Our governments own advisors told them to start preparing for a rise of four degrees in the world and that will mean billions of people will lose their lives. Vast parts of africa will be uninhabitable and spain will look like a desert. The International Energy agency say we have six months to act and that was two months ago. So if we dont focus on a Green Recovery from this pandemic, we could see a high spike of co2 emissions moving forward. I just feel like i have to be out here. We delayed our action in spring already and are taking necessary precautions, as i said. So this is just the time to act, the time to act is now and we need to support the climate ecological emergency bill and do everything we can to see the next much bigger wave, the climate ecological mountain. Which is the climate ecological emergency. When the pandemic again, even now, it is the thing that has grabbed the attention of all of us around the world. Has it shifted energies away from the Climate Emergency . It is a great question, philippa. You know, i think this is probably the first time in Human History where the whole of the planets population have been on a collective consciousness with a common threat, and i really feel like it has exposed our human vulnerabilities and it has given a lot of people time for reflection as such a tragedy that we needed a Global Pandemic for potentially a moment to realise that we do need to take the Natural World seriously and we have got to really listen to the scientists. Now, weve listened to the scientists during this pandemic and its absolutely crucial that we listen to the science now when it comes to the climate ecological emergency, which affects all of humanity and i have made the decision that im no longer am going to return to flying passenger jets because i think it is really important to walk the walk and lead by example, and the un say that we need to be below two tonnes of c02 per year to be sustainable and one flight from london to bangkok would be 3. 5 tonnes of co2 alone. Todd, i am hearing a great deal of conviction from you about the way youve changed your life. You told me a little earlier, you come from a working class background, being an Airline Pilot was something you wanted to be. How have family and friends reacted to this dramatic change . Have you had to do some persuading or have some pretty frank discussions . I could not have become a pilot without the support of my mum and dad who remortgage their house and they essentially lent me their retirement money and i still owe them £100,000. Initially, they were, you know, they did not really understand why i wanted to leave this fantastic career which id spent so long training to do. And i am passionate about flying, of course, but, as pilots, we always want to fly passengers to the original planned destination but, if we encounter adverse weather en route or something that might jeopardise the safety of the flight, without hesitation, we would divert and change trajectory. And it is the only way i can see that we can make the systemic changes required to deal with this emergency effectively. Todd smith, in london. Youre watching coronavirus your stories, a programme about how covid i9 is changing lives around the world. Im Philippa Thomas. And this week were thinking about how the pandemic has made us reassess our Natural Environment. Next, getting out into nature and bringing nature home to us. How to link the Great Outdoors with our personal health and peace of mind. From sweden, the man seen by many as the godfather of health based architecture, professor roger ulrich, about what that means and how it can help us right now. And from ireland, the founder of the Forest Therapy institute, nature and well being consultant, shirley gleeson. Forest bathing, the concept came from japan in the 1980s, so you are engaging your five senses in the Natural Environment. So youre listening to the bird songs, to the natural sounds of the forest, your smelling the different aromas, maybe from the forest floor, you are walking mindfully in nature and slowing down, you are watching what is moving. So youre taking in your environment with all your five senses. So it is really mindfulness in nature, engaging them through nature immersive experiences, and getting them to slow down and reflect. Roger, we have always known, i suppose, that a walk in the woods is good for us. What does Scientific Evidence tell us about exposure to nature . Exposure to nature, even viewing nature, even a realistic nature video accompanied by nature sounds can quite quickly produce significant reduction of stress. Shirley, the kind of effects roger is talking about, do you see that when you are out in the forest with people whove come to you for therapy . Yes, we would see that all the time in the forest. People would report feeling calmer, their fast thoughts in their heads would really reduce, they would slow down. When people could not leave their homes, we were running a number of nature and well being sessions online so we would bring nature to them. Like roger said, the Evidence Base around viewing nature scenes or hearing nature recordings is quite strong. So even when they cant leave their homes, it is possible to have a forest bathing experience. But also, if you think about people in hospitals, people in nursing homes, people in prisons that never or rarely get access to nature, that is where you can bring nature into them, to help promote their well being. Have you had more demand, shirley, because of the covid pandemic and the effect on us all . Yes, theres been a huge demand because of the pandemic, because theres huge increase in stress and anxiety that people are experiencing. There is so much uncertainty around but also what we found is that now people have had a time, a period of time may be out of the workforce for a little while, they have reconnected with their nearby nature so the nature on their doorstep so they are really seeing the value and importance of the nature that surrounds them. Roger, you were telling us about the evidence youve gathered and youve published the Ground Breaking paper back in 1984, showing the impact of healthcare environments both for patients and for medical staff are you seeing that now . I published a study which found that, if hospital patients recovering from Abdominal Surgery and have spent, at the time, about a week in the hospital, after surgery, were more or less randomly assigned to rooms with bedside window views of nature trees, in this case they had significantly better post operative recoveries than equivalent matched patients assigned more or less randomly to the same types of room, with the same staff, except they had bedside window views of a brick wall for their week. Those with the nature view had lower levels of emotional distress, they experienced significantly less pain. If i can pick up on that, if you fast forward to today and the covid crisis and so many of us thinking about hospitals, or the possibility of a hospital, are you seeing the environment in clinical settings make a difference, do you think, to covid patients, to their recovery . I know of no study yet published, quality study, thats examined the effects of nature on patients who are hospitalised or homebound with covid. Probably it is a matter of time, probably such studies are in progress. I do think however that we have some good research, quite pertinent to covid and staff stress. So i think it is noteworthy that a study published a few months before coronavirus hit showed that if nurses were assigned to take a daily