The terrible and avoidable carbon footprint of war

The war in Ukraine drags on
crayon, watercolour and ink
©2025 Charlene Brown

I happened to read about the two Advisories on Climate Change and Human Rights listed below in The Daily Difference - The Carbon Almanac the day after the Trump/Putin negotiations in Alaska made ‘progress’ but did not end the Russian-Ukraine war.  Couldn’t help wondering if, among the many immediate horrors of warfare, its long term cumulative (and avoidable) carbon emissions, and their effect on global heating was ever considered by either Russia or America. Or anybody.

1. On July 3, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) issued Advisory Opinion No.32, a 234 page document that is the longest advisory opinion that has ever been issue by the IACHR  ̶  pretty much guaranteeing that very few people will read it other than those who are being paid to do so.  In it, the court says “states have legal obligations to protect people alive today and future generations from the impacts of climate breakdown,” ruling that access to a stable climate is a human right that states must protect. Some of the actions that must be taken include working on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, cooperating internationally, guarding against the threat of climate disinformation, adapting to evolving needs and utilizing the best available science to inform decisions. 
2. On July 23, 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is the United Nations’ top court, released an advisory opinion stating that “countries could be in violation of international law if they fail to take measures to protect the planet from climate change, and nations harmed by its effects could be entitled to reparations.” It affirms a simple truth of climate justice: Those who did the least to fuel this crisis deserve protection, reparations and a future.” 

My first Christmas away from home

Innsbruck

watercolour and oil pastel

©2018 Charlene Brown

Until the summer of 1963, I'd never really been anywhere but Alberta except for brief forays into Saskatchewan, BC and the American states of Montana, Idaho and Washington.  So, when I suddenly landed in Europe after working that summer in the Yukon Territory, the first thing I did was hitch-hike through a ridiculous number of countries to make up for lost time.  Then I started looking for a job near Innsbruck, so I would have a place to stay during the 1964 Winter Olympics.  

I got a job washing floors in a Krankenhaus on a mountain-side south of the city. One week after I started I was told that ‘my’ President had been shot. As I hadn’t yet acquired the 50-word German vocabulary one needs to wash floors in Austria, they practically had to act out Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas to get the message across. Even though Kennedy wasn’t my President, like many Canadians I thought he was terrific.  

It was a very lonely time until a joyous Tyrolean Christmas – despite the trauma of being my first Christmas away from home – worked its miracle a few weeks later. 

A great trip with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria

Retiro Park, Madrid                       Park Güell by Gaudi, Barcelona                                  Cantabria

Triptych of a trip not taken

watercolour, ink and marker

©2025 Charlene Brown

These are some of the locations I might have painted last September if I’d made it past the Seattle airport (where I fell and broke my arm) on the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria tour: Spain: Icons of Spanish Art - Goya, Velasquez, Picasso, Dali.

The Parque del Buen Retiro (Retreat) is a classic garden with “an Andulusian air” with delights ranging from this Cupid statue in the fountain in the Garden of Roses to the oldest tree in Madrid, a Mexican conifer planted in 1633.  

Park Güell is an enormous garden with stunning and distinct architectural elements designed by the same architect as the famous (not yet finished) Sagrada Familia  ̶  the renowned Antoni Gaudí.

Cantabria is on the northern coast of Spain, slightly off the beaten path from major tourist areas, but with mountains, beaches, stunning views and rich history, it is a “goldmine of authentic Spanish beauty.”  And great food, apparently.

 

Favourite Google Streetview ‘location’ paintings from 2010

County Clare, Ireland

Rio de Janeiro from Estrada do Sumaré

Revueltas, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

  Diamond Head Rd, Honolulu HI, USA

Looking south from GC-210, Canary Islands 

 Lutsiveien, Stavanger, Norway

 Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, CA USA 

Albertacce, Corsica 

 

Favourite Google Streetview ‘location’ paintings from 2011

 The Bank of Eureka & the Savings Bank of Humboldt, Eureka, California, USA

Via Verdi in Talana, Sardinia

St Louis Cathedral from Decatur Street, New Orleans, LA USA

 Koyukuk River crossing, Alaska, USA

North of Glenorchy, Otago, New Zealand  
 

Ave. de Verdun, Eze, Alpes-Maritimes, France

Table Mountain from Leeukloof Drive, Cape Town, South Africa

Favourite Google Streetview Virtual Paintout ‘locations’ from 2013

 Corner of Calle dello Spezier and Calle Fondamenta Megio, Venice, Italy

Þjóðvegur, Iceland 

Rua Jorge M. Reis Machado, Azores

Via Roma Destra Bridge, Lido di Jeloso, Italy

Mosque in Smolevo, Bulgaria

Gedimino prospektas, Vilnius, Lithuania

Prospect Hill, Douglas, Isle of Man

Favourite Google Streetviews from 2014

 Trädgårdsföreningen, Gothenburg, Sweden

Jinsha Township, Taiwan, ROC

Russky Bridge,Vladivostok, Russia 

Along Ruta 7, Southern Parks area of Chile 

Georges Pierhead, Liverpool, UK

Lake Jasna, Slovenia

Pershing Park, Washington, DC USA

This is not Spain

Nivernais Canal in Auxerre

watercolour sketch

©2024 Charlene Brown

In early September I was preparing watercolour paper for some painting I hoped to do during an Art Gallery of Greater Victoria art tour to Spain, when I received some lovely photos from my daughter who was making her “hilariously slow” way along the Nivernais Canal south-east of Paris.  Her shot of Auxerre seemed especially paintable, and although it wasn’t the same shape (see below) as the paper I had ready for the Spanish trip, I scrunched it into a square and painted it anyway. 

Little did I know, it would end up standing in for the whole series of paintings of the Spanish trip ─ on which I only got as far as Seattle.  More about that next week…

Another illustration for The Grand Tour of 2000

A view of the garden at Chateau Hautefort

Watercolour and crayon

©2024 Charlene Brown

Back in 2020 when we couldn’t go anywhere or do anything, I wasn’t getting out to paint much.  So, I wrote a series of blog posts expanding on the Christmas letters I had written and illustrated since 1990. 

In 2000 our activities had included a two-month Grand Tour of Europe   ̶    resulting in a longish Christmas letter that year.

Here is a thumbnail illustration of that letter 

A couple of months ago, I decided to write a two-part version of that Grand Tour on Medium, an online publication that actually pays writers and illustrators for stories.

 The second part was a little short of paintings, so I added Chateau Hautefort to the mix.  

Here's my description of our day there:

In the second week of June, we were in the Périgord region of France, where we toured the Chateau Hautefort. The estate was a real treat — acres of Cedars of Lebanon and geometric and filigree-sculptured boxwood. We probably should have stayed outside in that wonderful garden.  But it was threatening rain most of the time we were there, so in we went. The inside was mainly spiral staircases and furniture they didn’t encourage you to sit on. But you do get a nice look at the geometry of the gardens from the tops of the turrets.

Another page for my Time Travel book

San Gimignano towers, Tuscany, Italy
watercolour monotype 1/1
©1988 Doris Livingstone

I’ve been to this medieval walled city, where 'skyscrapers' were invented, twice.  The first time was in 1988 when I was visiting my sister during a print-making workshop she was attending in Florence.  She was learning to make monotypes such as San Gimignano, above, which I love, so I have made this one exception to my watercolour-and-crayon procedure for illustrations in my Time Travel book. 

I’d never heard of San Gimignano, but she promised me that the 800-year-old ‘skyscrapers’ – apparently built by rival families trying to out-do each other ­­over a period of years beginning in 1199 – were definitely worth seeing, and it was easy to get there on a local bus.  She was right on both counts and we had a great day, with the place practically to ourselves.

It was quite a different story in 2000 with my husband on our Retirement Grand Tour, because an amazing number of people seemed to have found out about the place since 1988, and we had to deal with a lot of world class competitive parking professionals. Even under those circumstances it was well worth the effort, starting with our first glimpse of the  unforgettable skyline as we made our way from the distant spot on the highway where we’d left the car through climbing up to the city’s hilltop setting and exploring the stonework and architecture.

Here I am recovering from the effort

The Chilling Rise of the Zero-degree Isotherm

Morteratsch Glacier collapse
watercolour
Charlene Brown

Glaciers in Switzerland are shrinking more quickly every year and have lost 10% of their ice volume in the last two years. Tongues of glaciers such as the one pictured are collapsing and many small glaciers have disappeared completely.

The photo on which this painting was based was taken by Sean Gallup in May of last year, prior to the record-breaking heat wave in Europe. In August, the zero-degree isotherm, below which ice melts, rose to record elevations, well over 5000 metres  ̶  higher than many of the mountain peaks in Switzerland.

The main reason for this chilling development is human-induced climate heating. By the middle of the 21st century, a further rise in the zero-degree isotherm of a catastrophic 400 to 650 m can be expected if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase unchecked.

Two birds with one stone: solving two problems with one incinerator

 

Fernwärmewerk Spittelau
watercolour, crayon and marker
©2011 Charlene Brown

As I have mentioned before, I am fascinated with the designs of Friedensreich Hundertwasser,  a fabulous painter whose work covers several buildings around Vienna, such as the garbage incinerator/district heating plant, Fernwärmewerk Spittelau, I’ve painted here.  An ardent environmentalist, Hundertwasser only agreed to undertake the incinerator commission when he was promised that the plant would be equipped with the most modern emission-purification technology and that 60,000 apartments would be heated, thus making Vienna's air cleaner.

I have written before about proposals which will mitigate the effects of climate change in more than one way ─ solar vineyards and deciduous firebreaks.

Creative Archaeology: Time Traveling back to 3200 BCE

Ħaġar Qim

Watercolour and crayon

©2023 Charlene Brown

I plan to organize the chapters in the series ‘Time Travel with a bag of crayons’ in chronological order, so Ħaġar Qim, which dates from 3200 BCE, may be the first archaeological site in the book. Ħaġar Qim, meaning ‘standing stones’ is a megalithic temple complex located on a plateau near the south coast of Malta.

(Full disclosure) The tiny island of Filfla, seen off the coast, doesn’t line up with the ‘trefoil’ arrangement of the elongated oval chambers of the temple quite as picturesquely I’ve shown it. And the stone frieze of domestic animals anchoring the base of the painting was actually sketched in the Tarxien temple complex, about 10 km northeast of Ħaġar Qim, when my sister and I were there in 1999.

Creative Archaeology: continuing ‘Time Travel with a Bag of Crayons’

Antikythera mechanism

Watercolour, crayon, marker

©2023 Charlene Brown

An intricate mechanism, considered to be the world’s first analog computer – dating from the first century BCE, was found in 1900 in a shipwreck near the island of Antikythera in Greece. The recovered fragments of what became known as the Antikythera Mechanism are in the National Archeological Museum in Athens. 

In 2019, I reassembled these fragments and overlaid the result on a sketch I made in 2007 at the Posidonius School in Rhodes. There are many theories as to who designed and built this ingenious mechanism. Our tour guide on a shore excursion from a Black Sea cruise was a firm believer in the hypothesis, based on x-ray computed tomography and notations about solar eclipses, that it did in fact originate at this location in Rhodes.

I recently updated the 2019 painting, after hearing about a more complex version of the Antikythera Mechanism appeared this year under a new name, The Dial of Destiny.   This surprisingly intact and polished machine, now credited to Archimedes, is newly capable of time travel and was found by Indiana Jones, of all people!

Could this be a solution to two climate change problems?

Solar Vineyard in France

Computer-stylized watercolour

©2022 Charlene Brown

Solar Agriculture, sometimes known as agrophotovoltaics, describes the use of land for both alternate (low-carbon) electricity generation and agriculture.

In some parts of Europe, 2% of agricultural land is allocated to the installation of solar photovoltaic panels.  Sometimes the panels are raised high enough to allow access for farm machinery. They are generally mounted in single-axis rotating arrays.

Research to determine what crops will maximize the efficiency of this dual use of the land has been ongoing for some years.   It has been found that grapes adapt well to cultivation under solar panel arrays, in fact they benefit from the intermittent shade provided during extremely hot days and the partial shelter on cold nights at the beginning and end of the growing season.  

A break from blog posts about carbon emissions

Virtual AirBnB on the Amalfi Coast

Watercolour and crayon

©2022 Charlene Brown

This painting was based on some pictures my daughter sent me of the spectacularly-located villa she and her husband and another couple rented on the Amalfi coast near Positano. I hope to get back to real international traveling and painting next year but, for now, am still enjoying completely effortless virtual participation in adventures like this.

Meanwhile, back in the world of climate change, the Carbon Almanac has been published.  Several hundred of us worked on this project (you’ll find me at the beginning of the eleventh row at Meet the people behind the Carbon Almanac.) 

If you’re tired of hearing people debate climate change’s causes and dire consequences without providing facts to help you make your own decisions, I hope you’ll consider buying a copy of The Carbon Almanac  (27 CAD)

 

Twentieth Century Design in Europe

The Atomium, Belgium
Watercolour, crayon, and marker
Charlene Brown

The Atomium was constructed for the first post-war world exhibition (Expo 58). The nine sphere model of atomic structure represents faith in the power of science, and in nuclear power.

This is the last of the four samples highlighted in the twentieth century time capsule below.

I have written nine stories for the online publication platform, Medium, each with four paintings representing four areas of the world.  So far, seven of these stories have been published, all with the underlying message: 

“History isn’t just a series of wars, you know.”  

A few of these examples, like today’s painting, mention war or even have obvious military connections – Citadel in Mohenjo-Daro, Great Wall of China, Fort at Bahla, Alhambra at Grenada, and Morrow Castle in Havana.  But I think there is general agreement with my point that the art and architecture of civilization often outlasts the re-drawn maps and treaties and military alliances and other results of wars... And will continue to do so.

My Plan for '1150 Words by Charlene Brown' in 2022

Eiffel Tower as seen from the top of the Arc de Triomphe
Watercolour and crayon
©2021 Charlene Brown

The Eiffel Tower was built to be one of the main attractions at the Exposition Universelle held in 1889 to mark the 100^th Anniversary of the Fall of the Bastille and the launch of the French Revolution.  This painting will be one of the illustrations in the first project listed below.

History of Design:  A few years ago I put together a cross-cultural 'History of Design' timeline covering art and architecture from the third millennium BCE to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Since then I have illustrated the designs highlighted in this History of Design, and published them in stories such as this one about Design in the Second Millennium CE in the History section on the online platform Medium.  I plan to add The End of the Second Millennium CE (19th and  20th Centuries) to this series.

Graphic Novel:  As I mentioned last week, Canadians are kind of ‘electioned out’ so I won't be rushing to finish the graphic novel I’m working on – “By-election in Exceptional Pass” in 2022.  But I’ve got lots of background landscapes to work on, so I’m going to borrow this sentence from my Plan for (would you believe?) 2016, on which I didn’t make much progress –  “I hope to continue shifting from representational landscapes toward more stylized paintings and add some people to my landscapes” – and apply it to these backgrounds.

Creative Archaeology: And here’s a sentence from my Plan for 2021 – “In case my travel plans don’t work out any better than they did this year, I may re-interpret some of the photos and sketches I accumulated in past archaeology-related travel with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and University of Victoria travel study program” – on which I did make some progress, as I mentioned last week. I plan to continue the series ‘Time Travel with a Bag of Crayons’ working with the only truly portable plein air ‘painting’ kit I have discovered.

 

 

One of my favourite posts from the past (January 2016)

A Parliament like no other
Watercolour and crayon
©2016 Charlene Brown

From the outset, the Scottish Parliament building and its construction were controversial. Begun in 1999 with completion planned for 2001, it actually opened in 2004, £400 million over-budget. The design won numerous awards including the 2005 Stirling Prize, and, according to Wikipedia, has been described as a tour de force of Arts & Crafts design and quality ‘without parallel.’  It also placed fourth in a 2008 poll on what UK buildings people would most like to see demolished.

I think the driver on a tour bus I was on in 2007 might have been one of the folks who placed this building so high in the demolition rankings the following year. We drove by so fast that, by the time he even mentioned what it was, we missed most of it.

I got another chance to paint it, when the Virtual Paintout (where participants used Google Streetviews for reference) went to Edinburgh.  I like the unique look of this building but couldn’t find a Google Streetview that gave any sort of idea of its overall appearance, so I settled for this glimpse of what I thought might be the front.  (I realized later that if, instead of painting this Streetview, I’d rotated the camera to the right I would have gotten this rather better view and I’m guessing the flags are at the front door.)

When time travel is measured in Millennia

Druid’s Stone on the Island of Gigha
Watercolour, crayon and gouache
©1995 Charlene Brown

The Standing Stones of Scotland were likely erected in the third millennium BCE during the Neolithic Period.  Many, including this one, were associated with the Celts’ Iron Age priests in the early first millennium BCE.  

Some of these pre-historic stones were inscribed much later, in the fifth and sixth centuries of the first millennium CE, using an alphabet created specifically to represent the Gaelic language.  Then in the ninth century a few had Celtic crosses added.

The Druid’s Stone, shown here with the Paps of Jura in the distance, doesn’t have any of these inscriptions, so I’ve overlaid a few on the painting.