The first thing I think about when I consider how my sit spot has changed over the course of my time here is how comfortable and pleasant it feels to sit here now. In the beginning, my fingers always felt stiff from the cold, the trees were bare, and the sky was always cloudy and grey. Now, it’s brighter out and the trees are green with new leaves. New colors are arriving every day: light pink, delicate green, and soothing purple, just to name a few. Dandelions have sprung up in the grass and there are magnolia flowers and cherry blossoms blooming on the trees. We’ve had a surprisingly sunny April and a milder winter than Massachusetts winters usually are (no snow here though, unfortunately), so I feel pretty lucky to have missed some of the harsher weather this year. This is my final visit to my sit spot before I fly home, and it feels very bittersweet. I’m really grateful for the chance to return to this spot over and over during the term because it allowed me to create a space of my own in an unfamiliar city. Goodbye for now Oxford!

At the national level, the UK government has passed several key pieces of climate legislation, primarily the Climate Change Act of 2008. Under this act, the government set a target of 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, established a Committee on Climate Change that would report on the progress of emissions reductions, and made provisions for adapting to climate change. In the Committee on Climate Change’s 2025 report, they identified extreme weather events, especially drought, heat, and flooding, as posing the greatest risk to health, agriculture, ecosystems, and infrastructure. Flooding seems to be an especially great concern because of how frequently it rains in the UK, and I’ve heard from my tutors about severe flooding here in Oxford in the past couple of years that led to entire roads being covered with water and blocked off. Based on the report, adaptation measures that are aimed at reducing these impacts of climate change across the nation are not well implemented, leading to a necessity for clearer and more robust climate resiliency measures. Like in the US, the topic of climate change has also become politicized, with the Conservative Party being split between a pro-climate stance and a climate denial stance and the far-right Reform Party taking a strong position on climate change denial, while the Labour Party and the Green Party are advocates for climate change legislation adaptation and mitigation efforts.