Decision Meeting 24 June 7.30 Bridge Centre June 21, 2008
Posted by jsquires in : Uncategorized , add a commentThe next meeting of Sustaining Haddington will be at the Bridge Centre on Tuesday 24th June. At this meeting we hope to decide on some positive action we can take over the summer. Hopefully this will be where we go from Climate Change Discussion to Climate Change Action.
Anyone is welcome to come along, but it would be helpful if you have had a think about what you would like to get out of this, and what might be worth doing as a community rather than as individuals, or things that only government could do. If you would like some ideas to mull over, there is a file on the Yahoo discussion group site, or phone Jean on 01620 823966 and she will get a copy to you.
Haddington Communities Day June 21, 2008
Posted by jsquires in : Uncategorized , add a comment
For the stall at Haddington Communities Day we made a display showing the food miles of various bits of fruit and veg. It was a strange experience going round Tesco’s deliberately buying things that had come a long way! The potatoes were particularly surprising - there were some from Aberlady, about 5 miles away, some from Jersey (470 miles), and some all the way from Israel (2500 miles). Another surprise were the onions - despite UK onions coming into season, it is still possible to buy ones from Argentina - 7500 miles distant.
Of course it’s not always clear cut - because of methods of production you may be better from a CO2 point of view buying say butter from a long way away that has been made from cows that can stay outside all the time and don’t need to eat anything but grass. But generally speaking, it surely is not a good idea to bring food from the other side of the world when we are surrounded by prime agricultural land here in East Lothian. The idea of the stall was to get people to think - food production and distribution is a large part of our carbon footprint because eating is something you have to do such a lot of. If we are going to move to a sustainable lifestyle, that means aiming for eating local, seasonal, organic produce, as well less meat generally.
Penguins Against Climate Change also put in an appearance at the stall. Their numbers were boosted by Snowmen for a Cool Planet, worried about their long term job security. They said the Berg they floated down on used to be 2 miles across, though it is now a mere half metre or so, and has been moulded by the action of the sea to look remarkably like an upturned bath tub. Nice to see you again, penguins.
Al Gore Film June 7, 2008
Posted by jsquires in : Uncategorized , add a comment
We showed An Inconvenient Truth as planned in the Bridge Centre - Haddington’s newest film venue. At the start there was a slight high whiny noise from the equipment. “Was it Al Gore?” some wag asked when I mentioned this later. No. Al Gore went carefully through why we should care about climate change in a deep southern drawl.
All in all not a bad turnout, considering the rival festival events, and some new folk have signed up to the newsgroup (hello!) following this. After the film we had a discussion which ranged from what we can do as individuals, to what governments really ought to be doing, with what communities could do in between. One of the things that seemed to make the most impression in the film was the graph at the end where Al Gore shows how much of a cut in CO2 emissions could be made now, in each sector, using existing technology, to make cuts needed. It can be done. All we’ve got to do is - do it, as Al Gore says, person by person, town by town, country by country.
Haddington Festival Stall June 7, 2008
Posted by jsquires in : Uncategorized , add a comment
We did, amazingly considering the timescale, manage to get a stall together for the Haddington Festival. It consisted of several saplings and a wormery, both kindly lent by Haddington Infant School, loads and loads of relevant leaflets, and a flock of penguins protesting against climate change. Apart from some ants escaping from the saplings, it went off more or less without incident. We had to take the stall down on the Monday for an event later on, but decided to risk leaving it up for the children’s Dog Show, despite warnings of chaos from the stall holder next door. Which turned out to be a good call, as captive adults had a good chance to have a look through all the leaflets, especially since most of the stalls had packed up. It was interesting getting to talk to people while manning the stall - sadly couldn’t do as much of this as hoped due to work/children/abundance of cheap (locally baked) cakes.
We ran out of several of the leaflets - the eco-driving one was popular, not surprising with rising fuel prices. The Vegetarian Society ones also went well, and Walks Around Haddington disappeared early on. The penguins, luckily, stayed till the end, surviving both the Dog Show and the unmanned hours. Let’s hope their trip from the Antartic will pay off.
Powered by FireStats