The answer (for now) is 42

The Guardian reported a couple of days ago about some very important developments north of the border, where Scotland have committed to a 42% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020. That's the biggest commitment in the world, to date.

We need to urgently start looking at what these numbers mean for public sector organisations, community and business. On July 10th, I'll be asking representatives from 22 local authorities to do just that, and get the first analysis complete by the end of the year

Soundslide - Freshwest and the lazy chair

One of the great things about living on a corner, in a place like St Davids, is that it's a convenient stopping-off point for lots of interesting folk going one notth or south around the coast. This week saw cyclists converging on TYF and our house, which was great. A baker's dozen of riders from the Otesha Project (more of this later) stopped by to work and play, and designer, philosopher and clear-eyed seer Nick Hand stayed over between Tenby and Fishguard. He's riding the coast of Britain, collecting experiences, sounds, images and stories on the way. There's a lovely one here on the folks down at Freshwest in Tenby, who have just designed a lazy chair; click here for more.

Good design, life-affirming conversations, slow travel, evenings with friends. Hard to want more

Voice of youth - Part 1

The Climate Change Commission for Wales met on Thursday last week, and the agenda included an opportunity for one of Wales' young climate champions to speak. This time around, it was Cerith Jones' turn to attend; hot from a coaching session at TYF the weekend before with other climate champions, Cerith turned the taps on full and delivered an excellent speech calling on the commissioners present to up their game and start to address the issue of change with greater urgency and ambition. Notwithstanding that Wales is already doing much good work, it's still not enough, and hearing a call for change and speed from someone young, informed and passionate was excellent. Cerith had a big impact on his audience - the minister and heads of organisations representing the climate change arena.  Selected passaged of his talk provide the evidence that young people can have when they are given the opportunity to be heard:

STATEMENT TO THE CLIMATE CHANGE COMMISSION FOR WALES

Cerith Rhys Jones, Climate Change Champion for Wales 2009

Climate Change Commission for Wales, 25 June 2009

“A carbon emission reduction target of 3% is a good place to start, but scientific research has shown that we need to look at a target more like 9% and higher.... We have some forty years’ worth of oil left. Is now not the time to use what resources we have, to build a self-sufficient and renewable society? I want the Climate Change Commission for Wales (CCCW) and Welsh Assembly (WAG) to continue to work towards a sustainable future for Wales, but I want you all to up your game. The United Kingdom was the first country in the world to introduce climate change legislation, but I want Wales to be the first country in the world to be a self-sufficient nation.

“As a young person, it’s my generation that will have to deal with tomorrow’s consequences to today’s actions. In fifty years’ time, it’s my generation that will be the leaders, doctors, lawyers, workers, parents and adults of this world and so it’s essential now, that we play an active and leading role in tackling climate change. Yes, the Countdown to Copenhagen Youth Conference is a good way to gauge popular youth opinion on climate change, but my judgement is that it isn’t enough. The Eco Schools movement isn’t enough. Young people need to play a leading role in policy and targets and as impractical as that may be, it’s what I think is needed. We are going to be in charge when climate change is at its peak so, shouldn’t we really be in charge now, so that we can determine what we want to happen and how we want to tackle the climate crisis?

“I’m calling on the CCCW and WAG to look into setting up a Youth Climate Change Commission for Wales – not a youth led forum, but an appointed group of young people who represent all of Wales’ young people, to work closely with the CCCW and WAG on a regular basis so that they know exactly what we want to happen.

Education is a major part of tackling climate change. If the pupils in Wales’ schools don’t know what climate change is, or how they can tackle it, and the importance of that, then what hope is there for us to survive the climate crisis? Frankly, I don’t believe that Wales’ young people are being educated adequately on climate change... I’ve learned that a teacher at her school has taught the pupils that climate change isn’t true, and has only presented facts and figures in a negative light.

“ I want this commission to put pressure on all of Wales’ local authorities to ensure that every school in the country is taking vigorously effective steps to tackle climate change. I want young people to be a part of this process. I believe that eco committees should have the power and capacity, in co-operation with schools’ councils and governors, to make decisions, to say what should be happening, and to employ methods by which serious steps can be taken. I want every school in our country to be actively working to reduce its carbon footprint –

I want the CCCW and WAG to work with businesses to ensure that we increase the amount of local food we buy, and thus decrease our food miles. I want the CCCW and WAG to see to it that when something is grown or produced in one place, it isn’t transported across the country for packaging, then shipped all the way back to be sold. We’re in a ridiculous situation, where we’re pointlessly emitting tones of carbon dioxide each year, when we could be developing local economies and cutting our emissions. I want the CCCW and WAG to help Wales work towards a future where food is grown and sold locally, with as little packaging as possible.

“The public transport network in Wales needs to be drastically changed – we need modern buses that run on time, and not just in urban areas. I want the CCCW and WAG to look into ways of doing this. Again, using my local area as an example, I call on the CCCW and WAG, to develop cycling and walking opportunities throughout our country. Without designated cycling paths, and not just exposed, narrow, green lanes on main roads, how can people be expected to make the effort to cycle or walk instead of driving? In my opinion, it’s completely and utterly unreasonable to ask people to do so when if they do, they’re exposing themselves to the danger of passing cars.

“If I weren’t a Climate Change Champion, I wouldn’t know what happens in the CCCW meetings; I wouldn’t know what the commission does. I’ve searched for the commission’s website, I’ve searched for a Facebook group, but I found nothing. If people are going to know how important the commission is, they need to have a way to get hold of basic information about what the commission, and that from a user-friendly website.

“We’re just not doing enough. I’ve made a lot of requests in this statement. I’ve called on the CCCW and WAG to do a lot of things. They may think that I’m being unreasonable or extreme, but I believe that if we as a country cannot trust the Climate Change Commission for Wales or the Welsh Assembly Government to take the appropriate steps to tackle climate change, whom can we trust? Now is the time for us to prepare for a major shift in the way we live our lives, and I look forward to seeing what the CCCW and WAG will do in the coming months to see that appropriate and significant steps are taken to prepare Wales for the climate crisis, and to equip Wales with the tools to tackle it.

Thank you.

a reason for action on food

Although it's off most people's radar, there is a real sense of urgency to get moving on community, regional, nation and humanity scale awareness of the risk and response to the challenges coming down the track in terms of our food supply. Such as this:

UNEP estimates that nearly 2 billion hectares of land are affected by human-induced erosion and soil degradation, and in its 2002 “State of World Soils” report, provided the shocking insight that if we continue on a business-as-usual basis, nearly half the world’s current arable land will be “unusable” by 2050. Farmers the world over will need to move rapidly and systematically to regenerative fertility-building systems that build humus and retain carbon in the soils. (Jonathan Porritt, 2009)

TYF EcoSapiens are working with the Soil Association, Cardiff Uni and others to create a draft food reslience plan for Wales. Email us if you are interested.

new economics

Adbusters put out a call for short pieces on economic insights, so I posted this off to them. It was fun to write, and remember what's important:

The experiment nearly worked, and could have done, with its simple elegance. Providing that people were glued to the meme of ‘how much can I manage to spend?’, they were easy to control. As most folk drove air-conditioned cars, there was no talking on street corners, and little conversation through the car window. Processed food and eating watching TV reduced the chance of people talking over the dining table or the kitchen, and the shop assistants in the food store didn’t gossip. Managing the almost continual flow of material from the shops to the house to the dump took much time, and people didn’t seem to mind that the rubbish they threw had only been paid for hours before. Tiring commuting patterns and long hours at work ensured that few had the time to talk at home, or over long walks in the park or the country. As Mark Vernon wrote, ‘That's the genius of so much human exploitation: it can be taken for progress’. Mind control was strong, and nearly complete.

It would have worked except that, just in time, a few people started asking the question ‘how little can I live on, by choice?’ Is it £10,000 a year for my family, or five times that? At last, realisation. Fresh, cheap food cooked slowly tastes good, and allows space for words. Talks over walks have a magic that seeps deep into the conversation. Cycling and walking around community makes connections between people, hearts, minds and smiles. When the question of ‘Do I really need that?’ started to kick in, people realised that mind control was happening, but this time around, it was their own minds. At last.