On Saturday 29th March an event which started in Sydney, Austraila in 2007 became an international movement. It was called Earth Hour and the idea was to switch off any unnecessary electrical items for just one hour... to help spread the message about conserving energy to reduce the effects of climate change.
Regular readers will know that I won a competition by Oxfam to find three supporters who had a small carbon footprint.. the prize being a trip to Westminster (John's Weird World 9/3/08). I have now had time to digest my visit and wonder if it would have had any positive outcome.
On Saturday I spoke at a Carbon Reduction Action Group meeting in York about carbon offsetting. We'd tried to engage a carbon offsetter to speak... and failed.... so we drew lots and I got the short straw and had to present the pro-offsetting perspective. This also meant I had to explain what carbon offsetting actually is.
A few weeks ago I was on the Carbon Rationing Action Groups website and up popped a message saying "use your tiny carbon footprint to get into the corridors of power". Curious, I clicked on the link, and arrived at the Oxfam website. They had a competition to find three people with small carbon footprints, and these people would be invited to meet Hilary Benn and his shadow counterparts Peter Ainsworth and Steve Webb at Westminster. To enter the competition, I had to do the Government's Carbon Calculator 'Act On CO2'. I had filled in a few other carbon calculators before but not the 'official government CO2 calculator' so I was pleased to give it a go. It was easy and fun, and came up with a household footprint of 1.8 tonnes, and then I realised I had to submit an individual footprint so I re-did it and it came to 0.46 tonnes/year. This only covers home energy, heating and transport, so the average UK citizen's score would be about 6 tonnes.
Far from being a dedicated follower of fashion, John Cossham is a dedicated follower of recycling
Clothing isn't a subject which is immediately associated with sustainability, but our choices have an appreciable impact.
I was reminded by the Community Editor of Community Care that the most popular blogs are those which refer to the working practices and concerns of social workers, and this seemed to fit in well with an email I got from one of York's Green Councillors about 'e-democracy' and online participation. I wondered if this subject would resonate with social workers employed by local authorities?
