This is my last post for Community Care, and I'd like to thank all readers, especially the few who have written interesting comments, and my employers at Community Care who have been so good to me.
It was my birthday yesterday and after the York Green Festival planning meeting that I chaired, some of us went to the pub. I hardly ever do this anymore so it was a bit of a treat. And the experience reminded me why it is so popular... you can have conversations with people you've never met as well as old friends, and the alcohol (if that's what you're partaking of) loosens the tongue somewhat, so the talk flows and ebbs and goes off at tangents... excellent!
These days there are hundeds of campaigns, schemes and groups aiming to 'save the planet', all of then well-meaning but of varying effectiveness. I don't actually like the term 'save the planet', as I tend to take things literally and in my view, the planet will be around for a long time... I prefer to think of these ideas as 'keep the planet habitable for humans and other life-forms' but that's much less catchy....
One such scheme is Earth Hour, which this year takes place on Saturday 28th March at 8.30pm. The idea is that for one hour, around the globe, all participating individuals, businesses, local authorities etc switch off their lights, computers and other electrical appliances for one hour. All well and good... it's not asking anything too difficult or complicated, it saves energy, gives people a sense of participation, and yes, this has made it one of the most popular campaigns around.
This year it is being labelled as 'Vote Earth' and the website claims that 930 cities and towns in 80 countries are participating; the aim is to involve a billion people. It started in Sydney, Australia, in 2007, with about 2.2 million homes switching off their lights, and last year an estimated 50 million people joined in. So, during that hour, a lot of energy was not used which would have been if things had gone on as normal.
The popularity of this event is evident when doing a search on Facebook for 'Earth Hour'... I counted up to 300 groups dedicated to it before I gave up. Some were for individual towns and cities, some for states or countries, some for supporters and fans. However, this search also showed a handful of groups with names like 'Anti Earth Hour', 'Earth Hour Sucks', 'People against Earth Hour', 'Earth Hour was Useless', and 'F*ck Earth Hour'. These groups fall into two broad categories, the so-called 'climate deniers' who think that the broad scientific consensus that man-made gas emissions are altering the planet's atmosphere is wrong, and that any observable warming is part of some 'natural cycle', and those who feel that just switching off your lights for one hour per year is a complete waste of time when what we actually need to do is to cut our total emissions by 80%. This view is promoted by the various Facebook groups such as 'Earth Hour Every Month' and the more radical 'Earth Hour Every Week'. Maybe I should start a Facebook Group called 'Earth Hour Every Hour'?
Unfortunately, I will be unable to 'attend' Earth Hour this year as I have a ticket to go and see the Ukuele Orchestra, and my guess is that they'll need amplification which is of course, based on electric power. I'll stick to my Earth Hour Every Hour concept, I think!
I'm not sure if I have any regular readers... certainly no-one has mentioned my little break from writing this blog. I've had a month's holiday... over Christmas and New Year I just didn't feel like writing anything. And no-one noticed! Well, no-one asked why I wasn't keeping to my usual once a week routine. I didn't go anywhere on holiday, I've been at home, looking after the children, my wife, cooking, composting, managing logpiles, doing occasional Professor Fiddlesticks gigs and trying to keep on top of the paperwork. I suppose I've been a bit low, not as far as depressed, but not feeling my usual joyful optimistic self.
Regular readers will remember that a year ago I managed to secure an appointment at The Maudsley Hospital to find out if my unusual spectrum of behaviours meant that I had ADHD. I had self-diagnosed up to 10 years previously after friends kept on mentioning it to me and I'd seen some livlely 'labelled' kids when working as Professor Fiddlesticks, whose demeanour reminded me of my own childhood. However, at that assessment, I was told that I may have had ADHD as a child but didn't have it now... but might be on the Autistic Spectrum, such as Aspergers Syndrome with hyperactivity. This was a shock, as although I'd recognised I had some Aspergery traits, I had never considered that I might actually be Autistic!
I became interested in poverty when I got involved in Local Agenda 21 in the mid 1990s, a few years after John Major signed a document called 'Agenda 21' at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. This committed all the signitory countries to explore and implement 'Sustainable Development' by encouraging Local Authorities to empower their local communities to find local solutions... I learned that sustainable development was a balance between our natural environment, our social environment and our fiscal (money) environment... and that the number one enemy of sustainable development was... POVERTY.
Once again I've had an interesting gig as 'Professor Fiddlesticks', entertaining children this weekend at a conference organised by Sibs. My role was to provide a fun two hours with a circus show followed by a workshop where the children could try out different skills, finishing with an opportunity for some of them to show off these newly acquired tricks to the adults who had attended the meeting.
I am not an economist or a businessman, and although many of my posts are partly about saving money, I'm certainly no expert on what's happening to the economy. To me, it looks like some peoples' greed has caught up with them at the same time as peak oil has started to bite and our unpredictable and changing climate has caused a string of poor crop years. And, although it's not 'our fault' as individuals, we do collectively share some of the responsibility for heavy resource use, high carbon emissions and purchasing homes with mortgages many times bigger than our income. So we're all feeling the impact of this 'credit crunch' or economic slowdown.
I am very pleased to see Community Care magazine discussing the increasing costs for social workers of driving their car, and advocating alternatives (Running on Empty, p. 14, 10th July) and using my column ('Walk this Way', p. 34) on walking and cycling the same week. Transport is a big part of our carbon footprint and if we can reduce car use and replace with public transport, bike or even occasionally work from home and teleconference that all helps reduce the fossil fuels used and the pollution we are responsible for.
However, there is sometimes a need to carry items which wouldn't initially seem to be easily taken by bike, but these days there are many ways to shift bulky stuff by bike. I have a pair of Ortlieb panniers called 'Back-Roller Plus' which are waterproof and hold my laptop or childrens' rucsacks with ease. These attach to my rear rack, which can also be used to strap things onto... I use elastic 'bungees' which can be sourced at motoring or cycling shops. On my travels I often find bungees which have not been adequately fixed onto the vehicle and they've fallen off.... I pick them up and reuse them. My tip for not losing them is to put them on carefully and when you've cycled for 10 minutes or so, just check them. Sometimes things settle once you've got going and the bungees need to be re-fixed more tightly so they don't fall off... to be found by another re-user!
For bigger bulkier items including small people and pets, there are trailers. There are so many makes and styles of trailer... and mine was built specially for me to enable me to carry my circus equipment around, so as 'Professor Fiddlesticks' I can travel around by bike with full circus party stuff in tow... But a good make is a BOB Yak as it only has one wheel and is quite narrow to get down the lines of traffic jams! But Google 'bike trailers' and be amazed by the different sorts, or visit your local retailer and ask them what they have available.
Most people think that there are too many cars on the road, including many drivers, who, as drivers, are part of the problem. So are there any solutions? Well public transport, road tolls, home working and supermarket deliveries may all be part of a solution, but there is another way in which the number of cars could be (slightly) reduced. This is the car-club/car sharing concept.
