Earth May Day! Sat. 10th May
Saturday 10th May was the day Gloucester City went into Ecological Debt and started living on the resources of the rest of the world... the UK as a whole went into Ecological Debt on 15th April 2008. Community Leaders from all over Cheltenham gathered together at Francis Close Hall campus to form an Action Plan to tackle global issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss and deforestation helped by representatives from the World Wildlife Fund, New Economics Foundation and the University of Bristol. The day was a great success with participants leaving feeling renewed and inspired to go out and effect change in their local communities. Watch this space for updates on Earth May Day!
Saturday 10th May was the day Gloucester City went into Ecological Debt and started living on the resources of the rest of the world... the UK as a whole went into Ecological Debt on 15th April 2008. Community Leaders from all over Cheltenham gathered together at Francis Close Hall campus to form an Action Plan to tackle global issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss and deforestation helped by representatives from the World Wildlife Fund, New Economics Foundation and the University of Bristol. The day was a great success with participants leaving feeling renewed and inspired to go out and effect change in their local communities. Watch this space for updates on Earth May Day!
3 comments:
Hi Cathy,
Love the idea of your blog! I'm interested in measuring my carbon footprint (having read your blog and also recently attended a talk on Climate Change at the Cheltenham Science Festival!)
I've tried a few online carbon footprint calculators. They're all giving me wildly different results. I'm getting anything between 4 to 8 tonnes for my annual carbon sin.
I'm also finding lots of different stats for the average UK footprint. Sir David King (former chief government scientist) reckons it's 12 tonnes. Your blog thinks it's 5 and I've seen other figures too. Any ideas about which figures I can rely upon?
Many thanks! Green Witch
(P.S. I think we met at a Vision 21 meeting just before Christmas. I was the one trying to set up a car club.)
The average UK CO2 footprint is 11.3 tonnes of CO2 a year (according to the Carbon Trust) but this is probably based on 2005 figures so it is probably higher, more like 12 tonnes a year. But the official figure is 11.3. I know in 2003 when I started doing this work it was 10 tonnes - so it keeps going up! As for what I say about 5 tonnes - well that is based on the 10 tonnes figure because I am targeting people's direct emissions. They say that about half of our emissions come from direct emissions (space heating, personal travel and domestic energy use) and the other half come from indirect emissions, which are harder to effect as they include 1.7 tonnes each of national infrastructure emissions.
I think I told Rebecca to put on the V21 web-site (www.vision21.org.uk) which are the best carbon calculators on the internet but I rate Resurgence's and the Centre for Alternative Technology's - as they both include some indirect emissions, as opposed to the DEFRA one that just covers direct emissions. For an in-depth study into the best ones on the web check out COIN's web-site: www.coinet.org.uk (Climate Outreach and Information Network).
Cathy
Great work.
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