The One Tonners launch on Friday 2nd February got off to a flying start with over 60 people attending the main presentation on how to calculate your Carbon Footprint. There was also an impressive presentation given on everything you can do to reduce your footprint around the Home and an incisive critique of the current fad for Carbon Offsetting entitled: 'Carbon Offsetting is a CO2N' ! It was a lively event featuring exhibitions, music videos, a library of books and loads of useful leaflets. The second One Tonners on Friday 2nd March was also a success, despite the pouring rain outside! - with over 20 people attending... the third One Tonners on Monday 2nd April at Bethesda Church again had 20 people attending and was an inspiring event... plus on Thursday 5th April Cathy gave a presentation to the North Cheltenham Rotary Club and got the Rotarians enthused about cutting their carbon...

The next One Tonners event is on Saturday 5th May at the One World Festival @ the University of Gloucestershire, Park Campus, Cheltenham at 3.00 pm. Please tell all your friends and colleagues...

This Is Your Low Carbon Action Plan

FIRST THINGS FIRST:

· Stop flying – flying is now an unsustainable activity;
· Change to a Green Electricity supplier = Green Energy / Good Energy / Ecotricity;
· Fully insulate your home and loft including cavity wall insulation;
· Turn your heating down to 18ºC and only heat occupied rooms;
· Reduce energy consumption, switch off electrical appliances on standby;
· Fit energy saving lightbulbs in the home, lobby your workplace;
· Cut down all unnecessary car trips – walk, cycle, use public transport more: 25% of all car journeys are less than 2 miles; 58% are less than 5 miles.

NEXT STEPS:
· Compost your food waste;
· If your boiler is over 10 years old it could be 25% less efficient than a condensing boiler – replace it with a condensing boiler or Micro-combined heat & power unit;
· When replacing electrical goods buy only the most energy efficient rated ones;
· Recycle everything you possibly can and buy recycled goods in return;
· Save water – take showers not baths / put a brick in your toilet cistern / use a water butt in the garden to collect rainwater for watering the garden.

TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND:
· Stop using supermarkets – get your food from local sources e.g. farmers markets /vegebox schemes / local fruit & veg markets / local butchers;
· Stop shopping for new products in general – buy second-hand instead or recycled;
· Consider doing without a car and car share or join a car club. Consider buying the smallest fuel efficient diesel or hybrid;
· Travel less. Explore the beautiful Cotswolds;
· Grow your own vegetables in your garden or get an allotment;
· Change to an ethical bank and ethical investments
· If you are rich enough consider investing in Microgeneration.

WANT TO DO MORE…?
· Become a Climate Change Campaigner and tell everyone you know about how to live a low carbon lifestyle;
· Write to the Government and your Local Authority so that they know how much you care about the Climate and our future on the planet;
· Write letters to newspapers – local and national – join local groups – join local protests –

make as much noise as you can …

TOGETHER WE CAN BE VERY POWERFUL – JOIN THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT!

To find out what you can do see the web-site links on the top right-hand side of this blog = Campaign against Climate Change web-site / Oxford Students Union Climate Justice web-site / Prophets of Hope & many more...

One Tonners Paint The Town Red !

One of the ONE TONNERS handing out leaflets on Saturday 27th January in Cheltenham to promote the One Tonners events

Tony Blair's ridiculous comments in the media

Dear David Miliband,

I am writing to you as a UK citizen who is extremely concerned about climate change, along with a great many other UK and world citizens... unlike Tony Blair! He is a man in denial and trots out the same arguments about flying and the UK's carbon emissions that I would expect from a contestant in Celebrity Big Brother! He is completely out of touch with the reality of the climate science, despite having attended the Hadley conference in 2005. He also made it 100% clear in his interview in today's Guardian that all he has really cared about was getting elected - that is now plain to see. Tony Blair represents a selfish and unsustainable view of life and way of living and the sooner he goes the better for all of us...

Why YOU need to TAKE ACTION NOW!

2007 is likely to be the hottest year ever in the UK. European ski resorts are experiencing the hottest winters in 1300 years. The global temperature has risen by 0.8 C since the Industrial Revolution and we are already committed to another 0.6 C rise because of all the CO2 we have already put into the atmosphere. 0.8 + 0.6 = 1.4 C.

'Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change' was the title of an Exeter Conference held last Feb. 2005 and attended by scientists and politicians from around the world. This conference decided on a safe threshold of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which should not be exceeded if we are to avoid reaching the dangerous level of +2 C. The safe threshold for CO2 in the atmosphere was 400 parts per million. The present level of CO2 in the atmosphere is currently 380 ppm and this is rising annually by approx. 2 ppm - which gives us less than 10 years to stabilise CO2 at this safe level.

In January 2005 the International Climate Change Taskforce produced a report which described the consequences of raising temperatures above 2 C as "abrupt, accelerated or Runaway Climate Change" - this is when powerful 'positive feedbacks' like the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the dieback of the Amazon Rainforests could take place and we would no longer be able to influence the warming of the planet which would increase ever more rapidly: 2 C leads to 3 C leads to 4 C and so on. The upper limit predicted for this century is based on 'business as usual' and it is 5.8 C. The last time the global temperature was 5.8 C was 225 million years ago and it triggered the largest of the five mass extinctions in earth's history where 95% of live on earth became extinct. It is not the planet we should be trying to save as the planet will survive, it is all life on earth that we need to save! As more and more positive feedbacks come into play this nightmare scenario is looking ever more likely. But WE STILL HAVE TIME! We have a very small window in which to change the way we live and keep the global temperature rise below 2 C - what else in our lives could be more important than this?