A bit of news and remember, meeting this Tuesday at 5pm in Conservatory!

Hi everyone,

 

Hope you’re having a good weekend.

 

First off, just wanted to remind you that we’re having our next meeting this Tuesday, Dec. 2, at 5pm in the Conservatory.

 

Second, if you haven’t done the carbon footprint survey yet, do it!

The link is here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=HfAlg_2f3hvg1ozb6mOIXrxQ_3d_3d

And then encourage your hallmates, officemates, and general silwoodmates to do it to if they haven’t already. The more we know about what Silwoodians are willing to change in their lives, and the more input we get from the campus community, the more luck we’ll have with our efforts to cut Silwood’s carbon footprint.

 

Third, I propose that as our first big club outing we all go to the National Climate March in London on Saturday, Dec. 6.

For more info see here: http://www.campaigncc.org

We can talk about it on Tuesday, but I think that if we want the government to take action, we need to make it visible and obvious that climate change is an issue we care about!

 

Next, (fourth for those of you who like counting, but I’m getting bored of it ;-) ), I thought I’d give you guys a little run-down of what we heard at the (really good!) panel talk on Climate Change on Thursday, hosted by the public interest research centre’s (http://pirc.info/) Climate Safety group (www.climatesafety.org).

The panel included Caroline Lucas (MEP for SE england and head of the green party), George Monbiot (author of Heat and various other books and environmental journalist bits), Jeremy Leggett (founder of a solar E company and general energy guy), Kevin Anderson (from the energy program of the Tyndall Centre, manchester), Tim Helweg-Larsen (director of pirc), and Leila Deen (activist for I’m not sure which groups, google seems to say World Development Movement and Plane Stupid).

There were a lot of interesting bits and details that I won’t write out today (maybe tomorrow), but the main points were:

-The climate change problem is likely even more serious than people are making out so far – the effects of even a 2 degree C increase in global average temperature could be really terrible, especially considering positive feedback loops triggered by the melting of sea ice and methane release from melting permafrost.

-to prevent this, carbon emissions need to peak soon, and then drop dramatically – which means that real, big, changes need to be made. Each of us recycling more and remembering to turn off lights will not be enough – system-wide, country-wide changes are necessary.

-George Monbiot set out a practical plan for how to achieve necessary reductions in the UK – read more about his plan in the climate safety report (download it at www.climatesafety.org).

-Our action is needed! Everyone agrees that solutions to the energy/climate problem exist – we don’t need new technologies, just better infrastructure, etc – the job ahead is to educate everyone about the problems and solutions, and convince governments to take confident action. Furthermore, everyone agrees that there are lots of things to be done, tipping points to push, etc – we should all just pick something to push for and go for it!

Nothing too new I guess . . . I’ll send along more details soon.

Ok, that’s all for now!

See you Tuesday!
best

Yael

 

 

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PhD student, Division of Biology

Imperial College London

Silwood Park Campus

Ascot, Berkshire SL5 7PY UK

+44 (0) 20 759 42255