Glastonbury Festival Climate Conversations

I asked a number of people at the festival what they were doing in their own lives to tackle climate change and also what they found the most difficult.

Sharia - Greenpeace Fundraiser

‘I shop locally, eat locally, manage my own allotment, and cycle to work. I don’t use supermarkets, so for me fitting in all my shopping, along with everything else is difficult. But the vegetarian and vegan co-operative I’m a member of, makes this slightly easier.’

Joe - LetsTalkGordon.org.uk Campaign Co-ordinator

‘I’m getting active politically, at the moment I’m co-ordinating LetsTalkGordon.org.uk a campaign dedicated to getting the Prime Minister to make a televised address to the nation on climate change, launching the national debate about how we should respond.

I’m trying to eat less meat and cut down on flights. It’s difficult because my brother lives in New York. I offset, but am not convinced. Not being a vegetarian, eating less meat is not easy.

Helen - Festival Go-er

‘I’m growing my own veg in the garden, going to local farmers markets and buying too much cheese! I try to buy eco-products like organic, fair trade clothes and earth friendly toiletries. Overcoming my own laziness is the hardest part.’

Three Drunk Blokes on Cider

‘Arhhhhhhhhg.. Take a photo.. hic’

Gemma - Anti-Slavery Campaigner

‘Buying energy saving light-bulbs and saving energy around the house. I find the hardest part is seeing how were all making a difference, knowing that the part you play is just a small part in the whole thing.’

This year’s Glastonbury Festival was one of the greenest yet, but there was still room for improvement. It will be remembered as ‘one of those fantastic years’.

Keep coming back for a review of the Festival’s Greener Side in the coming days.

Green fields at Glastonbury Festival

At Glastonbury Festival, The Green Fields provide an environmentally friendly guide to life.

A number of entrances to the fields exist, but many will come along the old train track. Decorated by campaigners, the old track contains a number of climate inspired messages. ‘Did you know if all the bees died, life on earth would cease to exist after 60 years’, ‘Walk your kids to school’.

This year the Green Fields are showcasing a couple of low impact homes. Practical tips on how you can insulate your walls with sheep wool, build with green timber and make but use of your natural environment.

Despite all this greeness, the festival motto ‘Love the farm, leave no trace’ has clearly not struck a chord with some.

Better Search with Eco-Search

I just stumbled upon this lovely EcoSearch. These guys re-skinned google and created a nonprofit search that raises money for other environmentally nonprofits.

Users search on EcoSearch.org, just as they would on any other search engine. The results come straight from Google, but here’s the cool thing - they donate all of the profits from their ad revenue to green organisations.

Simple win-win.

10 Carbon Busting Greener Festival Tips

The Guardian recently reported that a study by Julie’s bicycle, revealed that large music festivals (i.e more than 40,000 people) can generate around more the 2,000 tonnes of CO2.

This year I’ll be going to Glastonbury Festival, and Camp Bestival and living by 10 greener festival tips as The GreenFestivalMan.

Number TEN - Fashion
Don’t waste money buying new clothes that will get trashed. Shop around charity or thrift Shops for pre-festival bargains. A large number of UK festivals have charity shops on site.

Number NINE - Toilets
This applies to guys more than girls. Festival toilets can be pretty grim but less grim than the thought of 10′000s of people urinating at random in a field. Doing so is tantamount, to empting the content of a large toilet right over the entire festival. Poor santitation = nasty stomach upsets and ecosystem pollution.

Number EIGHT - Lighting
It’s dark you need light. Use renewable power torches and lights, like the Puma Dynamo Torch available from EcoOutlet.co.uk. (It even has a strobe light).

Lights comes in all forms from solar to water powered.

Number SEVEN - Tent pegs
Made from potato starch, Millets.co.uk have launched a range of biodegradable tent pegs from GreenStake. Reusable, but won’t harm wildlife if you lose them in the ground.

Number SIX - Fire!
If like me you need fire be sociable and gather round someone else’s.

Use deadwood, don’t pull any branches down. Using charcoal? make sure it’s from a sustainable source. Charcoal in the UK should be FSC certified and can be sourced from British woodlands.

This year I’ll be using the WoodGas Biomass Camp Stove. Originally designed for developing countries to minimise smoke pollution. There are only a few UK stockists at the moment, but a larger number in the USA.

Number FIVE - Power
Use recharagable batteries or personal renewable power sources.

A number of personal solar panels are available to charge various different electronics like MP3 players, batteries and mobile phones. Most can be found for reasonable rates on the internet.

A recent addition to the pack, is the HYmini wind powered generator and handheld charger.

Number FOUR - Cleanliness
Use natural, bio degradable, wet wipes. Better still, take a flannel, remember those?

Use biodegradable soap and Eco-friendly toothpaste. Many ‘non-green’ hygiene products release nasty chemicals. These chemicals eventually get into food chains.

Number THREE - Rubbish / Trash
Leave no trace. Leave nothing but footprints. Use on-site recycling facilities or take home waste to recycle and/or compost.

Don’t trash your tent or burn it, give it to an organisation like Globalhand.org for recycling. If it does get trashed, salvage the useful bits. Tent poles can make good flag poles. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Number TWO - Food
Buy local, eat seasonal – try out the local food stalls. Meat eaters can cut back their carbon footprints but eating more vegetarian food. Cut it out or cut it back. This year at Glastonbury I’ll be only eating vegetarian food, but only if I can find another 15 meat eaters to join me. Sign up on www.PledgeBank.Com/GoVegetarian .

If going vegetarian isn’t your bag try to make the special effort to get something that’s local, free range and preferably organic. The meat tastes better that way and will have taken less carbon to produce.

A good range of organic and fairtrade museli and granola bars are available (excellent munchie food).

Decant soft drinks into a re-usable bottle, like CamelBak’s innovative BPA free range.

Alcohol from local breweries will quench the festival thirst. Find yourself stuck with a bottle but no way of getting in to it? Show your friends how old stuff can be reused. EcoOutlet.co.uk retail bottle openers made from recycled metal spoons.

• Number ONE -Transportation

Most of your Carbon footprint originates from the way you travel to the event. Use public transport where possible, many festivals across the world can be accessed by trains and coaches. Rock am Ring in Nurberg and Glastonbury included.

Going by car? arrange a lift share via liftshare.org or find a travelling companion on boards like eFestivals.com or networking sites like isanyonegoingto.com. Whatever your means offset it a few times using audited carbon offset companies like Climatecare.org.

Have a happy Festival and Camping Season. See you at Glastonbury or Camp Bestival.

GreenFestivalMan

(aka Gareth, GGG Editor)

Guest Editor: David Hayes - Social Networking for change

It’s safe to say that the use of social networking sites worldwide has exploded in the past year, with popular sites seeing total visits increase by as much as 270 percent, according to a recent study by ComScore Inc. MySpace, alone drew more than 114 million global visitors in June 2007, a 72 percent increase over the past year while Facebook, experienced a 270 percent increase in worldwide visitors over the past year.

Alongside the growth of these networks the emergence of niche networks is also growing, coupled with the increased media attention on climate change its no wonder that we are now seeing a host of green social networks emerging. Personally I welcome this for a host of reasons but primarily anything that puts climate change at the centre of the debate is both necessary and essential. While I enjoy dabbling with Facebook and other networks the communication involved seems to be rather limited and the content rather egocentric. This is not a criticism rather an observation and it’s totally natural given that we are really just beginning to explore the potentials of this form of communication.

What ever your beliefs in regard to climate change and its effects it’s hard to ignore the problems we are facing in relation to escalating fuel prices, food shortages and extreme weather conditions. Whether we believe it or not they are inextricably linked and the need to address these issues is paramount. For the first time in human history the Internet offers us the tools to communicate and collaborate on a global scale. While the net may not offer all of the solutions it does however allow each of us to partake in the discussion and therefore it is unquestionably a truly democratizing tool and one that needs to be safeguarded.

As I said earlier I welcome the proliferation of green focused networking sites and I myself am part of a new networking site www.edenbee.com that offers users a platform to tackle climate change through better personal choices (with a little encouragement from like-minded souls). It has all of the essentials of a social network — ways to build a network with friends, and groups and discussions — but on Edenbee, personal profiles get a unique spin with “Lifestyle Profiling” and “Carbon Logbooks,” and a framework for setting goals against the two.

Edenbee encourages not only information sharing, but also a way for people to cheer each other on. If you are looking for up to date news and information you can browse through the blog posts that offer a host of news and interesting articles on how to be more eco conscious and other topical green issues. We feel that we are encouraging a more meaningful conversation, one that is necessary if we are to leave any kind of lasting legacy for future generations.

The Green Festival Man says ‘Festival Season is Upon Us’

This year I’m trying to reduce my carbon footprint at Glastonbury Festival by living by 10 Carbon Busting Green Festival Tips.

Recently a number of GreenGuys and GreenGirls have written about the environmental and health benefits of going vegetarian. Some reports even say vegetarians have half the carbon footprint of their meat eating counterparts.

People go vegetarian for many different reasons, but for me it’s about the environment.

I’m looking for 15 other meat-eaters to join me between the 25th - 29th June 2008, and try out vegetarianism.

WILL YOU JOIN ME?

Join in the fun at http://www.pledgebank.com/GoVegetarian

OR text ‘pledge GoVegetarian’ to 60022 (in the UK only)

The idea has already generated a lot of lively debate on eFestivals and fits in nicely with Glastonbury’s attempt to lead the way in Green Festivals in 2008. Much of their marketing material carrying the strapline ‘Leave no trace, Love the farm’.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be reviewing a number of the latest eco-camping products and publishing my 10 Greener Festival/Camping Tips on GreenGuysGlobal.

I’ll be writing from the festival on my environmental finds, and asking people what they are doing in their lives to help reduce their carbon footprint, and finding difficult about making changes in their lives.

Join the group ‘Follow The Green Festival Man’ on Facebook, and become a friend of the Green Festival Man on Myspace http://www.myspace.com/GreenFestivalMan.

Look forward to chatting with you soon.

GreenFestivalMan
(aka GGG Editor Gareth)

PS Keep watching this website for my GreenFestivalTips later in the week.

Canvass Your MP campaign kick off

This is probably the fastest campaign ever.

A bunch of 10 strangers met for couple of hours, came up with some solid ideas, exchanged few emails and after only a week(!), a simple, single-minded and hopefully effective campaign was born!

Well done to all people involved.

The Canvass Your MP campaign aims to encourage members of the public to engage with their local MPs on the climate change bill issues by going to meet them in person. When they need our vote, MPs are going door-to-door to convince us why they deserve our support. We want to flip this practice and get people to canvass their MPs to convince them to press for a stronger, more effective bill.

There’s nothing like a bit of one on one time to convince someone of your true feelings and many people feel passionately that the it’s time for the politicians to pull their fingers out of their a**e and to start taking positive, effective, cross-party action on Climate Change.

This is a politics neutral campaign. The issues are far more serious and urgent than any petty party-politics and herd-voting. We want to know who is serious about tackling climate change and who is just paying lip service to make him/his party look good.
Canvass Your MP is providing three easy steps for you to take action.

1. If you don’t already know your MP you can find out by entering your postcode into the Find Your MP website.

2. Contact your constituency MP at their surgery. You can use this website to find telephone numbers and surgery times.

3. As soon as you get a response from your MP, saying that they will (or won’t) support the 80% target, let us know by reporting back.

The Canvass Your MP website will show people taking their future into their own hands, proving that the power of the individual is an amazing force. The more people that meet their MPs to discuss their thoughts about the Climate Change Bill the more informed the Government will be and the more likely they will vote for the 80% target.

Thanks ever so much to Jez from Make Hay Ethical E-media for putting the wonderful site together in no time.

Canvass Your MP - campaign in the making

Last week John invited me and Dave to a meeting at the office of Steve Webb, the Lib Dem spokeperson for the environment together with few other really interesting bloggers. Steve wanted our help with ideas on how to best utilise social media for influencing the political process of the Climate Change Bill.

The UK has the opportunity to show real leadership in combating global climate change by delivering a strong Climate Change Bill. We need to set a target that delivers the reduction in UK climate-changing gases that is needed – the scientific data tells us the target should be at least 80%, not the 60% the government proposes, which is based on out of date science (read more here).

Annoyingly, for most politicians, especially the Tories with their phony green disguise but the labour is not much better on this one, this is a petty political matter and they will probably vote as a herd.

So we had a nice improvised brainstorm and quickly realised that WE DON’T need another public awareness campaign, and we don’t need another pledge, and the email your MP mechanism has lost it’s steam.

We need something else. Something that might not involve thousands of participants as there is not only general green fatigue, but also the green activism sphere is highly fragmented. We need something personal and effective that will send MPs the message that this is a national and global matter and it’s not the time for political pettiness and herd voting. Vote as you believe you should.

This is how we came out with Canvas My MP. The final mechanisms are still being sorted out but the idea is that we want to reveal each and every MP personal stand on the bill and put as much pressure as possible on those who refuse to acknowledge the need for a stronger, more effective bill. So we are moving away from the rather ineffective email your MP to hopefully more effective action of meeting every MP in person to try to convince them to vote for stronger bill. In a nutshell we will ask people to set an appointment with their local MP and and nag them to vote for a stronger bill. These people (we are hoping that a dozen constituents meeting their MP in person can start making an impact.

Our efforts will of course be documented and all MPs opinions and replies will be reported. We hope to get all green organisations and initiatives like the brilliant The Nag, Do the Green Thing as well as BBC Green and Treehugger on board in helping promote this one.

This all happens in the speed of light with not much time to polish the details (the details are being sorted out as we speak) but with lots of great people cheeping in for help so if anyone has any more ideas on how this initiative can grow more teeth please get in touch or leave a comment below. The lovely

I’m trying to convince Steve Webb to go for some BIG PRish initiative to get a nice kick start t this and send the message that this is a cross-party a-political issue - something like 12 MPs Calendar-Girls-like project (Prescott in bikini anyone???)

Will keep you posted on further developments.

UPDATE: I just been told that the lovely Make Hay have volunteered to design the website and already put some initial page…cheeers for that Vicky!!

Imagine

This video made my day. It’s small, it’s real, it’s brilliant.

It’s a great example of how media is changing from something through which to disperse information to becoming a tool for (collective) action. It’s a little long, but worth the patience.

“As citizens and as consumers, we may not be able to wield a great deal of power. But when we do things together, our power is ridiculous!”

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

Managing Change : A Blue Print for an ‘Ecolution’

How many times have you witnessed your workplace changing? A few days ago I sat and participated in a workshop on change management. The very words ‘change management’ evoke all sorts of cynicism in me. I’ve seen my fair share of departmental re-structures in both the private and public sector. ‘Change management. What feeling do those words evoke?’ the consultant asks. ‘Sham’ is usually my first unconscious first reaction. However change management is more about trying to help people come together, and sort things out in a way everyone wants to. If only they told you that in the first place.

As I sat there, it dawned on me that maybe society needs some help with Climate Change. Maybe society needs a little bit of Change Management.

Prosci came up with a change management model called ADKAR. They call it a model, but some may call it common sense, a Tao or even a bit of advice.

Apparently these five steps enable you to recognise what you need to do in life, to survive change (or at least make yourself feel better about it).

1. Awareness – ‘For things to make sense, you’ve got to know why change is needed.‘

- Famine, mass immigration, food crashes, economic risk, disease caused by climate change. If you think Climate Change is a left-wing conspiracy, then you really haven’t read enough. I’m not being nasty, it’s just simply the way it is.

2. Desire – ‘You must have the desire to support and participate in change‘

- As James Lovelock said in The Guardian(1) ‘Humanity is in a period exactly like 1938-9, when “we all knew something terrible was going to happen, but didn’t know what to do about it”. But once the Second World War was under way, “everyone got excited, they loved the things they could do… they had a sense of purpose - that’s what people want.” At the moment people are in denial, because they can’t relate to catastrophic climate change on a personal level. They won’t make environmental improvements until the waves are at the doorstep.

3. Knowledge – ‘Once the need for change is realised, you wonder how to change, and minimise the impact on your own life’

- GreenGirlsGlobal, GreenGuysGlobal, and all those leading the environmental on-line ‘ecolution’ can help increase your knowledge. Information about making environmental improvements has never been so widely available.

4. Ability – ‘You need the ability to implement new skills and behaviours. Can you rise to the challenge? ‘

- Recycling, growing, building, helping, engineering, discovering, complaining, campaigning. There’s something for everyone

5. Reinforcement – ‘Making change, making history. It can only happen with reinforcement‘

Once you’ve cracked all the previous points, change large enough to save the world can only happen, if you help others through the process. Don’t forget, not everyone surfs the Internet.

We are headed towards a 2-degree rise in global temperatures. IPCC scientists have told us that this is the limit of safety (2). For those of you that think this will make the summers nicer, think again. Reports from the Center for a New American Security (3) and the OECD (4) have climate change could induce: mass immigration, crop failures, disease, economic crises and international security issues. It’s not just about the sea level.

Kevin Watkins UN Development Report recently said that it require take rich countries to make a 80% reduction in Carbon Dioxide for there to be a fifty-fifty chance of the temperature not rising by 2 degrees (5).

We cannot give up on humanity now. For all the bad things in this world there are at least twice as many good things. The challenges we face together as a species are not insurmountable. We owe it to those generations that have given us our freedom, we owe it to future generations across the world.

Climate change isn’t a war, a great fire or a pandemic. But like all those challenges it requires commitment, strength, creativity and all the technological ingenuity that humanity can muster. In the words of Nelson Mandela. ‘Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.’

(1) ‘Enjoy Life while you can’, The Guardian, 1 March 2008 

(2) ‘Too late to avoid climate change’, The Independent, 19 September 2007

(3) The Age of Consequences : The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change, The Center for a New American Security

(4) OECD 2008, Environmental Outlook

(5) UNDP, ‘UN Focuses carbon burden’