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We get a majority world perspective on the climate emergency from Goldman Prize winner Ricardo Navarro. Navarro won the Goldman prize for sustainable development back in 1995 for his work as founder and director of the El Salvador Centre for Appropriate Technology and he is a former director of Friends of the Earth International.
Here he talks about how a new regional Movement of Climate Change Affected Peoples is responding to the pressures of climate change with awareness raising, permaculture techniques and low-level technologies as well as putting up resistance to inappropriate development. He also gives us his wider perspective on the United Nations climate talks which he has been attending since 1992.
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We are delighted to present a recording of a lecture by joint Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.Dr Pachauri has made news recently by advocating eating less meat as a personal contribution to combating the problem of global warming and climate change. This advice has its basis in a recent report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation entitled “Livestock’s Long Shadow” which showed that beef and dairy farming was responsible for a massive 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions – more than the entire global transport sector. The lecture is entitled “Global Warning – The impact of meat production and consumption on climate change.”
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Biofuels have been condemned as a “crime against humanity” by the outgoing UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Zeigler. We speak to Deepak Rughani of Biofuelwatch and find out:- Why agrofuels have been responsible for food riots, land grabs and increasing hunger around the globe
- Why the Gallagher report and others underestimate the impact of biofuels on climate change
- Why the Gallagher report is not independent
- Why we need to listen to the global calls for a moratorium on biofuels rather than industry and government’s suggestion of a slow down
Ahead of this year’s Camp for Climate Action we speak to Connor O’Brien about the movement’s plans for sustainable living, education, and shutting down the coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent. And we end the programme with a rough mix of “Soul Not Coal” a song written for the Camp by The Carbon Town Cryer.
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In the last show of this series, we cycle to the local farmers market and see our low-carbon future emerging in front of our very eyes.We interview the following traders and cyclists at Alexandra Palace farmers’ market:
- Chris Elder (City and Country Farmers Markets)
- Martin (Pitfield Brewery)
- Adam Coffman (of CTC – the UK’s national cycling organisation)
- Helen & Jim (producers of biodiesel from used cooking oil)
With music from The Carbon Town Cryer
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Growing Communities is a social enterprise based in Hackney, North London which has cut through the multitude of environmental and social costs incurred by our globalised, supermarket-led food system and set up community led models for a more sustainable future.The project represents a model of best practice that is ripe for replication across the capital and across the country.
Their organic box scheme was the first in London and now supplies 300 households in Hackney with their weekly fruit and veg for as little as £6. Most of the salad leaves in the boxes are actually grown in Hackney in Growing Communities’ own urban market gardens – which is the only organically certified growing land in London. And their farmers market in Stoke Newington is the only weekly, fully-organic market in the UK.
They employ 13 part-time staff, a large team of volunteers and two
apprentice gardeners on a project that supports farmers who are producing food sustainably.The Low Carbon Show met up with co-founder and director, Julie Brown. With the sun beating down on their Allens Gardens plot we talked about food swaps, seasonal feasts and edible orchards….
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The Transition Towns concept is a grassroots, action model for making the change to a low carbon future. It’s about designing the future and making it positive rather than just waiting for it to happen. All the signs are that it is a project that works and it’s spreading like a virus throughout the UK.This programme features interviews with people involved in transition towns projects recorded at the Transition Network inaugural conference. It provides a snapshot of the many and diverse projects now underway.
- Naresh Giangrande – Totnes Energy group co-ordinator – pioneering community owned, large-scale renewable energy resources and bulk buying of domestic solar water heating
- Nick Weir – Transition Stroud food group member – pioneering community supported agriculture projects, communal allotments, food co-ops, and a new legal model – the Community Farm Land Trust
- Dr Pamela Gray – Transition Penwith Medicine group co-ordinator – asking how will we provide healthcare in a post-oil world?
- Jo Hamilton – from Oxford Climate Exchange – a dynamic project connecting all the climate change resources in Oxfordshire and aiming to engage all sections of the population
For more information see:
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HOW TO LIVE A LOW CARBON LIFEChris Goodall has just written what the New Scientist calls “the definitive guide to reducing your carbon footprint.” Climate Radio takes a trip to Oxford to meet Chris and find out some of the book’s key messages on aviation, consumption, personal travel and food purchasing habits.
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Climate Radio presents the last in our series of four talks recorded earlier this year at the Soil Association annual conference looking at the impact of peak oil on agriculture.This week the founder of the Transition Town movement, Rob Hopkins, relates how he has been turning to challenges of peak oil and climate change into action now for a better future. If you’ve not heard Rob speak before, I’d highly recommend it as he is hugely inspirational. Here he describes the thinking behind the community-led process of designing Energy Descent Action Plans and the Transition Town model which is helping ‘unlock the collective genius of the community’. The original Transition Town in Totness is buzzing with creative energy and positive projects:
- an awareness raising programme (film screenings and talks)
- community “open space” days which brainstorm solutions and ideas for action
- oral history interviews – finding out what life was like with less fossil fuel from older people
- specific action groups on food, psychological aspects of change, medicine & health, the arts, energy, economics and local government
- evening classes
- bulk community purchase of solar water heating
- formation of a renewable energy services company
- local food directory
- oil vulnerability auditing for local business
- nut tree planting project
And that’s after just four months…
At the end of the programme we find just enough time to squeeze in a live recording of a lightbulb moment from the Boycott Coca Cola Experience. “Everybody Suddenly Got Real” was recorded live at Club Integral in Brixton earlier this year. Many thanks to the Soil Association and Tim Siddall (aka BCCE) for their kind permission to broadcast this material.
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Climate Radio presents the third in a series of four talks recorded earlier this year at the Soil Association annual conference looking at the impact of peak oil on agriculture. This week urban architect Andre Viljoen discusses the potential for urban centres to transform themselves into food producing regions. This would help make urban spaces more self-sufficient lower their carbon footprint. In particular he draws lessons from the experience of Cuba – a country which underwent a transformation when it lost access to oil imports after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.Since this talk runs slightly short, we are able to squeeze in an extract from a performance by author and comedian Rob Newman on the subject of peak oil at the very end.
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Climate Radio presents the second in a series of four talks recorded earlier this year at the Soil Association annual conference. Author Richard Heinberg talks us through the challenges that peak oil poses to the way we produce our food today. Much of our agriculture relies on fossil fuel intensive inputs such as nitrous fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides as well as the transportation of food huge distances around the globe. Should we be relocalising food production and using more traditional methods of small-scale, labour intensive, mixed farming? Is this the most sensible response to the multiple challenges – of peak oil, climate change and an expanding population – that we now face?
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