Low Carbon Show

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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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Britain can become free of fossil fuels and self-sufficient in energy and food in just 20 years. That is the conclusion of the most ambitious report yet on what Britain needs to do to play its part in avoiding dangerous climate change. What will Britain be like and how will we get there?

We speak to the co-ordinator and co-lead author of the Centre for Alternative Technology’s new report “Zero Carbon Britain”, Tim Helweg-Larsen. Why are Tradeable Energy Quotas expected to be the most effective way to drive the changes? What will be the impacts on transport, agriculture, buildings and – most importantly – our well-being?

• The Zero Carbon Britain Report

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Like Slow Food, Slow Travel is all about quality rather than speed. We investigate this emerging concept with two of its leading proponents:

• Author and deputy editor of The Idler, Dan Kieran, who recently travelled across England in a milkfloat;
• Founder of fledgeling low-carbon travel agent Loco2, Jamie Andrews, who is co-authoring the Slow Travel Manifesto

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What will holidays be like in a low carbon world?

Will we feel the need to escape so much if we are living less stressful, more community-focussed, local lives that give us greater well-being?

We speak to Laura Burgess, editor of a new directory called Ecoescape which brings together sustainable accomodation, eateries, and environmentally-focused places to visit in the UK.

We also speak to artist Lottie Child who has been developing the practice of “street training” with people of all ages and exploring creative approaches for interacting with, and feeling at home in, our own localities.

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I left the camp on Sunday evening convinced that a new political movement has been born – George Monbiot in The Guardian

We are armed … only with peer-reviewed science – banner from the Climate Camp

Interviews, recordings and reports from the amazing 2007 Camp for Climate Action near Heathrow Airport, London. Seven days of workshops, sustainable living and direct action on the root causes of climate change. The show covers:

• participatory education and consensus decision making with Alice of the Trapese Collective (editors of “Do It Yourself – a handbook for changing our world” published by Pluto Press)
• analysis of the media coverage in conversation with the media team
• a conversation with local residents about their views of the Camp
• other stuff

Resources and references:

• Camp for Climate Action
• Do It Yourself – A handbook for changing our world
  
• Indymedia UK coverage of 2007 Climate Camp
• George Monbiot on the Climate Camp
• John Harris in The Guardian

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The UK government is planning to provide for a tripling of aviation movements – a move that the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, The Tyndall Centre and the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee say is incompatible with our commitment to play a fair role in avoiding dangerous climate change. Not content with a weighted planning system, the government is proposing to speed up the implementation of major infrastructure projects which will lock us into high carbon pathways in the future.

We speak to Brian Ross, economics advisor to Stop Stansted Expansion to find out how their campaign is going and if the government’s arguments about the economic benefits of aviation have any basis in reality. And we hear from Paul de Zylva, England Campaigns Co-ordinator at Friends of the Earth about the unprecedented new “Planning Disaster” coalition that has come together to oppose the proposals in the government’s Planning White Paper.

Finally we have an extract from an interview with Alan Simpson MP about why he will be standing down at the next election and why he thinks that leadership on climate change can now only be found outside Parliament.

• Planning Disaster Coalition
  
• Stop Stansted Expansion
  
• Alan Simpson MP
  

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Stop doing. Stop consuming. Stop. Period.

Could doing nothing be an easier and more pleasurable way of saving the planet? We discuss this contention with author and editor of The Idler, Tom Hodgkinson.

Making the transition to a low carbon economy necessitates a fresh look at the skills we have and the jobs that we do. What activities are going to be most valuable in a world without fossil fuels? How will we organise ourselves in a world that is less wasteful, more local, and more about self-sufficiency and community resilience?

What interested me in talking to Tom Hodgkinson was the fact that the ideas he had been exploring about freedom and a life of leisure matched increasingly closely to some of the visions that are emerging of what our low carbon future will look like. In a sense, Tom has been beavering away on the development of a philosophical justification and historical precedents for environmentally-friendly lifestyles.

Check out Tom’s books – “How to be Idle” and especially “How to be Free”.

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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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A recent UN report reveals that livestock are responsible for 18% of global emissions – more than the entire transport sector. We visit the largest vegan fayre in the world to find out why eating less meat and dairy is likely to be the single most significant thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.

We interview:

• Nigel Winter – Chief Executive, Vegan Society
• Dr Stephen Walsh – nutritional advisor to the Vegan Society
• Justin Kerswell of campaign group Viva!
• Tim Yaoh – the organiser of the Bristol Vegan Fayre