April 2010 Newsletter

Welcome to our April newsletter, with the latest events and information from Cambridge Carbon Footprint.

This month:

Cambridge Carbon Footprint events coming up:

Wild Food Walk at Coe Fen with Jacky Sutton-Adam

Saturday 17th April
A guided forage walk to discover some of the many edible wild food plants that can easily be found and used to supplement regular foods. Jacky almost guarantees we’ll find at least 10 plants worth eating and those that want to try using them can come with a basket, a pair of gardening gloves and a small knife to forage. To book, send an email with your name and a contact telephone number to sally.davis@cambridgecarbonfootprint.org. Maximum 12.
Price: Suggested donation £1-3

New Volunteers Meeting

19th April, 7.30-9.30pm
Venue: Cambridge Carbon Footprint, Citylife Social Enterprise Centre, 182-190 Newmarket Road, Cambridge (entrance via Harvest Way).

Are you curious about the work of Cambridge Carbon Footprint? Would you like to get involved in encouraging carbon reduction in Cambridge? You are warmly invited to a new volunteers meeting. It is an opportunity to meet people, find out more about us, and find out which of our activities you would like to be involved in and contribute to, such as foot-printing, talks, stalls, groups, energy surveys, DIY group, Akashi, and behind the scenes stuff. All of these projects rely on our volunteers, and we would love to have your help!

For more information and to book please email siobhan@cambridgecarbonfootprint.org or call 01223 971353.

Grow Your Own with Keith Jordan

20th April, 7.30-9.30pm
Venue: Ross St Community Centre, Ross Street, CB1 3UZ. Cost: Event is free with suggested contribution of £2-£3 towards costs.

Spring gardeners gathering. As daylight increases the growing season will be in fulll swing. We will look at the variety of spring jobs – ranging from sowing tender veg, identifying and controlling weeds and pests and discussing any other gardening issues.

Please note the date of this event has changed (previously 19 Apr).

Communication workshop: Starting from where we are now: values, identity and campaigning with Shilpa Shah.

26th April, 7.30-9.30pm
Venue: St. Luke’s Centre Victoria Road, CB4 3ED. Cost: Event is free with suggested contribution of £2-£3 towards costs.

Government campaigns and political campaigns alike often treat the public as ‘cannon fodder’ – people to take simple actions, write letters, or turn out as required. More effective ways of organising start with people’s actual concerns – their views, their values and their needs. In this practical workshop we will explore how we can work effectively alongside groups, to engage, empower and ensure their voices are heard by decision makers. Shilpa Shah founded CCF’s Akashi project and currently works for FOE’s Rights and Justice team.

Wild Food Lunch

Saturday 8th May 2010 11am-2pm
A chance to get your hands on some wild food recipes and your teeth into a tasty wild food lunch! We’ll take some freshly foraged wild food plants and turn them into delicious lunchtime dishes to share together. Price: £10 per person to cover costs. Places strictly limited to 8, booking essential by email to Jacky at wildfoodie@gmail.com.

All events free unless otherwise stated. Donations welcome towards costs.
Booking advisable, but not essential – call 01223 971353 or email sally@cambridgecarbonfootprint.org.

Cambridge Open Eco Houses June 20th and June 26th

Cambridge Carbon Footprint is delighted to announce a major event for the Environment Festival in June.

Cambridge householders open their doors to show best examples of how you can renovate your home to make it truly climate-friendly. Super-insulation, photo-voltaic panels, solar thermal, triple-glazing, off-grid heating, sedum roofs and more will all be on display. There will be info on our website in due course, and bookings will go live in mid-May.

Eco-renovation Question Time and launch of Open Eco House days.

Tuesday June 15th 7.30
Venue: St Luke’s Church Centre, Victoria Road, CB4 3DZ.

Meet the experts, find out about our Open Eco House days and ask your questions about how to turn your house into a climate-friendly home. On the panel: Anne Cooper (sustainable architect), Andy Brown (Sustainable Construction consultant), Tim Acheson (green builder) and Justin Smith (Council officer and grants specialist). In the chair: Sian Reid, Executive Councillor for Climate Change & Growth. Admission free. Refreshments will be served. Donations welcome.  Details on our website www.cambridgecarbonfootprint.org

Other interesting events:

Green Enterprise Community meeting

Thursday 8th April 7:30-9:30
Venue: Friends Meeting House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge.

Our Speaker is Clennell Collingwood of TTP Ventures and TTP’s Carbon Trust Incubator , who  will explain what investors and potential funders of green businesses are looking for.

What do you need to do to have a chance of getting the support you want for your green enterprise? Is there any such thing as “free money” for Green Entrepreneurs?   More information here.

10:10 Are We Saving the World? – Franny Armstrong in conversation with Tony Juniper

Saturday 10th April, 12:00pm
Venue: The Babbage Lecture Theatre
Price: £8/6 concessions.  Visit http://www.adctheatre.com to book.

Climate  Emergency Overnight Vigil

Night of Saturday to Sunday 15th-16th May, outside Parliament
Candlelit Procession down Whitehall – assemble 11.00 pm outside St Martin’s in the Fields, Trafalgar Square.
Post election event to remind the new government that dealing with the climate crisis needs to be their top priority.Join others in a visible demonstration of conviction that we face a climate emergency, and determination to challenge the government in the future if it does not respond appropriately.

Join us right outside the home of government if you can… if not, can you organise an overnight vigil in your locality, say outside the surgery of the newly elected MP, or wherever you feel most appropriate?

For more information visit  www.campaigncc.org.

Carbon Conversations Groups about to start

Groups in Cambridge

  • Mondays fortnightly, beginning 26th April, 7:30-9:30 in the Mill Road area.
  • Tuesdays fortnightly, beginning 4th May (postponed from 20th April), 7:30-9:30 at Arbury Community Centre.

Interfaith group in Cambridge

  • Thursdays fortnightly, beginning 29th April (postponed from 15th April), 7:30-9:30, on Newmarket Road. We are inviting people of faith, and giving time for discussion each week about different faiths and their take on looking after our world.

Outside Cambridge

  • Histon: Tuesdays fortnightly, beginning 20th April.

CCF Opportunities

DIY helper needed

Are you any good at DIY? Would you be willing to come into the ccf office to sort out our bookshelves? What we require is some kind of fixed end-stops so that our files don’t keep leaping onto the floor. It doesn’t have to be anything slick or beautiful, just practical! Contact Mary Geddes on 01223 971353 or email: mary.geddes@cambridgecarbonfootprint.org

Open Eco Houses event – June 20th and 26th

Could you help out with this event?
Open Eco Houses is being organised by Cambridge Carbon Footprint to help and support people who are intending to eco-renovate their homes and want to see examples of what is possible.  The houses will be open on Sunday 20th June, and Saturday 26th June from 11am till 4 pm.

We are looking for volunteers to steward groups of up to 8 visitors in people’s homes, and/or offer technical support.  We will be holding a briefing session before the event. For more info and to register your interest contact Liz Serocold lserocold@yahoo.co.uk

Climate Friendly Homes

How cosy is your home?  Are you thinking of making some changes in time for next winter?
The Climate Friendly Homes project can offer:

  • a visit from a trained volunteer surveyor who can talk through the changes with you
  • the loan of an electricity monitor

You can find out more on the website and follow the links to Climate Friendly Homes
To register, email Sally in the office – info@cambridgecarbonfootprint.org or phone 01223 971353.

Volunteer Surveyors needed for Climate Friendly Homes

Would you like to learn more about how to make a home more energy-efficient and reduce its carbon footprint?  Do you think you could help other people to implement the changes they need to make in their own homes?

The Climate Friendly Homes project is looking for more volunteer surveyors.  We offer a short training in the basics, followed by a couple of surveys with a more experienced surveyor.  And then you’re ready to work on your own.
If you know a bit about houses, have good people skills and a wish to help the transition to a low-carbon world, we’d love to hear from you.  To register your interest, email info@cambridgecarbonfootprint.org or call the office on 01223 971353.

Ro’s reflections

Turning the soil on my allotment this Easter Sunday and spading sharply through a slowly surprised worm, I remembered the title of John Stewart Collis’s book ‘The worm forgives the plough’. Written in 1973 the book is a paean to an agricultural tradition that is long gone, but its title speaks of perennial themes in the relationship of people and the natural world.

Spring is traditionally a time of optimism as energy returns. It confirms that whatever destruction has been wrought by a cold, cruel winter, all is not lost. Recovery can take place. Reparation is possible.

The reparation that nature makes for its winter assault is not necessarily reflected in human behaviour however. Easter is also a time to take a holiday, or to go shopping and treat yourself to something new as a reward for surviving the winter. Outside the religious traditions, spring is the cue for more consumption, rather than for reflection on our indebtedness and the need for gratitude and reparation.

As a psychotherapist I see this phenomenon as a defence. Faced with our destructiveness towards the rest of the natural world, the guilt and anxiety are too much to bear. Rather than try to repair the harm, people defend themselves unconsciously against the idea that they are implicated in the damage. Being busy, being defiant, affecting indifference can all bring temporary relief. The camaraderie of others behaving in similar fashion brings confirmation that little is wrong.

For most people however, such a state of indifference is painful to maintain and psychically damaging. Growing up the child struggles with resentment at finding him or herself displaced from the centre of the mother’s universe, battles with jealousy of the father and rivalry with siblings. Love usually triumphs however and with it the development of what the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott called the ‘capacity for concern’, the ability to empathise and engage creatively in reparation for harm caused. We do not live our personal lives in psychopathic indifference to those around us. We do not have to live our lives in psychopathic indifference to the natural world either.

Undoing defences, particularly when they are socially supported, is not easy. But – like spring – the human capacity for concern is a cause for hope.

Politics and Campaigning from Tom Bragg

March saw a landmark legal case brought by a coalition opposing Heathrow expansion. The judgement concludes: “The government’s entire aviation policy must now be reviewed to take into account the implications of the 2008 Climate Change Act”. This probably puts an end to Heathrow expansion plans, but what are the different political parties’ plans for the future of aviation? Taxing private aviation would be a good start.

The government announced its proposed high-speed rail link from London to Birmingham and beyond. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8561286.stm.  Campaign for Better Transport has a good analysis.

A rarely mentioned alternative is a long-distance coach system, with motorway interchanges, as proposed by Cambridge’s Alan Storkey  www.bepj.org.uk/motorway-based-coach-system This needs much less extra infrastructure and provides low-cost, low-carbon travel.

Britain desperately needs investment in an integrated, sustainable transport system.  The parties’ transport policies differ significantly – do ask them!

Ask Andy – What carbon emissions is my computer responsible for?

What carbon emissions is my computer responsible for?

This will depend on the type of computer and what you use it for. There are three issues to look at:

a) How much electricity is your computer using?
This you can find out for yourself. If you borrow an ‘appliance meter’, you can see how much your computer uses when it is running and the average over a few days, which will depend on how much you use it. There are some efficient ‘net books’ and eco-computers, but some desk top units, with their monitor and peripherals, consume several hundred watts. What might surprise you is how much power is used when the system is ‘off’. Power supplies, including the one in a desk-top unit, need to be turned off at the mains. If the power socket is inconvenient, buy a lead with a switch.
A moderate laptop user (2-4 hours per day) might cause less than 50kg CO2 emissions a year.

b) What is the embodied CO2 in the computer?
There is a lot of embodied energy and carbon dioxide emissions in electronic goods. Figures vary. Some sources say a laptop may create almost one and a half tonnes of CO2 during its manufacture and sale. Over the life of a computer, the embodied CO2 will be several times more than the emissions from using it. It makes sense to hang on to your computer for as long as possible, and to buy second-hand.

c) What is the energy consumption of the internet?
As much as 2% of global electricity is used storing and moving data around the world. Researchers say there is about 4kg CO2 emissions per Gb of data transmitted to consumers. Moderate internet users are likely to cause less than 50kg CO2 emissions a year. Intensive users who, for example, download a lot of music and films, will have much higher
emissions.

Gardening in March – Time for sowing hardy and tender vegetables by Keith Jordan

The gardening year really gets going in April – time for planting and sowing many crops outside – but be prepared to delay if the weather takes a turn for the worse (snow showers at Easter are not uncommon!).  With our temperate climate we can cultivate plants originating from many parts of the world but some can only be grown outside when cold evenings and frosts are no longer a threat (June to Sept/Oct.).  The more tender (‘half-hardy’) vegetables from warmer climates include tomatoes, sweetcorn, peppers, courgettes, squashes, some beans, basil, etc.  Do read the seed packets and gardening books to find out which plants survive in which conditions.  Broad beans are very hardy, withstanding sub-zero temperatures but French and runner beans will be killed by one night of frost.  Half-hardy seeds can be started off indoors this month, timed for planting out in late May/ early June after the last frosts and once they have been ‘hardened-off’ (gradually acclimatised to the cooler outdoor conditions).  Plants, just like humans, don’t like sudden temperature changes!  Crops have very different growth rates – tomatoes, aubergines and peppers are relatively slow growing and it you intend to grow from seed need starting off in pots in warm conditions without delay.  Faster growing species like courgettes, squashes, French and runner beans can be sown later this month or early May or they will grow too big in their pots before they can be safely planted outdoors.  The latter can also be sown directly in the soil outside later in May to give a later crop.

We will consider some of these points at the next Grow Your Own session on 20th April (see above for details).

Seasonal Recipe – Three Cousins Salad by Jacky Sutton-Adam

We are now well into the growing season after a relatively late Spring start and it’s time to check out the most seasonal and local of vegetable choices, garden weeds! If you don’t have access to a garden, there are plenty of semi wild spots around the city which are great for collecting wild food plants. You can find out more on my Cambridge Carbon Footprint guided forage on Saturday 17th April.

This month’s recipe features a much maligned weed – particularly unwelcome in the garden as it is so invasive, Ground Elder. Take heart if you have a thick and spreading patch of this low growing weed, it is a tasty and versatile vegetable and was once grown as a potherb (known as Goutweed) by medieval monks. It has a flavour not unlike celery and is a member of the carrot family, along with coriander and parsley. It works well as a cooked vegetable or raw as a herb when young and tender. Substitute some spring grown parsley or coriander leaf if you can’t get ground elder.

Three Cousins Salad

Ingredients
450g whole carrots
2 handfuls of young ground elder leaves, chopped coarsely
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
juice of 1 small lemon
a sprinkle of fine granulated sugar
coarse sea salt
black pepper to taste

Instructions
Cook the carrots whole until tender but still crunchy, drain and cool. Slice into 1/4 inch chunks. Roast the coriander seeds in a dry pan over medium heat for 1 or 2 minutes, then crush in mortar and pestle. Add garlic and 1/2 tsp of coarse salt and pound to a paste. Mix in the lemon juice, olive oil, sugar and coriander mixture, then combine with carrots. Add the ground elder leaves and black pepper.

Climate Change Charter

The Cambridge Climate Change Charter Practical Help Team was set up to support local businesses and organisations in Cambridge and South Cambs who want to do more to address climate change issues. Find out more at www.cambridgeclimatechangecharter.org.uk, which details of forthcomeing events, videos of past events and discussion forums.

Charter Awards 2010:

The Cambridge Climate Change Charter Awards will be presented to organisation who have made an effort to combat climate change. The mechanics is very simple: Basically any organisations working locally to reduce their carbon emissions can describe why they merit an award, in 200 words or less and send it to amy.tillson@carltd.com by the end of April. Download the Award Application form here. Winners will be chosen by an independent panel of judges representing business and the public sector, and presented at an awards ceremony on the 16th June at 6-8pm (location to be confirmed).

First Steps: Baselining:

11th May 6-8pm, location to be confirmed
How to get started. This is the second of several small group meetings where you can bring your organisation’s energy bills along, and we will help you turn that into CO2 emissions data.
We invite participants to bring electricity and gas bills, ideally for the last 12 months, and whatever information they have about fuel use for travel. Previous participants have found the groups very useful in simplifying the process. Register for the event, and see a video of the previous one here:
Any questions contact: amy.tillson@carltd.com

CAT needs help

The Centre for Alternative Technology faces a difficult time following the bankruptcy of a creditor owing them over £500,000.

You can find the full story and donate here.

And finally . . .

If you’re looking for some amusement on a rainy April day, have a look at this video by Dan & Dan, “Read it in the Daily Mail.”

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