in the Woking area, by David
Pennant
I have been goaded into action!
In April 2007, friends of ours flew to Canada for just four days skiing, out on Thursday back on Tuesday. I was incensed All that aviation fuel turning into greenhouse gases for a long weekend? After a week’s reflection, I emailed, offering them a copy of Six degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas as an un-birthday present. It’s an outstanding book, telling what we can expect if the world goes up one degree in chapter one, two degrees in chapter two etc.
I received no reply, because they had now flown to India to see their son on his gap year. They already had three more flights scheduled for the summer. That’s five plane trips in as many months.
If we carry on like this, we will ruin the planet. We may have done irreversible harm already. We are wasting the precious non-renewable resources. We are also doing far too little to cut down on carbon emissions.
How can I help, I wondered?
I decided to prepare an assembly for schools. I am used to public speaking, having been a clergyman for a while, and I have done thoughts for the day on radio. I put together an eight minute talk, with visual aids, including a water butt and Poppy the population manikin, who gets hauled up to the ceiling to indicate how world population is going through the roof. So far, I have delivered it at Fullbrook School in New Haw, at St. Bede's Junior School in Send, St Dunstans in Maybury and Winston Churchill School on the Inkerman Estate. That's thirteen talks, to a total audience of about 3500. The young people listened well, and at St Bede's, I was mobbed at the end by pupils wanting a copy of the book for their parents, even though I had told them it was too hard for children of their age. It has also been pleasing to see staff coming in at Winston as the week progressed.
Each time, the talk comes out differently, but broadly speaking, I start by explaining that we burn 86 million barrels of oil a day worldwide. Our water butt holds one and a half barrels, and the line of water butts needed to hold all that oil would stretch three quarters of the way round the world. With world population going through the roof (as ably demonstrated by Poppy, see right), demand is not going to slacken. As the oil becomes harder to extract, prices will go up all across the board. The result of the burning is to put more Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. I explain that the amount of Carbon Dioxide going into the air every minute worldwide is the weight of the Titanic. As a result, the tiny increase in the temperature of the planet is enough to accelerate the melting of the ice. I tell the young people that between December 2004 and December 2005 fourteen percent of the ice in the arctic circle disappeared; that’s an area the size of Texas. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing between ninety and one hundred and fifty cubic kilometres of ice each year. If all the ice in Greenland and West Antarctica were to melt, Woking would be twenty metres under the sea. At St Bede's I ended by asking the children for their ideas on what to do, adding a few of my own afterwards, which worked very well. They seemed clued up to me.
A final thought. If we fail to cut our emissions enough, and sea levels rise by just half a metre, then eighteen million people from Holland will need to be re-housed. Where, I wonder? At Louisbourg, a ring for mooring boats shows how high tide levels have changed over time. The sea level can and does change.
Doing nothing and carrying on as usual really is not an option. It will lead to a mass of problems. I hope my talk can do some good.
David Pennant, Autumn 2007. Contact Details
PS Poppy does have arms, but she likes to fold them behind her back.
