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.
We are ruining the planet. 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. I 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 was also pleasing to see staff coming in at Winston as the week progressed. My next assignment was a week at Woking High School in Feb 2009, where the subject was "How are we to cope when oil, gas and electricity run out?" My answer was, we won't. We are unprepared. The skills required will be creativity and adaptability, and could the young people please go on to become inventors? The talks seemed to go down well.
Each time, the talk comes out differently, but 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. If 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; James Lovelock's figure is 6cm increase per decade (The Revenge of Gaia, photo opp page 78; The Vanishing Face of Gaia, page 60).
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 Woking
