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Sunday, October 01, 2006

Climate Change








These photographs are from the BBC competition on their web site at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/default.stm.
Mallard Ducks at dawn was taken by Arnaud Darondeau in Central France and the other of Terrapins by Manoj C. Sindagi in Southern India.

Our local group meeting last week on Climate Change was a great success, especially important for us as it was our first public meeting. A talk by the Director of the Somerset Environmental Records Centre was a no punches pulled affair and was in fact quite worrying because it got over the stark message that unless we all change our life style to dramatically cut the volume of green house gases we are individually responsible for, the planet will soon be in real trouble. Those of us who live in wealthy countries are faced with a serious problem.

By coincidence the latest issue of the Somerset County Council newspaper arrived today and gives details of its involvement in a UK Govt initiative to tackle climate change. The web site address is:

http://www.climatechallenge.gov.uk/

On their web site it says: "This website is part of the Climate Change Communication Initiative led by Defra, in partnership with the Environment Agency, the Carbon Trust, the Energy Saving Trust, the UK Climate Impacts Programme, the Department for Transport and the Department of Trade and Industry."

So it looks as if this is a main strand of the Governments action on the issue and it puts communication top of the pile.


The Wildlife Trusts and many other groups ( as listed below) are all working together for a major campaign to persuade the Government to take action to save the planet. Quite a serious demand. (As I write the web site wont respond so perhaps its being updated as we speak, must try again later). This is the web site:

http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/

As you might expect The RSPB and Friends of the Earth are taking a lead in the campaign but, may be surprisingly, so is the Womens Institue. Here is their web site which gives a lot of details about their involvement:

http://www.womens-institute.org.uk/campaigns/climate-c.shtml

I've extracted a few bits from their web pages including the 2005 resolution which gave their national committee a mandate to act on the behalf of members.


Climate Change
Stop Climate Chaos was launched on September 1st 2005 aiming to build a massive coalition, that will create an irresistible public mandate for political action to stop human-induced climate change. The growing coalition, of which the National Federation of Women's Institutes is a part, contains most of the UK's leading environmental and international development organisations as well as other women's organisations, activist groups and faith-based campaigns.
The NFWI joined the Stop Climate Chaos coalition as part of the Care of our Environment campaign.

Here is the resolution :

Care of our Environment - "This meeting calls on WI members to take further action to reduce waste and conserve resources in their own homes and communities; to lobby manufacturers, retailers and decision makers to reduce waste in the production, packaging and transportation of public and consumer goods." 2005

Here is a list of campaign members.
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