Bentham Local Action for Justice and Peace

Meeting in One World Week

A challenge: Global Warming:- what we can do
Bentham Methodist Hall, Station Road
12 noon 22 Oct 2005

Report by J Allinson

Over forty people met at Bentham in Yorkshire (but near Lancaster) to consider this topic. The local Rector Revd Thomas (left) chaired the meeting.

Rev John Smith of the Cumbrian Environment Group, seen here holding a radiator reflector, (who had worked for many years as county librarian, before training to be a Cof E priest) explained the problem: -

• Since the beginning of the industrial revolution we have been putting more and more carbon dioxide into the year and it is causing global warming ( He explained a lot more beside - )
• The temperature has risen 0.6 degrees C over the last century, and could rise another 2 to 6 degrees in the coming century-
• There will be temperature rises not in the time of our great great great grandchildren - but in the next 12 years.

Jill Perry of Maryport Friends of the Earth then told us practical things we could do. She said "The situation is not hopeless." She said there were four main ways we produced CO₂ and that the largest way involved in food, due to the huge distances food is transported:

1. Food:
2. Transport
3. National Buidings (We don't have much individual control over this)
4. Home - Heating etc

• So she urged us to eat local food, and not to have meat more than three times a week.
• http://www.foe.co.uk/living/index.html
• http://www.foe.co.uk/living/references.html
• She encouraged us to send a postcard to our MP encouraging him to signthe Early Day Motion about Climate change, including .. that the government reduces the output of CO₂ in this country by 3 % each year.
• She recommended solar panels for heating water

She said:

• The gases hang about - If we don't make small cuts now we will have to make much bigger cuts later.

Nearly everyone there took some action:

• They filled in a simple "energy in the home" questionnaire which will be sent to the North Yorks Energy Efficiency Advice Centre - and in return will be sent suggestions on how to save energy.
• Everyone who filled in a form received a free energy efficient light bulb. and whilst stocks lasted, a fancy heat reflector to go behind radiators that are positioned next to outside walls of houses

After the meeting I stood around and listened to a couple of people who had burning things to say - So often "the right thing" to do just seems to be to listen.

1. "Why has there been no mention of tidal energy?"
2. "I have just come back from Canada - there they have had the hottest weather recently they have ever had - and the "glorious colours of the fall" are happening later than they used to.

After the meeting I and my two passengers drove back 10 miles to Settle.

Tthis may get put on a separate page eventually-- but it's here for now.

But en route, inspired by the instruction to buy local, and to buy organic, we stopped and bought some vegetables at the Quaker cooperative "Growing with Grace" organic greenhouses at Clapham

There we discovered an English Apple Tasting display:

Topaz was definitely the chosen winner

One of the Growing with Grace people showed me the new composting greenhouse. One day a week garden compost arrives. It is shredded in the machine shown. It is left in long rows. Within a day the new compost is steaming away, and after 7 weeks it is ready for use - At the moment the greenhouses themselves are using it all - Eventually there may be some for sale.

Happy One World Week - 23 - 30 Oct