TalkSwindon Climate change forum
Climate Friendly Swindon group @ Facebook
 Swindon Literature Festival Climate Change day, 13th May 2007 |
Every year, Matt Holland and the nice folks at Lower Shaw Farm organise the Swindon Festival of Literature, and a wide variety of authors come to Swindon to talk about the books they have written.
This year, Sunday 13th May was a day dedicated to the subject of climate change. Swindon Climate Action Network had a stall outside...
... next to the Sustrans BikeIt stall...
... while inside, various climate change themed books were on sale.
The first speaker of the day was Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees. (Video - 22 minutes, 56 meg)
Mark has spent the past few years scouring the body of scientific journals, both on climate modelling and paleoclimateology, to build a picture of how our world will look as average global temperatures rise by one, two, three, four, five and six degrees.
This image is very telling. It shows which parts of the world are using the most energy. You can download it from the NASA web site.
The second speaker was Kate Evans, author and illustrator of Funny Weather (video - 16 minutes, 41 meg)
In Funny Weather, Kate uses humour and cartoons to provide a very accessible introduction to climate change. The three central characters are a teenage girl worried for the future of the planet, a fat cat climate-change-denying capitalist, and a scientist who pops up every so often to explain the technical aspects.
The third speaker was Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper, talking about his book How Many Lightbulbs Does It Take to Change a Planet.
Lunch was provided in the form of hand-made pizzas...
... cooked in a clay oven.
One of the non-human residents of Lower Shaw Farm.
Whilst the talks were being held in the cowshed, the Green Team from the Ridgeway School held workshops in one of the barns...
... including making placards...
... and calculating your carbon footprint.
After lunch, Kate Evans and Tony Juniper joined a panel discussion chaired by Keith Stanier of Brunel FM.
