Something good has begun: 10 pledges for 2010

This morning  in rush hour as the Brussels weekly commuters trundled their suitcases off the Eurostar and marched briskly for the tube, about 80 climate activists emerged into the cold London morning, stretching aching limbs after the 19 hour journey from Copenhagen. Amongst them were fund-raisers, local campaigners, artists, sustainability consultants, Green party activists, development experts, musicians, journalists, long-distance cyclists, dreamers, visionaries, and Eiffelover and I. On the basis of an email from the Campaign against Climate Change we had taken what at times seemed like the rash decision to attend the 12 December demonstration in Copenhagen, at which over 100,000 campaigners from all over the world came together to demand a fair, real deal greenhouse gas emissions at the COP15 summit.

We had a lot of fun, both en route and once there. We learned a huge amount. But I was also conscious of the resources the decision to go entailed. And how we were taking up places that perhaps other more committed, long-standing activists could have made use of. We went to ask for greater commitment from the world’s leaders at the negotiating table. But I also know that change and commitment has to start with all of us, with me.

In common with many of our fellow travellers, for us making additional emission cuts is not easy. This is not meant to sound smug (although I understand it might). It’s simply that we are lucky/privileged enough to live within cycling distance of work, in a relatively energy efficient home, with easy access to locally produced food and neither Eiffelover nor I eat meat, nor do we have any children. We’ve been wanting to sign up to 10:10, but we also wanted it to be a real commitment and if there’s little left to cut  then what should we do? As a consequence of this trip I’ve decided that the best thing that I can do is to make a set of pledges – 10 to be precise  – that may or may not deliver a 10% cut in the size of my carbon footprint (although I hope they will) but will certainly be true to the spirit of the exercise and may help the people around me to do make small changes too.

In the back of a notebook in the train I scribbled down a few ideas:

1. Improve the water efficiency of our home (no more dripping taps and council-issue toilets!)
2. Get (more) active with a national campaigning group.
3. Get (more) active with a local campaigning group.
4. Take at least one action to improve the sustainability of our block of flats (in the broad sense i.e. improving the physical environment but also relationships between residents etc.).
5. Trial the Ministry of Trying to Do Something About It’s Ration Book (we’re lucky enough to have one of these kicking about at home already).
6. Measure my carbon footprint (and identify ways to reduced it). In Copenhagen we met someone promoting the Footprint Diary app – the most sophisticated tool I’ve seen yet. Not launched yet but should be live before the end of the year.
7. Grow more veg. Our 2009 harvest: about 5 tiny tomatoes, 2 withered chillis, about 200g of runner beans. Room for improvement here…
8. Get knowledgeable: read more about the issues, and use this blog to share what I learn.
9. Organise at least one event promoting sustainable lifestyles (and that’s also fun…). A few months ago I organised a Swish! What next?
10. Communicate and connect: write about climate change, talk about climate change, talk about it some more, write some more, talk to some new people, get them talking…

Most of these pledges are as much about making connections as much as they are about making cuts, hence the blog name (courtesy of my own personal branding expert – thanks!). It’s about putting out feelers, working together and exploring how I might want to take things forward in the future. And blogging about them might just help me achieve them.

It’s also definitely not about sacrifice : consuming less might also mean spending more time with friends, more time outdoors, more time dancing, more time making stuff. Going to Copenhagen was about deeply serious politics, but it was also seriously fun. On the train coming back from Copenhagen I got talking to one person about his job, his politics, his beliefs, his ideas for the future. How often do you get to have this kind of conversation even with your closest friends, he asked? Not often enough.

Having scratched our heads for a long time trying to think of songs about trains (we could have done with this list) it was only at 8:30 this morning that someone mentioned Cat Stevens’s ‘Peace Train’. I looked up the lyrics when I got home. It’s a bit cheesy – but then it’s no secret that I’m a big hippy at heart – and it seemed to capture lots of the things I’d been thinking over the weekend. It also provided the sub-title for this blog.

Now I’ve been crying lately, thinking about the world as it is.
Why must we go on hating, why can’t we live in bliss?

Get your bags together, go bring your good friends too,
‘Cause it’s getting nearer, it soon will be with you.

Now I’ve been happy lately, thinking about the good things to come,
And I believe it could be, something good has begun.

All aboard the Climate Express

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