Something good is happening (slowly): my 10:10 story so far

I wrote this post when on holiday a couple of weeks ago. Am just getting round to posting it thanks to the fantastic innovation of my new flexi-time half-day which I am dedicating to time-banking and Transition stuff. Best decision I’ve made in ages.

Nearly eight months ago Oliver and I travelled by train from London to Copenhagen. On the return journey, inspired by the conversations we had had and the people we had met, I made ten pledges for 10:10 which I posted on this blog. Since the spring I have been very quiet on this site. There are two main reasons for this. One is that I increasingly find that away from my job I derive more and more pleasure from activities that do not tie me to screen: working outside, making and repairing things, cycling, meeting and talking to people. The second is that when I am at my computer I tend to have a long list of other tasks to do, many arising from the pledges, and the blog rarely receives my attention.

But now I am on another train, this time cutting right across the south of France, and with five hours to kill and no access to Internet this seems like a good time to take stock.

Getting set for spring: preparing to plant

This month’s 10:10 theme is all about planting. We’ve been joining in by fixing up the balcony for spring. We’ve massively increased the growing space this year by adding the trellis and shelves on the south wall to raise the troughs into the sunlight. So hopefully we’ll have a bigger harvest than last year.

All of the stuff we used on our balcony was either recovered from the street or recycled from previous projects in the flat (replacing the boiler for example). So the total cost was about £20 for some brackets and other such bits and pieces (screws, hinges etc.). More pictures in the photostream in the sidebar.

Meanwhile the big question is what to plant. Fortunately eatseasonably has some handy tips.  I’m not convinced they’re that easy – I’ve almost killed last year’s mint I think from over-watering. But I’ll update regularly with our progress.

Our little attempts pale into insignificance next to this fabulous project in a social housing block in Paddington.  There are now 46 adults and 16 young people growing food in raised beds on a plot previously experiencing problems with anti-social behaviour and crime. Apparently the founder Mike Wohl started out with only two tomatoes. So who knows how quickly our ambitions will grow….

Me emptying the wormery

Reclaim the Road: Long live the Re-VELO-tion!

Yesterday I took to the streets with the London Cycling Campaign for an International Women’s Day ride around south London. The 15k ride took in some major landmarks of women’s history in the capital: the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst, the London Eye (a great bit of women’s architecture and structural engineering), my old house off the Walworth Road (OK, true, but not strictly a landmark ).  Lovely though it was to ride around south London on a sunny winter’s day there were some really serious points to be made too.

Getting the measure: carbon counting meets social networking

As I mentioned in my last post I’m looking to start measuring my carbon footprint in more detail than is possible with lots of the existing carbon counters. Last week I attended Islington green drinks, a great place to swap ideas and ask for advice on these kind of things.  And indeed, Jack from Brighter Future (whom I met in Copenhagen) was able to offer some great advice.

He had two suggestions, both of which are set up to enable you to add your meter readings weekly. imeasure, from Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute is probably the more sophisticated. But The Carbon Account is definitely the more user-friendly, with a great interface and the option of joining groups and competing against your friends (imeasure also has ‘carbon clubs’ but they’re not visually so appealing). The Carbon Account also adds transport (cars and flights). Flights add staggering peaks to otherwise fairly steady graphs, a very visual indicator of just how damaging they are.

I’m going to see how I get on with both and report back. Meanwhile if anyone wants to join me search for 10tentacles and add me as a friend.

More recession please! Squaring the sustainability circle, or making the case for 'degrowth'

I meant no harm.
I most truly did not.
But I had to grow bigger. So bigger I got.

I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads.
I biggered my wagons.
I biggered the loads of the Theends I shipped out.
I was shipping them forth to the South! To the East!
To the West! To the North!
I went right on biggering…selling more Thneeds.
And I biggered my money, which everyone needs.

From The Lorax by Dr. Seuss (1971)

Last week the UK officially came out of 18 months of recession. The news was received in the media with near universal relief, and indeed for those looking for work and businesses struggling to keep afloat this can only be good news, although the level of the figures kept celebrations muted. But nevertheless, officially, growth is back. It’ll be Thneeds all round (well, perhaps not quite all) again before we know it.

For growth, we learn early on, is good. For growth means more revenue: more universities, more schools, more hospitals, more in the pot to pay my salary. What’s not to like?

Ushering in the new (and blocking out draughts)

10/01/10 or 01/10/10 for our North American friends: an auspicious day for a first slightly belated 2010 10:10 post.

One reason why I’ve been a bit quiet is that over the Christmas break I was enjoying spending some time away from a computer screen getting on and doing things. Like repainting our hallway with half a tub of paint recovered from the street a few months ago and waiting to be put to good use (very satisfying). And in keeping with this year’s low carbon fun-for-free ethos spending plenty of time outside, despite the snow and ice (cycling to work has I  confess fared less well over the last few days…).

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