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Saturday, September 30, 2006

Welcome to Kev's Climate Column. Kev, along with his helpers will bring you news of climate change in the coming editions of Nailsworth News and clarify the conflicting reports in the wider media. But most importantly, Kev’s Climate Column will bring you information and ideas on what you can do reduce your “carbon footprint;” these may be ideas that need individual action or collective action amongst the people of Nailsworth.

Kev’s climate column will also have a blog, at www.kevsclimatecolumn.blogspot.com/. You will be able to find all the articles here, as well as give your ideas on how to reduce your carbon footprint, discuss other ideas or let us know how successful our ideas for reducing carbon have been. You can also email on kevsclimatecolumn@btinternet.com.

First of all, how big a problem is climate change? To put it in perspective, the met office this month have released a long range forecast for Saharan weather conditions in England by the end of this century, with temperatures getting as high as 46oC. The worst of it is that this is not even the worst-case estimate and other computer models predict far worse. Changes this big will impact every single person reading this paper. We have already just had the hottest September and July on record. Climate change is not some abstract problem of the future that can be resolved by talking. It is a problem that is affecting us right now and needs all of us to act and think in very different ways.

One simple thing that you can do to save your carbon emissions dramatically is to drive less. Have you looked at lift sharing? If you do not have colleagues at work who live locally to you, then you could try one of the lift sharing web sites, or leave your journey details on our blog. We have looked at www.liftshare.org. It looks good and is free. There are even people logged on to it from this area. If everyone in Nailsworth who is interested in lift sharing went to this site, we could have a critical mass of people all at one place. Please let us know how you get on.

Would I use it? No, I bike to work!!!

Kev


PS.... Is this your gas-guzzler? If so contact us through the blog to claim your "I don't care about our kids" certificate.