It was lovely to see so many people at our Tuesday festival event (“Climate and ecological breakdown, what matters most now?”), and especially nice to have to get more chairs out as we got closer to kick-off.
Given that the audience was probably from the 75% of the public that polls as concerned or very concerned about the environment it is possibly not surprising that 75% of the audience thought that we were either heading towards extinction or would act to pull back from extinction just in time. If it sounds like the meeting was all gloom and doom, however, that was far from the case. The facilitator (Kimberley Hare from HEART Community Group – see www.HEARTCommunityGroup.org ) focussed us to consider what was ‘Ours to Do’, stressing that us being collectively able to work on multitudinous different issues was a strength as no single person could handle everything.
Although changing the way we do things is scary to many people, as the unknown usually is, when it comes to addressing the environmental and climate crisis the solutions mainly concentrate on the areas which psychological research has shown to promote well-being the most.
1 Connecting to people around us
2 Being active in our bodies.
3 Taking notice of the living world.
4 Learning new skills.
5 Giving to others.
The weather forecast for the “Fun day” is good at the time of writing this article so it would appear that the day should be enjoyable and successful for all taking part. It seems a long time since we were concerned about getting cold, but the insulation added to stop us getting cold in the winter also keeps us cooler in the summer if we take precautions to minimise hot air ingress through open doors etc. News has recently been released about a satellite that will be able to resolve to individual houses to show which lose the most heat. At the same time a map was released showing the average amount a UK house loses in 5 hours compared to other European countries. We were amongst the worst losing 3 degrees whilst in Norway they lost just 0.9 degrees, so needing just one-third the amount of heating. We need to ensure that any new homes built are even better than the Norway homes as, once built, retrofitting insulation can be prohibitively expensive as many of you will know. Likewise, new houses should be built maximising the efficiency of solar panels with batteries; and, to keep the occupants active, access to cycle and bus facilities.
Visit our website (https://e-voice.org.uk/knebworthenvironmentalgroup/). Join our Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/knebworthenvironmentalgroup). You can also contact us via email to Kristin at knebworthenvironmentalgroup@gmail.com. Our next meeting is at 8PM on Tuesday 11th July at the Station pub: you can email in advance or just turn up.