Many thanks to Dr Gordon Blunt for his talk on 23rd October - How Green is Harborough?
Dr Blunt has been a statistician for over 40 years, and in his talk, looked at what the data say about how 'green' Harborough District is compared to other parts of the UK. And the overall conclusion was that we are not very green at all. Considering our overall carbon emissions in the key areas of transport, household energy and food consumption, households in Harborough District produce more greenhouse gases than the average across England and Wales.
You can download a copy of his slides here:
The talk was followed by small group discussions, where people discussed what they might do as individuals to improve their own Carbon Footprint, and what they would like to see local councils and the government do to help improve the Carbon Footprint of the District. We asked each group to give us their one Top Suggestion. This is what they said:
Measure my own Carbon Footprint to see where I need to make changes, and start by taking one less holiday involving flying each year
Introduce an Electric Hoppa bus in Market Harborough that goes around all the new estates, giving those residents an easy way of getting into town without using a car
Improve cycle routes around the town, to give adults and children safe routes to cycle to school, into town, to the Leisure Centre etc
Make more of some of things we already have, e.g. Magna Park. Just think how much renewable energy could be produced if every warehouse had an array of solar panels on it!
Thank you to everyone who came along, and joined in so enthusiastically with the discussions. Harborough Climate Action will be collating all of the groups comments and considering how best to take them forward.
Here is the list of sources that Gordon used, all of which are freely available for anyone who would like to look at them in more detail.
Centre for Sustainable Energy Impact tool (https://impact-tool.org.uk/)
Office for National Statistics (https://www.ons.gov.uk/)
Census (https://www.ons.gov.uk/census)
Department for Transport vehicles statistics (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/vehicles-statistics)
Forest Research (https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/)
Our World in Data (https://ourworldindata.org/)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (https://www.ipcc.ch/)
Open Geography portal (https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/)
And here are links to some tools you can use to measure your own Carbon Footprint :
The WWF Footprint Calculator - https://footprint.wwf.org.uk/
Climate Hero - https://climatehero.me/calculate/
Carbon Footprint - https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx
Our next Open Meeting will be as follows
Date : Wednesday 27th November
Time : 7.30pm
Venue : Congregational Church, MB
Комментарии