The evening of the 7th February not also saw me turn 25, but also the beginning of the Oxford Climate Forum. This is the UK's highest profile student-led conference and saw a large range of high profile speakers interspersed with panel discussions and a parallel careers fair. The aim was to leave us "Inspired, Motivated and Empowered".
Friday's first keynote speaker was Dipal Barva, founder of the "Bright Green Energy Foundation" based in Bangladesh. He has been a key player in introducing solar and biogas to rural areas to improve the socio-economics. What they have done is amazing: from few grid connections, they have installed huge numbers of solar panels and biogas boilers - enabling those in rural communities to have access to "clean light" and less polluting cooking systems. My concern was the sheer number of batteries used, but they have introduced incentives for recycling them to reduce waste.
Dipal was followed by Professor Nigel Brandon, Dr. Nick Eyre, Trevor Nash (Sargas) and Dave Worthington who engaged in a lively discussion about the future of our energy system. The consensus seemed to be that the technology is ready, but it is the political and social will that is causing a delay to action. Dr. Eyre suggested this was because people are now so disconnected with energy - no longer having to carry it into the house in a bucket! This gave me ideas for my next FameLab talk....
The speaker of Friday was Martin Chilcott, CEO of 2degrees, who began by showing a video illustrating the growth of the world population which was pretty shocking! However, using the mandarin for crisis, which is the combination of danger and opportunity, and the fact that the US now offers more jobs in solar than in oil and gas combined left us feeling positive.
Saturday began with some moral philosophy from Professor John Broome, who explained how, because we should not inflict harm on others, it is our moral obligation to offset our CO2 to reduce our net emissions to zero. Apparently each of us in the UK shortens someone's life by 2-3 days just with our annual carbon emissions. However, he separated this "justice" from "goodness", which can be achieved in more efficient ways.
The next panel started with Robert Hunt from Veolia, who has worked a lot in London to reduce emissions from waste. They have saved 9% of their fuel costs by changing the behaviour of their drivers! They have also created a visionary document: Imagine 2050, which portrays the way waste could be managed in the future.
Dr. John Ingram gave an interesting presentation on food security, and showed shocking predictions to the number of people in the world eating "too much" and "too little". He showed how much food we would gain by eating food currently used for fuel and feeding livestock.
The afternoon brought the session I was most looking forward to: Communicating Climate Change. James Painter reminded us that most people still get their news from mainstream media, with social media remaining low on the "Trusted sources" list. Ade Thomas, from Green TV stressed the importance of visualisation, illustrated by the Connect4Climate video competitions that have spread information about climate change all over the globe. Their key message was to know the aim of your communication, as this will determine how you do it!
After just over a day of talks on a huge variety of climate change related topics, I agreed with the organisers that climate change can be viewed not just as a danger, but also as an opportunity for research and development. Inspired by the success stories, I left feeling ready to help take on the challenge!
Dipal was followed by Professor Nigel Brandon, Dr. Nick Eyre, Trevor Nash (Sargas) and Dave Worthington who engaged in a lively discussion about the future of our energy system. The consensus seemed to be that the technology is ready, but it is the political and social will that is causing a delay to action. Dr. Eyre suggested this was because people are now so disconnected with energy - no longer having to carry it into the house in a bucket! This gave me ideas for my next FameLab talk....
The speaker of Friday was Martin Chilcott, CEO of 2degrees, who began by showing a video illustrating the growth of the world population which was pretty shocking! However, using the mandarin for crisis, which is the combination of danger and opportunity, and the fact that the US now offers more jobs in solar than in oil and gas combined left us feeling positive.
Saturday began with some moral philosophy from Professor John Broome, who explained how, because we should not inflict harm on others, it is our moral obligation to offset our CO2 to reduce our net emissions to zero. Apparently each of us in the UK shortens someone's life by 2-3 days just with our annual carbon emissions. However, he separated this "justice" from "goodness", which can be achieved in more efficient ways.
The next panel started with Robert Hunt from Veolia, who has worked a lot in London to reduce emissions from waste. They have saved 9% of their fuel costs by changing the behaviour of their drivers! They have also created a visionary document: Imagine 2050, which portrays the way waste could be managed in the future.
Dr. John Ingram gave an interesting presentation on food security, and showed shocking predictions to the number of people in the world eating "too much" and "too little". He showed how much food we would gain by eating food currently used for fuel and feeding livestock.
The afternoon brought the session I was most looking forward to: Communicating Climate Change. James Painter reminded us that most people still get their news from mainstream media, with social media remaining low on the "Trusted sources" list. Ade Thomas, from Green TV stressed the importance of visualisation, illustrated by the Connect4Climate video competitions that have spread information about climate change all over the globe. Their key message was to know the aim of your communication, as this will determine how you do it!
After just over a day of talks on a huge variety of climate change related topics, I agreed with the organisers that climate change can be viewed not just as a danger, but also as an opportunity for research and development. Inspired by the success stories, I left feeling ready to help take on the challenge!
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