Brighter Future is hosting a harvest party on Saturday 15 October - join us for a great day of family-friendly fun including delicious sustainably-sourced food, a tour of local food initiatives and a damn good dance to live bluegrass tunes.

See the flyer above for more info. We look forward to seeing you!

Date: Sat 15 October 2011

Location: Slade Gardens Adventure Playground - Stockwell

RSVP and more info: Click here to RSVP on facebook.

Coming soon: a new community farm in London?

Tucked away in South London, close to Sutton, is a community farm project that I have loosely been involved with called Sutton Community Farm. It’s a 7.5 acre plot of land, tended to by an enthusiastic community of volunteers and groups. They have lots of activity days that I would highly recommend if you fancy heading a bit out of the city and getting your hands dirty!

Right now, an opportunity has come up to buy some land close to Sutton Community Farm. This is a beautiful 35 acre plot and could be London’s biggest community farm. Anna Francis from BioRegional has been leading an effort to raise the funds and put together a business plan for how it can work. So far, she has received community share pledges for £900,000, almost hitting the target.

So if you want to find out more and invest in a social and environmental project, go check out the page on the Sutton Community Farm website to find out more.

And perhaps next year we can have a big Brighter Future social on the community farm! 

The unbelievably cool team at Climate Rush have crafted yet another brilliant day of action. And this is one for anyone and everyone who’s ever shaken a fist or shed a tear at the unfair hike in rail fares. Not to mention the fact that the government plans to increase rail fares by 31% over the next four years. At noon Saturday 16th April they’ll be rallying at The Monument dressed as The Railway Children. Join in or wave them off at the platform this Saturday. For more info check out the Railway Adventure blog or sign up to the facebook event here.

A good visualisation can make all the difference. They can help us to understand complex things where words fail and enable us to communicate a situation or idea to others. In fact, I’ve recently been getting my water colours out and making some myself (to be scanned in and published soon!).

The latest in wonderful tools that is helping us understand a complex set of data comes from the Open Knowledge Foundation, who have developed a mini-project called Europe’s Energy. This tool helps to put European energy policy into context and allows you to quickly compare how different countries are performing in terms of energy consumption and renewable generation. Which is AMAZING. Because it can be hard to find that data from my experience.

So go check it out; here is the magic link: http://energy.publicdata.eu/ee/

And if you want to learn more about the project, check out Open Knowledge Foundation’s blog on it. Sam

2010: just another hottest year ever?

As the curtain fell on the first year of the ‘tenties’, you may have found yourself perusing one of the dependable ‘year in review’ features. Any such selection of major events from 2010 would have no doubt included the Haiti earthquake, the Wikileaks revelations, and the protests - reported with redefined impartiality - against the UK Government’s own shock doctrine. As memorable as they were however, for the world’s climate scientists, these stories are likely to have been eclipsed by early indications that 2010 was the hottest year on record.

Last year has now been confirmed as winner of joint pole position - tied with 2005 - in the global average temperature hall of fame, which spans the last 131 years. So what? Well, first, it is worth acknowledging that the revelation that 2010 was a record global sizzler of a year might be greeted with surprise or even disbelief by many of the people who had their Christmas plans blighted by snow, and by ‘sceptical’ elements of the media. Does heavy UK snowfall mean global warming has stopped? Unfortunately not, and recent research suggests that unusually cold European winters could be caused both by lower sunspot activity and by a loss of sea-ice due to Arctic warming.

This colourful temperature map shows that, for much of the UK and Northern Europe, temperatures in December 2010 were at least 4°C colder than the 1951-1980 average for that month. However, the European cold snap did not prevent the global average surface temperature for December from being almost half a degree warmer than the 1951-1980 average that provides context for NASA temperature measurements. Nor did it prevent large swathes of Canada and the Arctic from registering temperatures at least 4°C warmer than the historical average for December.

Readers may recall that the winter of 2009-10 was also unusually cold, however when compared with historical data, it seems that particularly cold winters have become the exception not the rule. According to data from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, although the European winter of 2009-10 had a mean temperature of about 0.8°C below the 1951-1980 average, it was only one of four winters since that of 1986-87 that were colder than the average. The other 19 winters had above-average temperatures. Looking at European summer temperature anomalies is more concerning; only one summer in the same 23 year period had a below-average temperature; that of 1993.

To understand the significance - in terms of global warming - of yet another year being declared as the hottest on record, it is essential to consider the event in the context of long-term trends, a process far more informative than looking at temperature records broken in a given year. That being said, it is worth noting that 2010 received the dubious accolade of (joint) hottest year on record despite a strong episode of La Niña - the phenomenon which results in unusually cool sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean - in the second half of the year. Low levels of solar activity provided a further cooling effect. Go figure as they say in the US of A.

Let’s return to temperature trends considered over decades, which climate scientist James Hansen has described as “far more important than any particular year’s ranking”. The decade of 2001-2010 was the warmest on record, with an average global surface temperature of 0.56°C above the 20^th century average, and with only one year (2008) that didn’t feature in the 10 warmest years ever recorded. According to data from the National Climatic Data Center, December 2010 was the 310th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The graph below, which displays global surface temperatures from four temperature monitoring institutions, clearly indicates that temperatures have been above historical averages since the late 1970s, with a strong trend of increasing variation from the average. 

Rising global surface (land and sea) temperatures - as depicted in a recent NASA animation - represent only two of ten established indicators of global warming. Unfortunately, the other 8 indicators also strongly suggest that our planet is warming. It seems clear that, if the trends in these indicators continue, 2010 is unlikely to hold its record as the warmest year for long.

Do we need some more environmental super heroes? I was chatting with a friend a while back about this. Apart from Captain Planet and the Planeteers protecting Gaia from climatic disasters, most superheroes seem only concerned with crime fighting. Spiderman is a crime fighter, so is Batman. Superman has potential but he is predominately interested in social issues, although it is worth noting he is a strict vegetarian.

Taking the super out of super-heroes, we do have some inspiring heroes today that are campaigning and delivering interesting projects on the environmental edge of the sustainability agenda. One quirky chap goes by the name of No Impact Man (Colin Beavan), who made a documentary last year of the same name. When I saw this documentary I was not in the mood for another environmental film but as it went on I actually ended up finding it funny and inspiring. It follows Colin Beavan and his family as they try to completely eliminate their personal impacts on the environment.

As a natural progression, No Impact Man is opening up the doors of his personal project and asking others to take on a No Impact Challenge for a week. With a interest in life experiments and making resolutions, it seems fitting to sign up for the first week of 2011. Another good reason to do it this week is to join Yes! Magazine staff and readers who are also taking up the challenge.

From glancing over the No Impact Project guide, part of me thinks the challenge may not result in many changes to my normal week. Partly because I’m already a keen greenie and it seems aimed at those new to low-impact living. But let’s see how it goes, after all, I’m aware there is more I can do.

If you are doing the No Impact Project, do get in touch (email sam at brighterfutureuk dot net). It’s great to hear what other people are doing and we also would love contributions to this blog from all friends of Brighter Future.

Adios for now, Sam

A special call to action in support of our buddies at 10:10.  In just 2 weeks there will be a vote on the Daylight Saving Bill that’s 3 December and we need as many MPs as possible to be present.

That’s where you come in: click here to e-mail or phone up your MP today to show your support for the bill. This campaign has already moved mountains through public support. Let’s give it that final push that could help a tiny change to the clocks make a massive impact for our environment.

We’re asking MPs to push the clocks forward by just one hour, preventing hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon emissions from hitting the atmosphere each year, saving lives, bolstering the economy and making us all a bit happier with that extra bit of daylight while we’re awake. 

On 3 December, MPs will vote on whether to conduct a cross-departmental cost-benefit analysis of the clock change. Only if the benefits are confirmed will a 3-year trial then be enacted. 

It sounds like a funny thing to do, but when you look at the facts, there’s really nothing against at least giving it a shot. Still need convincing? Check it out: http://www.lighterlater.org

Sam

Brighter Future is a seasonal network and in the winter we go into a sort of hibernation. We wrap up warm, get our thinking caps on and work out what we are going to focus on over the next year.

We are brimming with ideas and can’t wait to get things going again. In the run up to Christmas we are relaunching this site and will start a new programme of events in the new year. We are looking for enthusiasm and help as this network is shaped by you. If you are interested in getting involved, please pop us an email.

Brighter Future is hosting a harvest party on Saturday 15 October - join us for a great day of family-friendly fun including delicious sustainably-sourced food, a tour of local food initiatives and a damn good dance to live bluegrass tunes.

See the two-page flyer below for more info. We look forward to seeing you!

Date: Sat 15 October 2011

Location: Slade Gardens Adventure Playground - Stockwell

RSVP and more info: Click here to RSVP on facebook.

After lots of preparation, we’re really proud to announce brighter future’s transport season event! And we would love for all of you to come along.

Join brighter future on 7^th May as we discover the Hidden Cycle Havens of south and central London as part of the Transeuropa Festival. And get free bike maintenance tuition from CTUK while you’re there.

Meet us at 2pm in Brixton Village and learn some of the best-kept cycle secrets in the south. Or share your own special city route with other London cyclists.

If you don’t have access to a bike, there’s plenty of other festival activities to take part in, including a treasure hunt, recycled craft making and a walking tour of Brixton landmarks.

We’ll be wrapping up with a few drinks at the Dogstar at 4:30 pm, and heading to the Transeuropa after party (Brixton Village) for some live acoustic music at 8pm, which everyone is welcome to join.

This is just a small event, but we hope it’s the first of bigger things to follow next year. And it’s part of our broader transport season to help cut emissions from travel, which you’ll be hearing more about on this page over the next month.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

ps If you’re into Facebook - the event page is here

Come join Brighter Future at The Wave