Climate Cafe

 When I went up to the Globe yesterday evening, there was a big "Closed" sign by the gate - but I went up and tried the door anyway, and sure enough there were people in there.  On one side of the room were a couple of philosophers, and on the other side, about 7 or 8 people for the Climate Cafe - most of them were also members of HOWLS.

Paul, who runs the group, had sent his apologies due to illness, so the conversation was perhaps not quite typical of other climate cafes that have been held here.  

We started off with the Hay Handbook.  This was produced in 2015 with great effort and fanfare and, as Mark Robinson pointed out, it was out of date the day it came out.  As with many things in Hay, there wasn't the momentum to keep it going and there was never a second edition.  People who set up groups in Hay tend not to inform a central noticeboard or booklet or, these days, website, so it can be a lot of work just to find out how many groups there are in Hay and what they do.  However, there was some  discussion about renewing the Handbook.  The first task would be to go through the 48 pages to find out which groups are still active, and by the end of the evening Janet Robinson had volunteered to do the first ten pages.

Michael had a lot to talk about at the meeting (so was unable to take notes!).  He's been doing a lot of research into setting up a Citizen's Assembly for Hay, in collaboration with the Library.  It comes under their remit of educational work.  This isn't just a matter of calling a meeting - facilitators have to be trained to guide the process first.  

He wants a Citizen's Assembly to discuss three main areas of interest.  First - could Hay have its own community energy source, for instance a wind turbine owned by the town?

Secondly, Food Security - how can Hay organise a system of local food producers selling their produce in Hay, so that Hay can be more self-sufficient in food, especially in these times when there are random shortages in the shops.

Thirdly, Mental Health - how can the local community work together to identify people who are struggling with depression or other forms of mental health issues before it becomes a crisis that the NHS needs to deal with?  

So, Food, Energy and a more supportive community - they're all things that relate to the climate crisis, and they're all things that a small community should be looking at to survive in the future.

As part of his research, Michael came across an organisation which is funded by the Welsh government.  It's called Egin, and the website is egin.org.uk  When he contacted them, they told him that there would be help available, when Hay got the the stage of deciding what was needed.

There was a suggestion that the issues around Mental Health could be combined with the issues around Food Security.  Getting people gardening is extremely good for mental health.  There's a group called Edible Cardiff which has been linking people who grow food with people who want to eat it, and it seems to be successful.

Locally, there are several small groups involved in food production and distribution.  The people at Chapters regularly cook ready meals from donated food for Brecon Food Bank, for instance - Cabalva, across the river, is one of the donors to this scheme.  There are also small schemes in Boughrood and Gwernyfed (and of course, Primrose Farm has been around for many years).  There's also the community garden just across the river from Hay.

One of the people at the meeting was from Llangammarch Wells, and she described a local Landowners Group which had been very successful in getting people together and connected.  For instance, a farmer offered well rotted cow manure, and several people with gardens came to collect it.  Meanwhile someone else was giving advice about mushrooms, and there was a herbalist, all of them getting in touch with other members of the community that they wouldn't have known about otherwise.

Another local group is Our Food 1200/Ein Bwyd 1200.  They are building a network of land, from farms to small gardens, across South Wales, to grow local food - eventually they want to have 1200 acres, which would be co-ordinated so that different things were grown in different areas - no point in having a glut of courgettes!  They have a page on Facebook, and Michael said they were looking into the possibility of acquiring a 90 acre farm near Abergavenny.

Michael also wanted to do something to get schools involved, and Françoise pointed out that schools locally are doing a lot already - she and her husband Pierre have been involved in that, with Botany and Other Stories.

Michael added that the Black Mountains College is also interested in getting involved.

He also talked about what Citizen's Assemblies could achieve - for instance, in Hereford the Citizen's Assembly came up with various policies that the County Council have adopted - but this is probably because there are quite a few Green councillors now.  There has also been a lot of local disagreement with the policies, as a glance at the letters page of the Hereford Times will show.  Some people still want a bypass, for instance.

In the end, there is only so much a small community can do, if national governments are not prepared to do what is necessary to mitigate climate change.  Our own government do not have a good record on green issues, and in Alaska oil companies want to drill for oil in what are presently pristine environments.  The COP meetings have generally been disappointing, too, generally agreeing to small changes without clear penalties for countries that do not meet the agreed targets for carbon reduction.  

Françoise spoke eloquently about the Earth Overshoot Day - the day of the year when the Earth has used all the resources for that year - from that point on the Earth is using resources that are not sustainable, because the Earth cannot regenerate them.  When the Earth Overshoot Day was first thought of, the date was in December.  This year it's in July.

Her point was that global change is needed - but half a dozen people sitting in the Globe can't affect global change.  We can't even change what is happening to the River Wye on our own doorstep.  What we can do is small things like sharing food (there's a seed swap at the Globe on Sunday 5th March, from 2pm to 4.30pm, for instance, with children's activities).

This may seem like a rather depressing note to end the report on, but we are in the middle of a crisis, and we must do what we can to make things better wherever we can.

As an aside - I recently picked up a set of DVDs for Cosmos, the big TV series by Carl Sagan, which was on TV in 1979.  I remembered him talking about astronomy, and the history of science - but what came as a surprise was the episode where he talked about climate change and how we, as a species, had a choice - either  to go on as we were, or to make changes for our own survival.  (He was also concerned about nuclear war - the Cold War was still going on back then).  This was on prime time TV in 1979.  The science was clear then - and yet here we are in 2023, with the Earth in a much worse state than it was then, and the effort needed to change that so much more urgent, and more difficult than it was in the 1970s.