Climate Change and Sustainability Day clips and info

A packed house, informative speakers and an informed audience made for a stimulating Climate Change and Sustainability Day on Friday 27 March.

It opened with a pledge from Councillor John Jarvis to set up a screening of The Age of Stupid for Herefordshire Council in its entirety. “You can't change your life if you can't change your thinking. We have to get the message (about climate change) across to the people who manage the budgets,” he said.

Among other green measures, county library services are to make energy monitors and intelligent plugs available for loan while many Herefordshire schools have now achieved their green flag as part of the eco-schools award scheme.

The Age of Stupid (which has had a phenomenal run of five consecutive weeks at the Odeon West End) will be available for independent screenings after its official launch date on May 22. Information about purchasing a license (on a sliding scale according to the size and nature of screenings) can be obtained from the Indie Screenings website from May 1.

Listen to Mark Lynas introduce The Age of Stupid.

And, from the Q&A after the screening, a proposal for a 'War Bond' type scheme for renewables was greeted with much enthusiasm by the audience.

A lively session on Alternative Sources of Energy featured presentations by Richard Priestley on the breakthrough technology of concentrating solar power, Alice Goldstone of Talybont Energy on hydropower and how Talybont is working steadily towards carbon neutrality and Jon Hallé of sharenergy and Energy4All who urged any audience members inerested in setting up or participating in renewable energy co-ops to contact him via the sharenergy website.

Richard was prompted by the potentially large demand from audience members to set up a new course of evening classes Global Problems : Global Solutions at The Barrels pub in Hereford. Details in the comment attached to this post or contact Richard by e-mail or on 01432 358104.

Re local hydropower, we've been contacted by Stephen Ainsleigh Rice of the Herefordshire Hydro Group(see comment attached to this post for more information).

Summing up the energy debate, environmental broadcaster Robert Lamb said that there had been some terrific insights but added a note of caution, "As we've seen from the film this morning, as science shows, we can't wait for attitudinal change. Governments have a huge role to play; at the end of the day they regulate things. They did something about acid rain in the US, governments got involved, ODS (ozone-depleted substances) were made illegal. We have to press governments to deliver. Where things are happening in Germany, Denmark, Spain it's where governments have intervened. We have to recognise that we're a middle-class outfit and that 95% of the people in the UK would not find it particularly shameful to travel on EasyJet."

Following on, here's Joss Garman of Greenpeace and Plane Stupid spelling out why 2 degrees are quite so significant.

Joss's full PowerPoint presentation will soon be available for download.

The session was billed as How Far Do We Go? Speaking after Joss, Trish Marsh, Sustainability Manager for Herefordshire Council argued for renaming it How Near Should We Stay?

TBC..

The Age of Stupid screening in Ludlow sells out

Watch Pete Postlethwaite pledge to return his OBE if the government fails to act radically in favour of reducing carbon emissions at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. The event took place in a solar-powered tent at The Age of Stupid premiere in Leicester Square on Sunday evening and marked the launch of the Not Stupid Campaign which seeks to transform cinema-goers into climate activists with a fighting chance of seriously effecting change.



Both People's Premieres of The Age of Stupid in Wales (in Cardiff and Milford) sold out as did the Friday night shows with Director Franny Armstrong in Cardiff and Producer Lizzie Gillett in Aberystwyth. Closer to home, the Ludlow screening on Tuesday 31 March introduced by Pete Postlethwaite is now fully booked!

Change of time for Anvil! screening

On Sunday 5 April the screening of Anvil! The Story of Anvil will start at 6.35pm instead of 6.15. Listings on our website have been altered.

This rockumentary has had fantastic reviews and was featured in a Front Row item on Radio 4 last week.

Over a thousand people congregated in Shepherds Bush one evening in February not knowing what they were about to experience. They'd signed up for a new phenomenon called Secret Cinema. You're told to turn up at a given time and place, with an odd hint or two about the forthcoming event, and sworn to secrecy.

What the last lot of secret cinema-goers got was a screening of Anvil! at the Shepherds Bush Empire, only to have the group themselves step live on stage immediately afterwards. The crowd went wild (re-live the event via slideshow). It appears that rock stardom has arrived at last for the ageing, but ever-resilient band!

Controversy, controversy - nuclear power and green custard

First Mark Lynas (forthcoming Borderlines Debate speaker) comes out in favour of nuclear energy, along with three other leading figures from the environmental lobby. Then on Friday morning the green gunk attack on Peter Mandelson was perpetrated by Plane Stupid activist Leila Deen who has since given herself up for arrrest. Joss Garman of Greenpeace, co-founder of Plane Stupid, ex-Hereford Sixth Form college student and one of The Guardian's 50 people most likely to save the planet, who is also due to take part in our Climate Change and Sustainability Day - aptly enough in the How Far Do We Go? session - writes fluently and persuasively about his generation's stand on global warming in today's Observer.

There is much debate in the press as to whether Plane Stupid's methods are juvenile and justifiable but it seems that the pressing nature of global warming agenda is on the top of everyone's agenda from leading environmentalists like Stephen Tindale, former director of Greenpeace, to Prince Charles - who is to make a keynote speech on climate change in Rio on Thursday - to the Sun - which has launched a Go Green week. And The Age of Stupid's go-for-broke PR campaign to mark the film's launch next week carries similar urgency. The message is loud and clear: Do something now before it is absolutely too late.


Further links: Plane Stupid's flickr photostream
Play Leila Deen - Custard Queen

Oblivious to Oblivion

Double page centrefold for The Age of Stupid in yesterday's Sun. The film's star Pete Postlethwaite explains in the article why he had to take part: “When I looked at the subject and what the film was trying to do there was no option really. I had to do it.

“The stakes are very, very high. They’re through the roof.

“How could we willingly know that we’re going into extinction... and let it happen.”

The piece draws on the chilling (!) parallels between predictions in the film for 2055 (images of Sydney Opera House in flames) and the recent bush fires in southern Australia.


The Age of Stupid: final trailer Feb 2009 from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.