 Again, welcome. Thank you very much for that, Chris. Collaboration is really important. So, again, my name is Camilla. I'm an undergraduate at SOAS. I've been convening the series with a really great group of people. And I'm Ellie, and I'm studying global energy and climate policy here at SOAS. So, again, the objective with the series is to attempt to better understand the ways in which climate change relates to our own and to other societies. And we do this by approaching climate change from the perspectives of politics, development, law, economics, and individual action tonight. So, four weeks ago in our climate change and politics seminar, Larry Lohman discussed the ways in which the politics of climate change have been framed in ways that accommodate to western points of view, but largely neglect the ways in which climate issues relate to the livelihoods of communities and other parts of the world. Three weeks ago in our climate change and development seminar, Dr. Andrew Nusham of SOAS, he discussed climate change in relation to globalization, and he discussed how it's becoming increasingly crucial to address the discrepancy between those responsible for climate change, mostly in the global north, and those most affected by it mostly in the global south. And two weeks ago, we had climate change and law with Dr. Fair Lesvinovska. She illustrated how classical ideas about the purpose of law are being challenged by the uncertainty and instability emerging in our societies as a result of climate change. Last week, we had climate change and economics with Dr. Harold Hoiber. He highlighted the economic and financial issues of climate change, while emphasizing that sufficient action on climate change, first and foremost, requires changes in government policy. So, tonight we have climate change and individual action. Our speakers will share their journey with SOAS and how they successfully campaign to install 114 solar panels on the roof of the university. They will present their views on the most effective forms of individual and community action and will also bring perspectives from the work they are doing now in investment, law and civil activism. Yeah, and after having explored all these different academic perspectives, we do feel it's really important to bring that climate change to our everyday lives, because that is where it starts. So, the purpose of this seminar is really to have a conversation about that. The four previous seminars have very much been a 45-minute talk, and then we had a Q&A in which we had great discussions, but we want this to be even more participatory. So, we have Hannah Izzine-Rob, which we're going to briefly present in a bit, and they're going to talk about solar SOAS, their own experiences. They've been involved in a million different projects. Right now, they're doing very different things as well, all related to climate change. So, it's really about bringing a perspective from people who've really been involved in this in many different ways, but we really want it to be a conversation. So, at any point, if you have questions, please just raise your hand and ask. And if you have any thoughts, also please contribute. We really want this to be a conversation. Yeah, and so, we... Yes, and then afterwards, we have a reception, as we've written here, to celebrate the ending of a great seminar series with drinks and some nibbles, and we hope that you can all join us for that as well and continue the conversation or talk about other things. That's also fine. We're not going to force you to talk about climate change. No, but yeah, and also if you want to treat about it, use the hashtag climate perspectives, please. So, now I'd like to warmly introduce our speakers. We've got Izzy, Hannah, and Rob here tonight. Izzy studied a bachelor's degree in Chinese language here at SOAS. She graduated in 2016, and she's now pursuing a law degree and has been involved in various environmental projects. Hannah studied BA Chinese and Development Studies and also graduated in 2016. She's currently engaged in many different environmental initiatives, one of them being a cycling group in which she cycled COP21 in Paris and COP22 in Marrakesh, and she recently secured a job here at SOAS. Rob completed a Master's in Global Energy and Climate Policy here also, graduating in 2013, and he is now working for a crowdfunding investment platform called Abundance Investment, which focuses on renewable energy projects. So, without further ado, I'd like to introduce our guest speakers. Just press space whenever you want to switch. Is that fine? Yeah. I don't want to stand, though. Yeah, so it's happening. Okay, hi everybody. Hello. Hi. Yeah, so my name is Hannah. This is Izzy, and this is Rob, and we're here tonight on behalf of SOAS. We're here as individuals talking about individual action. So, we're going to be talking a lot about our personal and collective journeys in trying to take action against climate change. We're going to talk a lot about Solar SOAS and how we started as a... Yes, okay, so this is the correct slide. So yes, this is who we are. Yeah, so we're going to be talking about Solar SOAS, how it started, what it is that we did, and kind of what we're actually doing now, and the kind of next steps in where we're going. We're also going to talk a little bit more about our own lives, kind of personally and professionally. Not that personal, but you know what I mean. But yeah, so, but like Kamala said, we wanted to kind of be more of a kind of conversation slash discussion. So, if you have any things that you want to add or points of clarification that you want, please feel free to put up your hand. So, to hear a little bit more about what it is that Solar SOAS is and how it started, go over to Izzy. So, thank you for that introduction. Yeah, we've already had some great examples on individual action from Chris. There's so many different ways of doing individual action, but what we did started about three years ago when we joined the SOAS Energy and Climate Justice Society. And yeah, so this is a student society at SOAS where we would meet up about once a week and discuss different topical issues. So what was the changing international policy at the time, different laws that were coming out, or just go through news stories really. And it was something that we all really cared about for different reasons. We'd already come to SOAS with an interest in the environment and climate and how that could change a lot in the future. And we just got a bit tired of always talking about what was going on in the outside world and these powers that we didn't really feel we had that much influence over. And we decided we wanted to make some tangible change. So the idea of Solar SOAS was born and we looked into community energy as something we could bring to universities. And community energy is a form of energy generation and sometimes distribution that is essentially community-owned. So instead of traditionally where an organisation or a company or an individual buys solar panels, for example we could have asked SOAS to using their estates fund, just buy solar panels on their own and put on the roof. And then they would control it, they would get the profit from the government incentives. And students might not find out anything about it, like City University of London has solar panels. But if you ask a student, do you know you have solar panels? They have no idea. So we thought it would be much better to do it with a higher level of student engagement. So we followed the model that they've been doing at Brixton Energy, Repowering London and a bunch of other places where you get local residents, either in social housing or in villages, to invest by buying shares or in our case students alumni friends of SOAS donated. And then the solar panels are bought through this crowd-funded money and owned by a social enterprise to manage it. So it's owned and controlled by and for the community. So that any profits that we make will go into a community fund for more good instead of just... Who even knows? And there's real incentives to get involved in renewable energy then. Being at SOAS, none of us have engineering backgrounds, so you kind of think, oh, renewables sound great, but I don't know, I don't understand how solar works, how do we do it? So this is something that we thought anyone could get involved in. As you've been told, we have Chinese and kind of a more of a climate background with Rob, but yeah, we just kind of learned as we went along, really. And it's close to the go. So now I'll pass you on to Rob to talk about what solar SOAS have done after we decided we would do something radical. Right, so we were stuck feeling pretty powerless, not knowing what to do, how are we going to tackle this problem, who we're going to ask for help. So we kind of felt like we were out of our depths, but we got a really good group of people together who were really motivated to get this going. It was slow going, we needed to learn a lot about how solar works, how to finance it, how community energy works, how different community energy projects structure themselves as different social enterprises or cooperatives, how to develop a financial model to make the project financially viable, how to coordinate all these different things with different stakeholders, with planning permission, etc. So it took a long time, but we managed to get there in the end. We started off by setting out our aims, which was to have a community energy project where students, faculty, staff and alumni feel like they have a stake in it. Everybody is more aware about the solar panels, about the importance of climate change and how easy it is to get things going and to start your own projects. So we looked at different funding options. We started with a social enterprise seed fund here at SOAS, where we got £500 to get going. Then we became finalists for the Mayor's Low Carbon Entrepreneur Prize, where we pitched our project Dragon's Den style to a panel, including Dame Ellen MacArthur, Richard Reed, the founder of Innocent Drinks, a couple of big chiefs from Siemens. The Mayor of London was there. And even though we didn't win, we got lots of really good feedback. We felt like we were onto something and we were told about the Urban Community Energy Fund, which was a fund by the government to help community energy projects get off their feet, to fund all the risky stuff for doing all the feasibility work, the technical, to get a developer on site to make sure that everything is... You can actually install panels. The roof is strong enough that the grid capacity is good enough that there's no planning obstructions. We needed legal support. We needed to talk to lawyers about the underlying lease arrangements that the university has to see if there was capacity for the university to lease the roof to us. All this required money, which we didn't have, which was available through this... which was available through this government scheme, which was provided by DEC, which no longer exists, and the fund no longer exists either, but we managed to get there just in time to secure ourselves 20,000 pounds to do all this work. It really got us organised. We had no idea there was this much work involved into getting ourselves started. We enjoyed it. We learned a lot. And in the end, we were pretty close with timelines. There was a feed-in tariff deadline. The feed-in tariff is a government subsidy for a few producer-owned renewable electricity, which got massively cut, and we had to install before a certain deadline, which was end of September last year. Otherwise, we weren't going to get that feed-in tariff. That would mean our project wouldn't be financially viable anymore. So we had to make some compromises. We didn't have enough time to do a full-share offer, but we did some crowdfunding where we raised just over 2,000 pounds. We raised some investments and a loan from the Students' Union just above 10,000 pounds, and we got a massive grant from the university management as well to install the panels. And in the end, we got our panels, 114 panels installed, I think three days before the deadline. Classic so has. Classic so has. And now we have... What boy there starts again? 114 panels. 29.6. The capacity is 29.6 kilowatt peak, which equates to... Izzy has made these numbers. 10.22 tons of carbon per year, which... I know I've struck a number, but that amount of carbon is planting up 300 trees, and the carbon trees have not been tree planting, that's also great thing to do. Plant trees. And it's not a large amount of so has its energy usage, because we use so much energy, but it's something... I don't know. It's making a difference in the university. A lifespan of 20 years is going to kind of keep... I don't know beyond that what happens. Beyond that? The solar panels will still be generating electricity, but they won't be very efficient. So at that point you'd be looking at replacing them with hopefully they'll be much more efficient solar panels by that time. So yeah, we've installed on one roof on so has, which is the roof above the student's union basically, the old building. There's another larger roof, which is the building where the library is housed in. We weren't able to install on that yet because the university's going to do massive refurbishments on the windows. They need roof access, blah, blah, blah. Massive delays. Anyway, hopefully we'll be able to install on there in a couple of years time. We're already talking to the university about doing a full-on green roof with rainwater harvesting, wildflower planting, and of course the solar panels. And we're talking to University of London to expand our installation as well. So, small beginnings, but massive opportunities ahead still. Then, Hannah is going to talk about what our next steps are. So, like Rob was saying, it's kind of been quite an interesting journey and not really one that we ever envisaged we'd go on. Actually, I think when we started at SOAS none of us knew what had never really heard what community energy had no idea what it is and now we're kind of going full steam ahead trying to kind of spread it everywhere, which is just interesting where your life goes. But yeah, it's also been a very empowering process to kind of go through this whole kind of to go on this journey and to kind of start with the discussions of like, wouldn't it be great if to actually having them up there and it kind of allows you to think, wow, well if that can happen then what other things could we achieve if we put our minds to it. So right now, like Rob said, we've had small beginnings but we're definitely thinking about how it is that we can kind of grow this project and bring it to other universities. So that's something that we're definitely thinking about now. Like Rob mentioned, DEC which is a department of energy and climate change no longer exists. Thank you, Tories. So yeah, and then the Urban Community Energy Fund which is the kind of key to a thousand pound pot of gold that allowed us to check everything that no longer exists in the form that it did for us. So right now we're kind of exploring things given this very different financial landscape but it's not putting us off so we're still trying but recognizing that these are kind of obstacles to be overcome if we are actually going to be able to spread it. But just to give you kind of like a little taster of the different things that we're doing right now well the first thing is actually next weekend we're going to have a visioning session as an organization so I'm not sure I can't remember if Rob mentioned it but SolarSauce is the name of our project but we've actually registered as a community benefit society called Unisolar Limited so Unisolar is all about kind of spreading renewable projects specifically solar to different universities so it's kind of under this umbrella kind of name that we're exploring and talking to different people like the specific project. Yeah so some of the other universities that we're kind of in conversation with is UCL so they've just newly formed a group who seem very enthusiastic and so we're kind of in conversation with the UCL sustainability officer who's like very supportive and positive so that's like a really good sign so we're going to see where that goes because obviously UCL has lots of different buildings so if that were to take off that would be great. Another thing that we're kind of doing at the moment is the NUS runs like this campaign called Divest Invest which is all about trying to get universities to divest their investment portfolios out of fossil fuels and invest that into kind of positive community energy projects so that's at the moment I think kind of face outwards and not necessarily on universities themselves more just like community projects in the world but the ideal would be if we could kind of divest funds out of university investment portfolios from fossil fuels put it into kind of like local on the ground university based community energy projects I mean I don't know that would be quite hard but that would be great if we got there but anyway there's a really cool officer from the NUS called Laura who's currently doing that and so she and I are very much in conversation yes yes, yeah, yes We were involved with the campaign as well Yeah, so not SolasOS wasn't directly involved with it because Solas is very small many members are part of like lots of different things so yeah I think all of us were in some capacity part of the fossil free Solas campaign as are some of the other people here but that was basically Solas hasn't technically directly divested yet so they agreed to divest by 2018 so they haven't actually they just said that that was what they wanted to do they froze all new investments and agreed to be divested by 2018 Yeah we approached the university financial director quite diplomatically we told them that we were very we told them we didn't go full on very grotesque we approached them in a very civil manner we were very concerned about climate change can you tell us where Solas is invested and can we open a conversation on whether we can divest those funds away from fossil fuels and then we have them we put those reports on how funds that have divested from fossil fuels done pretty well in the last couple of years how exposure to more renewable energy doesn't lead to greater necessarily greater risks in the future and so it took our arguments on board pretty well it was just a lot of debates on how to manage that stuff because the university is contracted an investment firm to invest on behalf of the university and it wasn't very easy adding additional filters into funding I know so this no so this is completely separate we just happened to that was more sorry that's misleading I just put that picture on there because yeah sorry should have made that more explicit basically we just are beginnings when we are in lots of different energy environment related groups it's okay fossil free soas so we had two key representatives who dealt with them directly another key part of the process was that we actually did have an independent financial audit of what the impacts of divestment would be and the results of that said that there would be no negative impact on soas's funds potentially positive something like that and so that was very much key in convincing them eventually to agree to divest the reason we included that in this slide was that a couple of us were involved with that campaign as well and then afterwards okay great thing too now what we are talking about another long-term project and during those conversations soas was also also students to management we also had a UGM the first thing we did actually was have a UGM motion to demonstrate that there was kind of student support for this action and then from there we did all the other stuff yeah same with some of us as well important to get a student mandate cool yeah thanks for the question okay so in terms of just next steps what we're doing supporting kind of divestment projects and seeing if there are ways that we can link those up with community reinvestment is definitely something that we're doing so NUS is very involved with that they're actually like directly talking to Sheffield because Sheffield Students Union is really pushing for Sheffield to divest but also trying to link it up with putting that money into kind of community reinvestment so actually meeting with them tomorrow so we'll see kind of what the status is with that which is exciting a couple other things that we're doing right now we've actually just written a proposal for the GLA so that's the Greater London Authority who works with City Hall and the Mayor of London and basically we're trying to get them to include supporting University community energy as part of their solar action plan so when City Con ran to be Mayor one of his manifesto points was to have a solar action plan for London to kind of support developing solar projects but it was like a very vague plan and they're only right now kind of finalizing it so we've kind of written a proposal to them to include in that plan supporting University community energy because we think of that you know I think that would be quite like a buzzwordy positive project if it took off like you know this would be good there's lots of capacity we just need these kinds of funds in this way so hopefully they'll be like yeah and they'll be like great and then things will be happening so those are kind of some of the different things the last thing that we're kind of involved with is there's actually like a network called Community Energy London of loads of different projects across London at the moment like they're all happening independently and people are going through this process without you know heritage consent just all sorts of weird stuff that we had to go through that like we didn't know at all so like lots of different projects are doing that it would be great if we could actually work together and kind of skill share and not like duplicate work so we're trying to develop a kind of more concrete network and platform by which to do that so we're part of that conversation which is really exciting and we're meeting lots of cool organizations through that and yeah and just seeing like really positive kind of action across London so that's kind of the solar so our stuff I think we're going to throw it over to Izzy talk a little bit about herself so yeah with individual action I guess what Hannah was just saying about what we want to do is like streamline it and make sure that we're not all just doing little things that we could better do together coordinated so yeah as mentioned we're going to go through our journeys of individual action on climate change linking in with solar so as so solar so as wouldn't have existed and there wouldn't be this case study for reinvesting divested funds into renewables or case study for having community student driven renewables on campus there wouldn't be this case study if there hadn't been an individual that hadn't been an individual that kind of put the idea forward and then other individuals like Hannah as an individual we'd be like yeah yeah I'm going to spend my time on this I'm going to commit to doing all of these admin tasks and just learning as I go and it's only as individuals coming together that we've been able to make this change and now there are 114 solar panels that would not have been in existence otherwise so another aspect of individual action that I think is quite important everything but it can be important is careers so how do our careers affect climate change and the climate movement what can we do in terms of our skills and education that helps push forward this movement and I am now training to be a lawyer and I kind of got there but because of solar stars so quite early on we needed some free legal advice on what kind of social enterprise to set up us because there are some different legal structures and free legal advice is quite hard to come by but there was a firm called Simmons and Simmons in the city who mostly do commercial law but they also set up a charity that helps community energy and they do loads of great work with renewables and one of the partners there just agreed to meet us give us some advice and we're all quite impressed with the law firm and their work and so as I was in final year of Chinese I was thinking what do I do I'm going to graduate what do I do and I'd been previously applying to loads of wildlife conservation charities green charities sustainability officer stuff and getting nowhere Chinese degree isn't super relevant for those things and I didn't have environmental science but there is such a thing as a law conversion lots of people with languages go into law so I met up with that partner who gave us the free advice and they gave me loads of great advice I applied for a training contract with Simmons and Simmons that law firm so now they're funding me to study law and then I can work for them for two years as a trainee and get lots of experience in all sorts of things including working with renewables on the commercial contracting side as well learning about banking and finance at the inside of the system so it's good to have an understanding to change the system from the inside and then after that I'd like to specialise in environmental law more directly there are lots of really cool organisations like Klein Earth which is a charity with activist lawyers who do things like sue the UK government so first I'll start off by helping renewables and then maybe I can just like sue BPM Shell until they are destroyed so it's kind of start off gentle and then get a bit more antagonistic because yeah there's a time for both like we're saying how the fossil free and Solacea's approach is very kind of collaborative and when you approach with like a friendly proactive idea often there will be a good response but then on other levels sometimes it's fun to be a little bit more antagonistic like we also attended as Solacea's and as a university the huge climate march in London so you're kind of going from all angles so yeah one day working as an environmental lawyer would be cool and tying that into what I did at my time at SOAS but how many of you are at SOAS now or were at SOAS okay quite a few how many are at other universities also a few yeah so Hannah and I both studied Chinese and I guess because I'd always been interested in animals and wildlife conservation I tried to link that to my environmental interests by in second year in China on our year abroad I did my research project on changing Chinese attitudes towards wildlife and wildlife conservation and then when I came back in third year and we were just still doing loads more language tests and I thought like climate change is happening I should be learning about that doing something about that not just learning about different kind of sentence structures but yeah with any degree you can kind of tie it towards what you feel is more pressing so I took an optional module in environmental law which was really interesting and I was able to do my environmental law research essay on the role of NGOs in China in improving access to environmental justice so more of the kind of public interest litigation things where charities are suing local environmental bureaus or corporations that are going against like they're breaking the laws on pollution but with such a big country it's really hard for the central government to monitor accurately and actually make sure that the laws are being enforced so public interest litigation has a good role there and as well I did my dissertation on you could link it to climate change it's more broadly environmental but I did it on Chinese eco-cinema as a social and ecological critique of modernity on this documentary that followed an ethnic minority small tribe in the north of China in the forest where it's almost kind of like Siberian climate and they used to live of reindeer hunting and moose hunting and now their complete way of life has changed as a result of environmental change and yeah there's like massive rates of alcoholism of just like their lives falling apart because there was this really important human nature connection that has been affected by government policy, by poachers by wider changes that's kind of making everyone conform to one sort of system and enter capitalism whereas before they were quite self-sufficient and that is the case with lots of different small island nations and people around the world who had held on to what I think is really important the human nature connection and actually realising how our actions affect nature and how dependent we are on a healthy natural system and a healthy ecosystem sometimes it's easy to forget living in a city you can buy something and have no idea what happens then but yeah so round on my dissertation but yeah you can make even if you're doing something that's not related to climate change you can always link it because everything is linked to climate change in one way or another and it helps you in a dialogue oh yeah and I interned for a website that publishes bilingual Chinese English environmental news so it's working with the Chinese government and working with Chinese organisations and journalists on sharing information and sharing knowledge on like how different how things are changing, how laws are changing and how different people are bringing about different solutions so yeah so yeah individual action I guess that's one of the ways there's lots of important documentaries and stuff you can do Hannah talked about I was going to talk about flying and the other thing that Hannah and I did while we were at SOAS was we ran for environment officer of the student union which is a part time student position and we got it and together we were able to make a few changes at SOAS including selling loads of like keep cups like the reusable tea cups and reusable water bottles oh yeah subsidised and also raising awareness like we organised loads of talks like there was one from a UN senior professional who came to SOAS and talked about climate change in the Middle East and North Africa region I organised an interfaith dialogue so we had some Jane nuns, a Buddhist nun someone from a Christian charity, a Jewish climate campaigner that we know and someone Hare Krishna and a bunch of different people talk about actually if you look in kind of every religion there is something you can take that is useful and indicative of the importance of taking action and I recently met some people who got community solar panels up on a church the church of England is quite friendly towards community energy so even though it might seem hard to get planning permission having these solar panels on a roof of a church it's happened in north London other things that we did yeah that's about it really yeah and just individual action I think it's important to have a community even though individual actions suggest kind of doing things alone I was only able to get a lot of stuff done and I felt empowered to do things and make changes in my own life because I could see so many other people around me doing it and through the soas green group and solar soas I had a community of friends who also cared about this and we could all talk about our worries and learn things from each other and just having that network and that support base was really really helpful and as well you can achieve more when you work together so that's why we focus so much on community action in a talk on individual action and you can make a community out of anything really so yeah so now I'll pass on to Rob and what he's doing right so I'm working for a company called Abundance Investments we enable people to tackle climate change by allowing them to take their money out of fossil fuel investments other unethical investments and put it straight into the website effectively a funding website investments so people donate on their investment the responsibility managing people we enable people to do new energy projects as well we now allow to investments into it after as well so far friends and people get free hopefully by doing so we're democratising finance and maybe you can invest into funding new projects to overcome climate change and capital risk every investment carries risk so how did I get into this I first studied an undergraduate in national relations I really enjoyed myself but afterwards I did do with myself working as a public host in the French Alps and every time I hung over on the lifts I had some time to think to myself what I wanted to do with my future I did quite a bit of reading and I really really felt passionate about environmental issues and how they interact with loads of other social, environmental politics in helmets everybody's lives in general and so I found masters and so on climate policy a really good teacher I really enjoyed it and from academia I wanted to get active as well which is why I got involved with climate justice, IT also free so has and of course also other so has from solar so has having an experience developing my own project I came across this job role perfect so yeah so I I studied Chinese idealistic I hope to kind of develop a world obviously that whole thing basically in the first year my kind of view has become a lot more local when I was younger I was very much an international organization about like global level which I do think is kind of global policy but how I actually so that's an element in my thinking but like is the kind of community also different very very developed program and because value of the materials is so high that it means that that their income is to collect people's rubbish very diligently separated out and sell it on so while the value of those materials that's going to be policies and my dissertation is also on China's policies of the completed of years so actually in a way I don't want to say completely progressive people like to in terms of what I'm doing right now I've actually still or so has led me to get re-powering London Monday very new but re-powering London is all about setting up community so definitely would not have heard about this actually also just they got a job so all the big changes this week lots of things happening and definitely all very much linked to a couple of other things I just wanted to mention I'm working on a campaign 350.org called Divest Parliament and so this is working to try and get the attention from basically like a 600 which until very recently there was no information about what it was invested in at all several MPs have kind of asked them to just but very very recently they have this was like the top 20 so the campaign is trying to get that to change and the way in which we're doing that is we're trying to get on type their MPs a hey we've got this campaign for this campaign it's actually in the world in general there's quite an interesting relationship there's a lot of papers and pension funds at the moment people who save in a pension fund don't actually have it directly historically it's been a very separate way I think yeah I think it's interesting and that's the whole better we don't want our money invested in things that's why it happens the campaign is really interesting about 45-ish MPs I really strongly encourage you to check it out it's like that as a parliament it takes like one minute very effective way they have to respond to you if you're you have to include your address in your email it will have to respond and actually if you want to meet up with them if very few people know this it actually will have to step with you so for this campaign we did a very interesting training about how to I'll just speak to you about the ways in which to try and convince them and actually I think everyone should do this training in general for talking to anyone in authority because it was all about behaviors to expect so MPs or anyone in authority if they have to meet up with you will employ a lot of kind of like the conversation basically their goal is to like get to the end of it without actually promising so it was all about like how to keep it on time so trying to get yeah so anyway currently the check out that campaign because it's the last couple things I want to talk about one of them is about the cycling group that I am a part of it's called time to cycle and they're basically like a bike-tivism group so they do lots of cool things kind of at the moment as well they do a lot of tree planting bike rides where we cycle to Sari or wherever as a group which is a really fun group of cycling it's great if you've never done it but what you see is that especially we often play music so it's really good so we cycle to Sari plant some trees here take the beard to wear off cycle back but yeah it's really nice so if you're into the kind of environmental kind of small actions or whatever but that's another kind of like community based thing last thing I want to talk a bit more about was individual actions so I'm not going to say you know tell you about like the kind of typical things that people say a lot of them I did want to mention too which I think are a little less well known that's definitely very effective and one of them is about finding a rider in your home and wherever you're renting but does anybody do that here? yeah so there's definitely lots of potential there like I've seen I think whenever you move in you have to kind of set up that either kind of you know contacts me basically you take over what the existing rider or you can choose especially another one is whatever will be getting their energy provided by like the B6 electricity they also kind of operate they kind of control their a lot of other kind of independent riders will invest their money into them are also involved in like greenback so if you want to do this I highly recommend it it's so easy to do and then obviously it has that's it and it's also I think maybe cheaper you save money so it doesn't make any sense why you shouldn't do that and sometimes if you kind of will it is sometimes the website is called a helpful website for that is Green Energy Marketplace that compares all the different ones because there are quite a few now I think we all use different ones but then energy they're good at energy like good energy as well it's been far not too far away I'm without bold energy generation how does that work it's your responsibility to kind of set up the rider and probably when you move in for people who or at least inform them of they're going to have they charge you directly you don't have control once you just pay them that stuff won't work but if you most rent it go in and have to take the water bill in that process you can find out like oh we were previously it's very easy you just you make it from the new energy you provide you I want to switch to you for you though they sort of out with the older you really have to do those from if you have a project we don't know maybe mostly not I think if you're a new tenant MSc and or has a the previous tenants have contracted broken effectively you should write to start I'd just be here if you want I'll let you on after something I have agreed to about benefits I don't know about the green it's what I don't think that's what I often have very nice that was one thing that I wanted to green energy also the thing is like you're not actually directly using so that was one suggesting the other kind of thing that I wanted to mention actually I feel like I feel like flying is one of those elephants in the room always also yeah but the thing is actually only in the past few months one of those things I'm not talking about but it's such a so that flying and aviation and shipping either of those so that's crazy yeah so basically you know we know that we already think that the Paris climate tree is kind of like the base level that we can as in we need to it needs to be a lot kind of stricter than that but that's kind of what it is and also we're probably not going to achieve that but the thing is like all aviation emissions are going to be that and at the moment I think aviation is kind of 2 to 4% of our global carbon budget it's predicted to increase to 20% of our not our global carbon budget our carbon emissions at the moment it's 2 to 4% it's going to be 20% and that 20% is not being included in any kind of carbon emissions cutting targets so I think that the choice to not include aviation in any of the targets is I think every country wants to be a transport business travel hub of that and also I think it's awkward about which country it's not included so that's just like I don't really know how that's and also alternative fuels there's no way that you can kind of reduce the amount that's needed to keep a plane beyond as in you can't I've read about it a while ago so I can't but basically there's no way around it you need a certain amount of energy to keep that in the sky that produces a certain amount of energy and so we really need to kind of really strongly reassess our relationship to our individual relationship because the thing is if we are people who are involved in action but we fly a lot but yeah so I it's a really difficult one because I know that I know that people kind of are very interested in national lives but in terms of looking at like our personal carbon budget which I strongly suggest people do and kind of consider different aspects of their life but one kind of round trip, long haul flight almost your personal carbon budget is going to explode in one day pretty dire once you start looking at it so I strongly encourage you to consider it I recently decided that I would only take any of the songs for me but basically my mom lives in Hong Kong and I have to be there to see her so my personal pledge is to only do that one actually when I went to Marrakesh and when I came back I didn't fly I took six days traveling over Morocco to Spain and then I came from Santander to Portsmouth but yeah it kind of changes the emphasis of like what I don't know it changes the kind of dynamic of what it is a trip is you know it's not just about like I want to get to that really far away place and enjoy it there it's like the journey journey is half the fun so perhaps next time I go to Hong Kong I could take the San Siberian Railway that's an option but yeah so something to think about flying is a thing I really think that more needs to be emphasized on this point the brushed off is like kind of an awkward but it's there and it's going to continue to be flying is going to I heard that flying whatever it's going to be I don't want to say fact that are inaccurate alternative facts but yeah flying think about it so I'm not going to go into this in the interest of time just going to say that we've created a toolkit for other people to start a community energy project at their university or in their local area and we've got a PDF it's on our website at uni-solar.org you can download the PDF read through it it's got some just basically some key pointers to send you in the right direction we'll happily talk to you at the reception about it as well if you want but in the interest of time we're going to move on to the next bit Izzy so we talked to you about our own life our own environmentalism and now it's your turn so whoever is close to you or threes or just yeah find someone and ask you what their biggest source of carbon emissions is in their life might vary according to the kind I do need yeah so talk for a couple of minutes what's your name we're doing a very very very very very very very very very very What would they think are their largest emissions? I'd like to share. No pressure. All about pointing fingers, it's about colleagues or none of us. I'm Izzy and I took a lot of long haul flights of you. Which undoes the good work that I did by the end of the year. Buying that stuff and... Any other questions? Yeah, and actually I didn't mind. I was just reading about that and they were taking a flight and you could go direct or have a stop. It's a lot more emissions in the stop, which is shame because it's cheaper. It's just frustrating because the cost of it doesn't at all reflect the cost. I guess it's technically like the thing behind how the cost is. Because at the moment it means that your kind of, you know, reality is like a lot of people. Anybody else? And I mean, I've never heard what happened. And I mean, I could probably, yeah. But I think also it's like... I mean, and I guess one of the things I've made is just study abroad. Because you're going to, I mean, the family lives in Denmark. Not respect. That's such a negative. Also the kind of thing that's a very small size. But will be 20% of the carbon budget. The Green Party actually is a very interesting tax idea of like, tax flying. But to have it not be just like a blanket tax, but instead the more you fly, the bigger the tax gets to try and kind of disincentivise the people. Okay, I can't talk about it. Thank you. This is a really good model. We're basically doing all the research. Very, very small percent of the UK population is a large number of the flights. So it will be the people who, 15% of the UK population takes 70% of the flight. And to check to those aren't business-type. So just people going to their holiday home every several times a day. So, yeah, so you can have a large tax on people like that and a small tax on someone. Once every few years. The next thing we wanted to do very quickly, was to have people partner up again. Want to discuss what do you think are your best opportunities to mitigate your, how can you make changes in your life? Okay. What is attention again? Sorry, if you were solving all the world's problems. Does anybody want to raise some examples of what they think are the biggest things I think? The biggest album in the room. This is the one that has letters. They love to. It's mass attention. Whatever else you don't do. Affirmative. And it's what we can do beyond organizing and raising awareness of what's going on. It's all for people who actually are not necessarily environmental. So, I mean, I'm probably everyone in this room. Ethnic or old-slave or whatever. But I'm from Greece and I've been here for two years and I have witnessed this. Intensive process of vilifying Jeremy Corbyn. I've not even involved that much in UK politics, but it's blatantly obvious that there's this elite majority and minority people who are trying to influence the way society works. So, beyond just going vegan and flying less and you know what? Speaking up and... Yeah, exactly, and organizing. That's why I fully support what you're doing guys. We can individually go vegan, but it's not really going to make a difference. The difference is going to come when we actually are organizing. Very good point, yeah. Take our power. Generative. Or other small. Also, not black and white. Maybe steps. Sometimes. Maybe steps. Also, I don't really love the kind of stuff. But yeah, absolutely. The rules are going to change. I do think it's important to have action on every level. So, it's like three things. Like voting. Also, have it implemented that on your own. Anybody else? Guys in the back, any ideas? Actually... Sometimes it seems very daunting, but it's always very, very quick and easy. Ultimately. Okay. What's that for? I e-mult my effort of a diet. I'll show you. So, I think this is an effort. I don't know if you're happy with that. So, they have particular... kind of things. So, we actually have a whole... box of ways of doing it. Last, whatever it is that they're doing. They learn to all the potential. All the responses that we've had so far. We've kind of, like, anticipated. Yeah, it's also good if you do... Please, like, there's a way to also let us know that you've done that, so that we can actually progress it. The statuses of... Okay. The floor is open. The floor is open. Thank you. So, we actually won. So, the first question was, how to reach people that are already current? Yeah, I guess this is something that... we've also even thought about in terms of, like, when we were an environment officer and had events, same people would come in. If we have a film screening about documentary about climate change, it's the same. Why? You care about climate change. So, yeah, I'd say it's a very difficult question. I know, um, it's likely essential, but recently, this really interesting documentary... or sorry, mockumentary came out called Carnage, which is a really, really funny movie set in a, like, utopian future, in 1067, when everyone's vegan, but they don't call it vegan anymore. That's just the normal. They instead look back to the past when people were carnists. And it's a kind of a really funny take on looking at how people's perceptions have changed. It's all about, I think they're kind of talking... people kind of confess to having been carnists or to having, kind of, eaten animals and being counseling kids. Yeah, so that kind of thing where it's, like, quite accessible and, like, really funny, it's just a funny movie. They're trying to kind of pull people in in different ways that aren't quite, like, dramatic or... Yeah, or, like, trying to kind of push a message down people's throats, because the second people can tell that you're doing that and you switch off. I think the key thing is to frame it in the way that they want it and in the way that it affects them, especially for the younger generation. They're, like, going to go for a walk with their family and puts it in nature. I frame it in such a way that I don't have as much... and this is what you feel about it. Basically, framing the message in a way that engages them and feels passionate about it as well. I'm going to... because I think I have to read quite a few things. So, a couple of answers. There's an organisation called Climate Can't Reach. There's a lot of research on this and they brought out this report on how to talk about climate change to people. The minute it's kind of seen more as, like, a left issue, but it affects everyone, regardless of your political views. So it's, like, right. So we found that it was effective engaging people who were sufficiently conservative by talking about waste and, like, how to reduce waste, which is doing things the most efficient way possible. I personally think that's a bit frustrating and I think it involves a bit of a bigger picture. I'm really kind of asking people on an individual and a group level if they're just following the status quo and doing what is accepted by society, like, what do you want from life? What do you want out of your life? What actually matters to you? And how happy can you ever be so that there are people suffering in other parts of the world? How safe will you ever be? Climate change is happening and, like, getting rich and buying all this stuff and having a comfortable home. Is that what, like, what is important? And then people will kind of naturally reconnect with themselves and, like, is more sustainable? I think that argument nature is, sorry, okay. No, I was just saying... Yeah, no, I don't think, like, human nature is real or terrible. I want to screw everyone over before a planet. I think if we actually connect to our human nature, then we can definitely get defensive and not want to make changes, not want to age on climate action. But realize that it is important to them. That's effectively one of the reasons for us to show people that the issue is real, we're acting the issue and we've got something to show for it. We've got solar panels up on the roof and now we're reducing it. I guess it depends kind of the specifics. What would be, like, an impact? Act? It would be fun to kind of, like, take, you know, the nice thing about solar panels is that they're physical and you can see them. They have energy tours where we can see them and they're shiny. So, yeah, I don't know the specifics. There's big specifics. Like a local garden, object. Yeah, focusing on, like, um, it's a research agenda. There's only a few people who do respond to doom and gloom and statistics. I do, but a lot of people I talk to don't want to hear that. I mean, it works at 10. I never talk about the polar bears. I don't want to hear about the polar bears instead talk about the other people around their schools or it kind of changes it and more direct to, like, people. I was attracted by what appropriate for our region and the initials that we've been into now. I've yet to know. I've been interested in the initials and the solitude for the year-round. Because they can't do that. For year-round. Okay. We don't have much time to have a full presentation now. We very much agree. In our tool kit as well. We focused on solar because that's a feasible project that we could do. For us, we couldn't. We can't install a wind turbine here. For us, we have some access to it. So we can't do tidal energy here. But in our tool kit, we help people identify what's the most feasible thing. For example, some universities will be countryside next to them where they can put a wind turbine. Some might be all river where they can make hydro technology and some other universities outside the UK. So, I think that's one of the things we help people with. I'll suggest there is a solution all over the UK. We also think it's important for other explorations in the wind or onshore wind. It's a kind of national project. I was really interested to hear about it, perhaps, at the... Do we have time for more questions? Yeah, so we just have one or two questions. We'll be seeing them as we have. I'll put the conversation. Anyone else has any kind of projects? There is research going into it. I'll see. But moment as far as I'm aware, some biofuels have been made history, I think. Biofuels biofuels also have words. On how you... the time being, there's no actually questions. I went to a presentation by the international civil they had a very flashy presentation on all the research they're doing into biofuels and these really big targets. Basically, I think them as an organization have a target of having carbon emissions from aviation by 2050 by 50% on 2000... Some kind of complicated thing, which actually is impossible unless they were... As we were saying, the rate of growth of aviation from now to 2050 is such that if you were to achieve 50% reduction on carbon emissions based on this level of aviation, you have to have a fuel efficiency of 90%. I don't know the exact figures, but it's basically impossible, especially given that fuel efficiency gains that can be made very, very small. I actually think that them saying that they have this goal and them saying that they're doing research into biofuels is in effect greenwashing because they have this goal, people are like oh, it's okay and the flying is okay, we can all fly because we've got this goal. There's no way we're going to achieve that goal so actually we really need to re-examine our flying. To answer your question, I think there is research going into it, but I really I'm personally very confident in it. Definitely do more reading on it and like I said, I think this is an issue that we need to talk about a lot more about. Great, yeah. No, let's go.