Saturday 26
10.30 – 11.00 : Fair Trade Breakfast
With tea/coffee and all the papers plus alternative and green magazines and journals
11.00 – 12.00 : D.I.Y. Climate Change Education: Find out what you want to know about climate change!
With Lorraine Macaulay, Switch On to Climate Change Project Offer from SEAD.
There is a lot of information out there on climate change, but what is it that you want to know? Come and take part in lively discussions, be a critic for various short films communicating climate change and be inspired by stories of what groups around Scotland, the UK and the world are doing themselves to tackle climate change at all levels.
The Switch On to Climate Change project is the first of its kind in Scotland!! It is innovative and based on popular education techniques. We work to support groups around Scotland who want to develop community-led responses to tackle climate change, but unsure where to begin. We work to network empowered communities tackling climate change through positive social change. Come join us for what promises to be a lively positive morning event!!
12.10 – 2.00 : Welcome to Saudi Arabia
Scotland has been described a the ‘Saudi Arabia of Renewable Energy’. How do we fulfil that potential and become a zero carbon nation?
Panel on Energy with: David McGrath (ReGenTech), Duncan McLaren (Director, Friends of the Earth) Elaine Morrison (Solar Cities, Dundee) Andrew Lyell (RD Energy), Stephen Salter (Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design, School of Engineering and Electronics, University of Edinburgh)
2.10 – 3.10 : Death by Consumption
Afternoon Lecture: with Alastair McIntosh on his new book Hell and High Water, Climate Change and the Human Condition. McIntosh reveals the psycho-history of modern consumerism. He shows how we have fallen prey to a numbing culture of violence and the motivational manipulation of marketing.
3.15 – 4.15 : Kyoto and Me. Global Climate Talks and Local Activism with Daniel Mittler
“Get out of the way” said Papua New Guinea to the United States at the last climate negotiations in Bali last December. And, in a dramatic turn-around, the US did. A new round of climate talks was launched – and needs to deliver a treaty building on the Kyoto Protocol by 2009. Some dramatic TV moments aside, the world of the global climate negotiations is distant, strange – and only fun for lawyers. So what is it like to be part of this circus? And what does my life have to do with it all? Can I do anything to help deliver an action plan to save the planet at the climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009?
Daniel is a Political Advisor to Greenpeace International based in Berlin. He has lead Greenpeace’s work on trade since 2004 and has been active on the international climate negotiations and the G8. Prior to joining Greenpeace, Daniel Mittler was Head of International Campaigns at BUND – Friends of the Earth Germany for four years. From 2000-2002, he was also Earth Summit coordinator for Friends of the Earth International. Daniel Mittler is one of the founders of the McPlanet.com conferences, which happen biannually and are the biggest event in Germany dealing with globalization and environment issues.
4.20 – 5.00 : Croftwork - Eric Mcleod talks on his new book ‘Kerracher Man’ (Sandstone Press)
Eric Macleod looked across the loch at the forlorn wreck of his family’s croft. ‘How would you like to live there?’ he asks his wife Ruth. He doesn’t expect her instant reply - ‘I would love to.’ Come and hear his story.
5.15 – 7.45 : The Who What Where and Why of Transition
Communities around the world are getting motivated to tackle climate change and peak oil by using the Transition model. Transition offers a framework for communities to look at all the things they need to support themselves and thrive, and devlelop a plan for how they want to move towards a more local, sustainable and rewarding future. Eva Schonveld and Nick Wilding are your hosts for this session where you can find out more about how the model works, hear about what’s already happening in Scotland and further afield, and think about what it might take to take your community into Transition.
Nick Wilding has recently joined Carnegie UK Trust as facilitator for the UK and Ireland ‘fiery spirits’ rural community of practice. He is also Chair of the Centre for Human Ecology (www.che.ac.uk) and lives in the woods in Falkland.
8.00 – 8.30 : Transition Reception: Perthshire Wine & Pittenweem Cheese
Sunday 27
10.30 – 11.00 : Fair Trade Breakfast
With tea and coffee and all the papers plus alternative and green magazines and journals
11.00 – 12.50 : Eat Your Greens - Panel on Food
Steve Brogan on Organicopos (Cuban Urban Allotments), Mike Small (Fife Diet) A Local Eating Experiment, Ellen McCance (WECAN - Food for Fife) on Rebuilding a Regional Food Culture.
Steve Brogan is a Phd researcher at Dundee University’s Natural Design Group. He recently travelled to Cuba to study their organic urban allotment schemes.
Mike Small studied with Murray Bookchin at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont. He is co-ordinator of the Fife Diet, the co-editor of Bella Caledonia, the programme director of the Big Tent Festival and writes a column for the Guardian.
Ellen McCance is the head of WECAN – which stands for Working for Environmental Community Action Now! She has a special focus on Food for Fife, a project which supports local community groups in establishing new food initiatives which are aimed at tackling inequalities in diet and health.
John McAllion former MP, MSP, on ‘Scotland a Fair Trade Nation’ - setting a national standard for fair and ethical trading relationships in a global market.
Chaired by Donald Reid, convivium leader of Slow Food Edinburgh.
1.00 – 2.00 : Feeding People is Easy - Lunchtime Lecture: Colin Tudge
If we designed agriculture specifically to feed people then we could feed everyone who is ever liable to be born on to this Earth to the highest standards both of nutrition and of gastronomy. Common sense farming based on sound biology would produce plenty of crop plants; some meat — but not much; and enormous variety (because for long-term sustainability we need to balance different crops and animals against each other). The result – “plenty of plants, not much meat, and maximum variety” – summarizes the nutritional theory of the past 30 years and is also the basis of the world’s greatest cooking. So good farming, sound nutrition, and great gastronomy go perfectly together. So we don’t even need to be austere. In truth, “The future belongs to the gourmet”.
But agriculture nowadays is not designed to feed people. It is designed to make as much money as possible in the shortest time. That is a quite different ambition, and one that is bound to produce starvation on the one hand and excess on the other. Which it does.
Colin Tudge is a biologist by education and has spent the past 40 years writing about evolution, genetics, conservation, trees and birds – and also about food and agriculture. In his latest published book, Feeding People is Easy, he shows how with the right principles we could solve all the world’s food problems for ever more.
2.15 – 3.50 : Big Green Carbon-Sucking Machines: Reforesting Scotland and Climate Change
With Ian Edwards (Royal Botanic Garden, Director of Reforesting Scotland). Climate Change is all already with us and it is too late to put the monster back in its cage. We must learn to adapt to changing environmental conditions and seek natural remedies for an ailing planet. Increasing our woodland cover and nurturing a forest-based culture that appreciates the value and beauty of carbon stored as furniture, buildings and living landscapes, is critical for our future.
4.00 – 5.30 : Skilling Up for Power Down - Learning to Transition to Resilient Communities - Davie Philip
Almost every time we switch on a TV or open a newspaper these days, we see or hear something about the negative impacts of climate change or the high price of fossil energy. So how should we respond to these issues? The Cultivate Living and Learning Centre in Dublin, Ireland believe this is an opportunity to make changes that could improve our quality of life. In this up-beat and positive presentation using short films and animations Davie Philip, Cultivate’s education manager, will explore creative initiatives to facilitate the transition to a low carbon society. This presentation will be followed by a scenario planning exercise that will engage participants in visioning a future that works.
Davie Philip is the Education Manager at the Cultivate Centre for sustainable living and learning in Dublin. He was a founding member of FEASTA: the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability and Sustainable Projects Ireland LTD In May 2005 he was an NGO adviser to the Irish government at the UN Commission for Sustainable Development conference in New York.
5.30 – 7.30 : Reasons to be Fearful, Reasons to be Hopeful – Launching the Holyrood 350 campaign
With Justin Kenrick and others.
The Arctic is predicted to be free of ice and absorbing rather than reflecting sunlight by 2013; meanwhile emissions in Scotland rose 8% in 2006. In tackling climate change, there is a massive gap between the ‘absolutely necessary’ (immediate action to reduce emissions from 387ppm to 350ppm) and the ‘politically possible’ (negotiations seeking stabilisation at 450ppm by 2050 while climate change accelerates). What to do?!
Looking ahead radical social change looks impossible; looking back it often appears inevitable. By responding to the broader realities that conventional politics effectively ignores, and by building alliances between those marginalised by that politics, social change movements can become the majority and the ‘impossible’ happen. The broader reality today is an economic system which is globally unravelling the ecological and social fabric to fuel unsustainable affluence for some, unbearable impoverishment for most, and accelerating climate change for all. How do we build a majority political movement to tackle the causes of climate change at the state level, and to ensure the state supports rather than impedes community initiatives and international negotiations? After a presentation, there will be the chance for small and large group discussions that can bring together the different strands of what promises to be an extraordinary – and potentially catalytic – weekend of rethinking and reskilling ourselves to make this a world we can delight in not deplore.
Justin Kenrick is a social anthropologist who works for indigenous peoples rights in Africa, chairs the Portobello transition town initiative, has been facilitating informal dialogue between socialists and greens on tackling climate change, and runs an activist MSc in ‘Global Movements, Social Justice and Sustainability’ at Glasgow University.
7.30 – 8.30 : Transition Reception: Perthshire Wine & Pittenweem Cheese
Please remember that adults must be responsible for their children at all times. Children will get their own special Big Tent stickers on entry with room for your mobile number just in case you get separated.
Using recycled cardboard playhouses, dens and tipis we will create the village of Big Tent. Children are invited to decorate and paint the village using Eco Paints and their imagination. Once dry, let’s play!
some planting of your own.
Join the puppeteers and storytellers from Flotsam and Jetsam for an hour in their wonderful storytelling / puppet-making tent. Come and listen to stories, make a puppet and take it on an enchanted journey to the well at the edge of the world. At the end of each workshop we will put on an instant puppet show based on an old Scottish folktale. This is a family workshop suitable for children 4 and up, and their adults.
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