Holyrood 350 consists of people from across Scotland who are actively working to reduce their communities carbon footprint. We are responding to the message of top climate scientists that CO2 in the atmosphere must be reduced from the current 387ppm to below 350, to avoid a rise of 2 degrees and catastrophic climate change.
We ask the Scottish Government to take the lead in the race out of carbon, by enabling all communities to make the transition resilience. By doing so Scotland can demonstrate to the world how rising to the challenge of climate change can enrich rather than impoverish us.
A sketch of our draft Resilience Strategy for Scotland is here. (Older background documents relating to our proposed policy framework can be found on this home page).
HOLYROOD 350 is currently co-ordinated by: Justin Kenrick PEDAL Portobello, Andy Ross Glasgow CRAG, Mike Small Fife Diet, Lucy Conway Isle of Eigg, Eva Schonveld PEDAL Portobello, Rachel Nunn Going Carbon Neutral Stirling, Nick Wilding Falkland Transition, Jonathan Dawson Findhorn Ecovillage, John Riley Carbon Neutral Biggar Jane Grey Let’s Live Local, Abi Morden Urban Roots Glasgow, Alan Drever Sleat, Isle of Skye, Alan Brown Linlithgow Climate Challenge
Holyrood 350 — Recent Events
Parachuting off the Energy Cliff: Securing Holyrood Support for Community Resilience — June 5th 2010
On Saturday June 5th 2010 at the Renfield Centre, Glasgow, we held this ‘internal’ H350 event focusing on the energy cliff, economic livelihoods, and how to enable MSPs to build on the success of the Climate Challenge Fund and Scotland’s excellent climate change targets, in the context of Global failure at Copenhagen, the economic crash (our experience of the energy crisis), and the changing political landscape in Scotland and the UK.
Kicking off with presentations on energy (Andy Ross), livelihoods (Justin Kenrick) and politics (Mike Small) we collectively, realistically and imaginatively sought to arrive at a clear picture of how communities and their politicians can work together to effectively and strategically build on what climate active communities have been working so hard to achieve, and to ensure that the kinds of communities CCF Mark 1 has had less success in reaching can be supported in moving towards resilience. An outline of the structure of the event can be found here. We aim to have a ‘Public’ meeting back in the Scottish Parliament in the Autumn to take this back to the politicians in the build up to the May 2011 election.
Scotland’s Civil Society Summit — 18th February 2010
The Holyrood 350 analysis and proposals were presented by Justin Kenrick — alongside Chris Martensen’s analysis of the looming energy and economic crash — as part of Scotland’s Civil Society Summit on Thursday 18th February in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.
Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability — 25th February 2010
Our analysis and proposals were also presented by Andy Ross on Thursday 25th February as part of the evening that kicked off the FEASTA (Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability) conference in Forres. Andy also reports that a version of one of the 4 key solutions to climate change proposed by Holyrood 350 has been taken up by senior figures in American politics. It is a version of ‘Cap and Share’ called ‘Cap and Dividend’ (see right hand column for explanation of how this system works to rapidly and fairly wean a carbon-obese society off fossil fuels).
A Range of Responses to Copenhagen here
The Story of Cap and Trade
Although they sound similar, Cap and Trade is entirely different to Cap and Share:
CAP and SHARE (see right hand column) is a system which can be used to CAP (to limit and dramatically reduce the carbon coming into the country in line with the science), and to SHARE (to distribute the revenue raised to ensure people have the money to cope with the increased price in all goods and services which have carbon content).
In contrast, CAP and TRADE (the EU response to climate change, and the approach proposed at Copenhagen) simply enables business as usual (soaring emissions, soaring fuel prices and soaring profits for the heavy emitters) to continue. See this superb 20 minute cartoon explanation of how Cap and Trade works: The Story of Cap and Trade
Reflections on Holyrood 350’s Event in the Scottish Parliament
… on September 2009 can be found here. Reflecting on what a community approach to politics might look like.
… and finally: click here for a comment on the scariness of Kevin Anderson’s ‘Optimistic’ Scenario
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