I attended the launch of the Maidstone Friends of the Earth group last night. The event, set up thanks to the work of Rob Callaghan, was attended by about 12 people - which is relatively good for this type of meeting in Maidstone.
Rob had arranged three speakers, first up was Geoff Meaden of the Kingsnorth trial fame. Geoff talk about the effect of sea level rises on Kent, paying particular attention to Romney Marsh, Thanet and Seasalter.
Next was Hilary Newport of CPRE. Frustratingly for Hilary, her presentation was set up to cover the same topic, although she managed to get other information and a slightly different perspective into her talk. Hilary talked about how CPRE lobbied councils and government.
Finally, Matt Sellwood spoke as the FOE local groups coordinator for the south east. He also talked about the lobbying work of FOE.
After both had shown slides of Romney Marsh disappearing under the sea, I asked Hilary and Geoff about the two nuclear power stations that are on the far tip of the marsh. Apparently there is already a continuous job of shifting shingle to protect the stations from the sea. I asked a supplementary question about whether it would be wize to build a third nuke on the site as it gets consumed by the waves.
Green Party campaigner in Kent. Also a nurse, academic, former manager, writer, Druid, husband and father...
2 comments:
Thanks for the post, Stuart!
You mentioned a figure for the number of people dying because of climate change every year I think last night. Something like 160,000? I'd like to use that statistic, where is it from?
150,000 deaths in 2000, according to a report by the World Health Organization.
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