We love this story as, unlike what we just ran on a large scale--country--level, this is a local community committing to cutting emissions and helping to restore our ecological balance. Think if we did this in thousands of cities and towns?
English Village Becomes Climate Leader by Quietly Cleaning Up Its Own Patch
ASHTON HAYES, England — This small village of about 1,000 people looks like any other nestled in the countryside.
But Ashton Hayes is different in an important way when it comes to one of the world’s most pressing issues: climate change.
Hundreds of residents have banded together to cut greenhouse emissions —
they use clotheslines instead of dryers, take fewer flights, install
solar panels and glaze windows to better insulate their homes.
The
effort, reaching its 10th anniversary this year, has led to a 24
percent cut in emissions, according to surveys by a professor of
environmental sustainability who lives here.
But
what makes Ashton Hayes unusual is its approach — the residents have
done it themselves, without prodding from government. About 200 towns,
cities and counties around the world — including Notteroy, Norway; Upper
Saddle River, N.J.; and Changhua County, Taiwan — have reached out to
learn how the villagers here did it.
As
climate science has become more accepted, and the effects of a warming
planet are becoming increasingly clear, Ashton Hayes is a case study for
the next phase of battling climate change: getting people to change
their habits.
“We
just think everyone should try to clean up their patch,” said Rosemary
Dossett, a resident of the village. “And rather than going out and
shouting about it, we just do it.”
One
of their secrets, it seems, is that the people of Ashton Hayes feel in
charge, rather than following government policies. When the member of
Parliament who represents the village showed up at their first public
meeting in January 2006, he was told he could not make any speeches.
“We
said, ‘This is not about you tonight, this is about us, and you can
listen to what we’ve got to say for a change,’” said Kate Harrison, a
resident and early member of the group.
No
politician has been allowed to address the group since. The village has
kept the effort separate from party politics, which residents thought
would only divide them along ideological lines.
The
project was started by Garry Charnock, a former journalist who trained
as a hydrologist and has lived in the village for about 30 years. He got
the idea a little more than a decade ago after attending a lecture
about climate change at the Hay Festival, an annual literary gathering
in Wales. He decided to try to get Ashton Hayes to become, as he put it,
“Britain’s first carbon-neutral village.”
“But even if we don’t,” he recalls thinking at the time, “let’s try to have a little fun.”
Sometimes,
efforts to reduce greenhouse gases involve guilt-tripping or doomsday
scenarios that make people feel as if the problem is too overwhelming to
tackle.
In
Ashton Hayes — about 25 miles southeast of Liverpool, with a
19th-century Anglican church and a community-owned shop that doubles as a
post office — the villagers have lightened the mood.
They
hold public wine-and-cheese meetings in the biggest houses in town, “so
everyone can have a look around,” and see how the wealthier people
live, said Mr. Charnock, the executive director of RSK, an environmental
consulting company. “We don’t ever finger-wag in Ashton Hayes.”
About
650 people — more than half of the village’s residents — showed up to
the first meeting, Mr. Charnock said. Some in the village were less
keen, but little by little, they began to participate.
Some
have gone further. When they were looking to build their
energy-efficient home and heard about Ashton Hayes’s carbon-neutral
project, Ms. Dossett and her husband, Ian, thought it might be the
perfect village for them.
They
moved from nearby South Warrington and found two old farm cottages,
which they converted into a two-story brick house, and installed huge
triple-glazed windows, photovoltaic cells on the roof, a geothermal heat pump that heats the home and its water, and an underground cistern to hold rainwater for toilets and the garden.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to think we live in a mud hut,” Ms. Dossett said, sitting on a couch in her warm, well-lit living room.
The
Dossetts also have a vegetable garden, grow grapes for wine, brew beer
and keep two cows, which mow the lawn and may also eventually become
food in a few years. They pay about 500 pounds (about $650) a year for
electricity and heating.
The
success of the carbon-neutral project seems to have inspired other
community efforts in Ashton Hayes. The residents, for example, have
built a new playing field with a solar-powered pavilion, which is the
home of a community cafe three days a week. They have also put
photovoltaic solar panels on the roof of the primary school.
Other
towns and cities around the world hope to copy Ashton Hayes. Their
representatives have contacted the project’s leaders, asking for help in
setting up similar initiatives, according to the diary the Ashton Hayes
group keeps about the project, chronicling almost everything they have
done over the past 10 years.
Eden
Mills, a small community in Ontario, Canada, is one of them. Charles
Simon traveled to Ashton Hayes in 2007 to learn how to translate their
approach to his town, adopting the apolitical, voluntary, fun method.
“Some of the changes are so easy,” Mr. Simon said. “Just put on a sweater instead of turning on the heat.”
Eden
Mills has cut emissions by about 14 percent, Mr. Simon said, and has
plans to do more. Residents have been working with experts from the
nearby University of Guelph, planting trees in the village forest to
help absorb the carbon dioxide the town emits, Mr. Simon said.
Janet
Gullvaag, a councilwoman in Notteroy, Norway, an island municipality of
about 21,000 people, reached out to Ashton Hayes about nine years ago
after her political party decided to include reducing carbon dioxide
emissions in its platform.
“I
think that the idea that Ashton Hayes had — to make caring for the
environment fun, without pointing fingers — was quite revolutionary,”
Ms. Gullvaag said.
Though
her community’s approach is decidedly more political, Ms. Gullvaag said
that adopting Ashton Hayes’s mantra of fun had paid dividends: She has
seen changes in her community, she said, as people buy more electric cars and bicycles, and convert their home heating from oil to more environmentally friendly sources.
“Whatever
you’re trying to do, if you can create enthusiasm and spread knowledge,
normally, people will react in a positive way,” she added.
Though
deep cuts across the globe are still required to make broader progress,
actions to reduce emissions, even by small towns, are a step in the
right direction, say experts who study community action on climate
change.
“The
community-building element of all this has been as important as the
environmental impact so far,” said Sarah Darby, a researcher at Oxford
University’s Environmental Change Institute.
She
added that Ashton Hayes was in a good position to take on these kinds
of projects — it is a small village of well-off and well-educated
people, so simply taking fewer flights each year can have a big effect.
Residents
were able to cut emissions by about 20 percent in the first year alone,
according to surveys used to calculate carbon footprints that were
developed by Roy Alexander, a local professor, and his students.
Some
have had even more significant reductions: Households that participated
in surveys in both the first and 10th years shrank their energy use by
about 40 percent.
Mr.
Charnock said he thought the village could get the cuts in its 2006
carbon footprint to 80 percent in the next few years with the help of
grant money to buy and install solar panels on the local school and
other buildings.
The
next thing they have to do, he said, is to get the county government to
be as committed to cutting emissions as Ashton Hayes is.
“There’s so much apathy,” Mr. Charnock said. “We need to squeeze that layer of apathy jelly and get it out.”
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