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Amazing Ashdens
Posted by: Doug Stewart
Having met a previous Ashden award winner in India last year I was very excited to get my hands on tickets for this year’s event. As ever it was a feast of positivity and inspiration. There were eco spies in schools that would put most of us to shame as far as commitment and engagement are concerned. There was a faceoff between eco techno masters Dulas and Kensa engineering. Arun district council and Leeds city council showed that changing attitudes to energy efficiency is possible and has created many wonderful extra benefits.
Then came the really powerful stuff, international efforts that are truly amazing. Again they all demonstrated that improvements in energy provision whether, solar panels or efficient stoves, not only provided environmentally friendly power but also improved quality of life on so many levels. It was also impressive to see how well many of these projects were scaling up, making me think that the common cop out of ,’what’s the point in us doing anything as our saving will be lost to 3rd world emissions’, is a rubbish attitude. Witnessing such amazing entrepreneurial spirit and success was truly heart warming and inspiring.
Another interesting moment was hearing former Government Chief Scientific Advisor Sir David King talk about how vastly estimates for the melting of Arctic sea ice were changing. The early predictions said maybe by the end of the century, then the worst case scenario was mid centaury. We are now looking at 8-10 years and this estimate appears to be shortening all the time. Still the doom and gloom side was softened by the still lovely Anna Ford.
The favourite quote from the evening was one that origionaly came from the founder of Opec when asked when the age of oil would end. His reply was, 'the stone age didn't end because they ran out of stones'.
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