Who Are We?

robinsmith3

website team CRAGger Islington Leeds Wokingham WSP

Where do I start? Well I realised the climate was a problem after exploring the global energy production and consumption balance and realising it was doomed unless we made radical changes. This was a couple of years back. I found the CRAG network while surfing on personal carbon allowances and bingo, it was ideal as a way to take action as an individual. I’ve made some pretty radical changes to my lifestyle, not to be a climate hero, but more to experiment on and get valuable output from, what its really like living low carbon. Measures taken so far include:

• Car not used since beginning of Dec 06, cycle and train everywhere
• Trialling life on the minimum wage (rationing claims to be socially and fiscally progressive so…)
• Adoption of hard nosed energy efficiency measures in the home without any costly green investment
• Career transition from high carbon IT into development of low carbon technologies and programmes
• Seeking political election so far at a local level, leading on climate of course (thats tough!)

Output so far has been pretty compelling. Drop me an email if you want to find out more

Cheers and good luck

A question, I’m often asking myself, but we’ll go into that at a later date. In terms of the Group, I’m the guy from Wokingham District Council who facilitates the meetings. My role at the council is to encourage everybody (individuals, businesses, schools and even the Council) to lead a ‘Greener life’, something that I am VERY passionate about !! I’m trying to do this in any way I can, but the mainstay of my work is with schools, individuals, planners / developers and increasingly community groups.
I am currently attending the CRAG with a view to monitoring developments initially, but i’m keen for the council to become more involved. I think that once the numbers of individuals attending meetings on a regular basis exceeds fifty (consistently over the course of three or four consecutive meetings) we will have more than enough demand upon the council for support for what we are trying to achieve. So (for that reason) my challenge is clear. I’m trying to encourage significant numbers of the community to be involved in this over a period of time and to ensure that the group has a clear constituition with established goals, aims and objectives. I’ve been overly impressed by what i’ve seen so far, its really encouraging to see that the environmental agenda is becoming an important concern for many of you BUT,.... we still need to keep the group growing and we need to make sure that we are all committed. I know I haven’t been too vocal at meetings, but I do have to be a bit careful – my remit is to ‘monitor’ with a view to potential future involvement, HOWEVER – I’d like to turn this on its head, how do all of you feel about getting the group formalised and up and fully operational and then all of us (as a collective community group) asking for the councils assistance towards a community focused environmental project of some description ? Lets see just how commited to ‘Green Issues’ the council is shall we ? Keep it going folks, you may not realise but you are part of a MAJOR environmental initiative and we do have the power to affect future decisions on ‘Green issues’ we just need a bit more focus and effort. CHEERS – Ian Gough

I’m a family man, living and working in Crowthorne/Camberley, and I’m keen to ensure that my children and others still have an environment to enjoy in the future. My background is electrical engineering (power engineering to be precise – transmision lines, distribution networks to provide 247 electrical energy) and it’s something I’ve been involved with for the last 20yrs both national and internationally. However, the effects of electricity generation and the burning of fossil fuels have to meet thirsty modern day needs concerns me, and we all know there is only so much the environment can take. I hoping this workshop will help me understand the issues, and allow my family to enjoy life and the environment with reduced carbon.