Welcome to the home page of Friends of the Earth: Inverness and Ross.

Meetings

We meet on the last Tuesday of every month at 6:15pm
All welcome

Leakey's Bookshop, Church St, Inverness

Film shows Age of Stupid, Croy Hall 20th March 7.30

North Kessock Community Market
Last Saturday of every months at the village hall. Swap your stuff stall
Culbokie Market 3rd Saturday. Findon Hall. Swap your stuff stall.

See our calender and Announcements section for details of events coming up.

Messages on Bottles Support Climate Justice Demo
on 14th November-see slideshow;

We had 100 signatures to the petition to Gordon Brown demanding climate justice.

Shoppers in Inverness were encouraged to send a message in a bottle to world leaders at the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen.  Danny Alexander MP came along with his family to join others in the community on Saturday 14^th November, putting their advice in writing on plastic bottles. These were attached to a giant wave structure or put in a real boat. Two polar bears were also wandering round putting in a plea for us to preserve their home.

The event took place on the High Street and was one of 10 taking place around Scotland to ‘Demand Climate Justice’.  The Inverness and Ross group created a model wave out of the plastic bottles contributed.  All of the messages will be collected and taken to Copenhagen for the Friends of the Earth International Wave demonstration during the climate change talks due to be held there in December.

Anne Thomas, co-ordinator of the local Friends of the Earth local branch said “We are trying to do our bit to raise awareness among the leaders meeting at Copenhagen about how important this agreement is. This could be our last chance to save the planet from runaway global warming. We are also campaigning locally to get people to reduce their own carbon footprint.”

 The messages are being sent with two locals who are going to Copenhagen with Friends of the Earth Scotland. The group is travelling the long way by train and bus as they are determined not to add to the problem by flying. All the bottles are being recycled afterwards.

See Press and Journal article

 

Demand Climate Justice in Copenhagen

This December the Danish capital of Copenhagen will host crucial international talks on climate change. These talks are the latest in a series of attempts to reach a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.See link here

The Wave

You can find our calender here

Swap Your Stuff Stalls

3rd Saturday of the Month, Culbokie Community Market, Findon Hall, Culbokie.
28th November at North Kessock Market, Village Hall, North Kessock

Past events

Black Isle Greening Homes and Gardens Day. 5th September.
This was an opportunity to see what people had done to their homes and gardens to make them greener.
Munlochy Hall was the starting point where people picked up a map showing the 10 homes open to the public and talked to experts on energy saving, or renewable energy and had a cup of tea before going to see them.
The turn out was great. 165 maps were given out.
This was organised by Transition Black Isle, Ross-shire waste action network (RoWAN) and the Energy Saving Scotland Advice Centre.
Friends of the Earth had a stall at the hall and talked to people on environmental issues and gave out leaflets and sold books.
There were also solar powered boat trips from North Kessock,  see here
As a result of this and some door to door follow up of a mail out by volunteers the energy saving trust advice centre reported over double the usual number of responses and have had requests for 140 installations of insulation and 30 queries about renewable energy.

The Global Climate Challenge

Talk By Julian Paren, who previously worked for the British Antarctic Survey and now runs an on line course on Climate Change for the University of Cambridge       http://www.cont-ed.cam.ac.uk/courses/pastdetails.php?id=2249
This talk was a challenge to all of us to do something about climate change before its too late and the concern is that climate change is happening faster than predicted and we have yet to reduce carbon dioxide emissions on a global level.
A copy of the slides can be found here

Wall-e  film and discussion at North Kessock Primary School,
This film was enjoyed by a lot of children and some parents. Discussion focussed on how to improve the school grounds e.g. by making willow wigwams and growing herbs. We also talked about setting up a farmer's market in North Kessock. It is hoped to start this at the end of October.

Transition Black Isle and Transition Inverness

Friends of the Earth Inverness and Ross was involved in setting up meetings about the Transition movement. There are now groups in Inverness and the Black Isle.

The Age Of Stupid   We supported the showing of this film at Vue and Eden Court with stalls together with other local environmental groups at each showing.
 Running Time 92 mins   Age of Stupid website  Director: Franny Armstrong
Starring: Pete Postlethwaite
Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (Usual Suspects, Brassed Off) stars as a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, looking back at "archive" footage from 2007 and asking: why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?
This is no longer showing at Eden Court however it is still showing in other parts of the country, it is very good.
We are hoping to get a licence to show it at various local venues over the next year.

“The Power of Community” film set in Cuba organised by Transition Town Inverness. A number of us went to this and the film is well worth showing in other venues. It describes how Cuba had to become self sufficient after the collapse of the Soviet Union and blockade from the US leading to severe shortages of oil. It gives a foretaste of what life could be like when we reach peak oil and beyond,

Walk and Picnic

Friday 10th April Culbin Forest. 

This was an opportunity to meet with Moray Friends of the Earth and have some interesting discussions as we got our exercise and enjoyed some great scenery.

The Great Wall of Carbon and climate graffiti wall

Friends of the Earth Inverness and Ross did a stunt in Inverness on 31st Jan. We compared Scotland’s environmental impact with other countries, including China, using a ‘Great Wall of Carbon’. The stunt, in central Inverness, revealed that each person in Scotland has a jumbo carbon footprint compared to individuals in other countries. We got 153 postcards signed ready to be delivered to MSPs. Well done all who took part!

Climate Change

We must strive with all the resources at our disposal to reduce the effects of Anthropomorphic Climate Change as much as possible. The climate will get pretty bad whatever we do, we MUST prevent catastrophic change to the climate. We must also prepare for the changes that we have already caused but which have not yet arrived, and for the changes that we will cause in the time it takes us to reduce our emissions. We must also prepare for the fact that we don't know how bad it will get and so we should prepare for the worst.
What you can do: Support a strong Scottish Climate Bill, UK Climate Bill. Act on CO₂ (advice on reducing CO₂), EST's 'what can I do today'.

Peak Oil

Easy to get cheap Oil is running out and peak oil is expected by 2012, we must act now to reduce our dependence on Oil.
What you can do: ecodriving, install renewable energy, switch to a renewable energy supplier.

Sustainability

By definition nothing can continue if it is not sustainable, eventually anything that is not sustainable will stop. Continuous growth in a finite system is not possible. We cannot have more and more of things, more and more people, indefinitely. We can have better and better things, more and more knowledge, more and more understanding, but not more and more stuff. As a species we are currently living beyond our means, we are living on our credit, burning our savings, and they will run out before that happens we must become sustainable.

Renewable Energy

Renewable energy is the only source of energy that is viable in the long term. All our energy must come from outside the system of the earth, it must come from the sun, the tides and the motion of the earth. We cannot burn up millions of years of fossilised energy every year, we must use each year only as much as we can obtain each year from renewable sources. Here I mean sources that are to all intents and purposes renewable and unending in supply, i.e. Wind, Sun, Wave, Tidal, Geothermal, (some) Biomass etc. (and possibly in ~30 years subject to it actually being sustainable and safe, fusion)
To see how one local family is getting on see here

Recycling

To achieve sustainability we must recycle as much as possible, make things last as long as possible and design things to last for as long as possible.
See: The Highland Councils information on Recycling

Locally produced goods

It is important to produce goods as locally as is sensible as this reduces the carbon emissions of transporting goods large distances

Locally produced food

Food is one area where local production is particularly viable you can grow some of your own food and you can buy it locally e.g. at Farmers shops or markets. Friends of the Earth: Inverness and Ross supports farmers markets and will be running stalls at local markets over the course of the year.