About 6 months ago I started volunteering for a local community organisation dedicated to inspiring real action on climate change. The organisation is called Aberdeen Climate Action and my first task has been to build them a website which promotes sustainable living. It’s still a work in progress but it’s looking good so far. Feedback is welcome!
What I really love about this organisation is that rather than focussing on doom and gloom and the dissemination of information – which, let’s face it, is readily available everywhere you look – we try to inspire real action by sharing empowering stories like the creation of Aberdeen’s community energy scheme. Aberdeen may be an oil city now but it hasn’t always been this way. People have lived in this area since the Stone Age; before oil there was a thriving fishing industry and before that, something else. Even if oil wasn’t plagued with the problems of climate change, pollution, and the issue of it being a finite resource, time will bring change. It always does.
Aberdeen Climate Action is running a monthly climate café at Waterstones bookstore on Union Bridge. The next one is on December 5th at 7pm and the topic is Fast Forward to the Future: New Energy Sources and Post Oil. Please come along!
rachel.blog 
I read your post on your recent meeting following your tweet but only after I switched off the colouring in the CSS styles (I have a Firefox gesture set up to do that) as, though I could read it, the pale-grey text was a real strain for me. OK for stuff round the edges but not for body text. Not everybody has perfect eyesight.
Thanks, Ed. I’ve changed the font to black. Is it easier to read now? Maybe it needs to be bigger as well.
Thank you, yes, that’s much easier to read.
Text size is an interesting question. For me it’s fine as it is but it wouldn’t surprise me if there are people who have problems with it – serifs are there for a reason in most fonts intended for body text and when they’re not there the text often needs to be a little larger to compensate.
Good point. I made the body text a serif font.
I rarely need it, but IME screen zoom works nicely for overly small text.
Yes, I should have said text size is less important as screen zoom works well whereas turning off CSS colouring and background images also tends to lose other functions. E.g., on that page it also makes the WordPress/Twitter/etc buttons disappear for some reason.
I hope you’re meeting some great people at this organisation. You’re right – it’s easy to be doom and gloom – I recently read an article about climate change in California that left me quite depressed, so it’s good to be thinking of positive change that could happen in the future.
Yes, I’m getting to meet some really great people. That’s the nicest thing about it.
Are you in CA, Denise? If so please drop me a line at stevebloom55@gmail.com. I’m finally finally finally about to launch a statewide climate initiative for 2018. Help needed!
Anyone else in CA reading this, please do so as well.
Re that article, sadly I can say with some confidence that there’s a lot worse than that if you know where to look. OTOH maybe we need this bad news to light a sufficient fire under us. But I’d like to know which article it was, so a pointer would be appreciated.
I’m sure you know you need to be a little careful about articles that aren’t themselves from reliable scientific sources, i.e. written by a working climate scientist or someone else with verifiable expertise. There’s a lot of shaky stuff out there.
Hi – sorry I’m in the UK and not… The article was in the London Review of Books and was by Mike Davis. I don’t know if you are a subscriber? Good luck with the initiative.
Great that you’re able to build a website for the group too. It looks nice!
Thank you!
If you want a couple of suggestions for initiatives then there is the Repair Cafe movement ( I believe Cambridge recently set the record for the largest single repair cafe event) and also a library of things (which Cambridge doesn’t have). Both initiatives are, of course, to do with reducing consumption – in different ways. They might be ideas to mull over at your next meeting (if you haven’t already !)
Those are great ideas Phil! Thanks for sharing that. I have heard of the library of things before and there isn’t one here. There also isn’t a repair cafe. That’s a wonderful idea too.
Good idea, Phil. I hadn’t seen a library of things, but around the SF Bay Area tool libraries have become more common. There are also bike self-repair locations, plant swaps and an annual women’s clothing swap (with extra clothes going to women’s shelters). Rachel, I can collect some of the web sites for these if you like.
So the new site looks pretty good! One other suggestion would be to get a carbon footprint calculator on there or at least prominently link to one.
Really interesting article! I am currently in Houston, the oil capital of the world and being a geologists I am aware of both the good and the bad side of it! I really like the idea of sustainable living and I think that is the way forward!