Green House event

Green House Think Tank is an exciting new environmental organisation which was created last year with the remit of “challenging the ideas that have created the world we live in now, and offering positive alternatives”.  

I attended its recent event at The Guardian’s headquarters in London where Green House think tank chair Dr Rupert Read and Polly Higgins, environmental barrister and Damian Carrington, head of environment at The Guardian, explored the idea of the ‘Guardians for future generations’ idea which Rupert had developed in discussion and collaboration with the membership of the Alliance for Future Generations.

Over 40 people attended this event which included a mini-try-out of Rupert’s idea. Twelve of those attended the meeting – including me – were picked at random to form a mock-jury to decide an issue of vital importance to future people. Our topic was fracking and as a ‘super-jury’ we agreed, on balance, that it would be against the basic interests/needs of future people.

This mock-super jury session was modelled on Polly Higgins’s ‘mock ecocide trial’ of last year, which has been featured in Resurgence.

This event represented a new idea to charge a ‘super jury’ of ordinary people with more extensive powers than the House of Lords. It followed Rupert’s launch of the ‘Guardians for Future Generations’ report at the House of Commons in January. The report proposes that a council of randomly picked members of the public should be placed above the House of Lords to oversee all government decisions. The Guardians’ central powers would be a veto over new legislation that threatens the interests of future generations and a right to force a review of existing legislation that is already damaging their basic needs.

For more information on Green House Think Tank, please visit: http://www.greenhousethinktank.org/page.php?pageid=home

Sharon Garfinkel is PR and Marketing Manager at Resurgence.

In It Together

Turns out I have a sister I didn't know about. Not only that but she lives just down the road. We have the same parents but up to now have led relatively separate lives. Interestingly despite this I was intrigued to discover we share many of the same values. This sister in question is another charity – The Resurgence Trust.

The charity I represent is the Yarner Trust nestled away on the Atlantic Coast on the border of North Devon and Cornwall and about 10 miles from The Resurgence offices in Hartland. The biggest surprise to me was that I am in fact a little sister and not a husband, son or brother that I'd been led to believe for the past 33 years. I thought I'd been making a good play of things as a bloke – culminating most recently as a hedge laying, coppicing and firewood-chopping caretaker at the Yarner Trust.

Resurgence has 12 years on Yarner (which is in fact exactly the same age as me and anything else starting things off in1978), and we met this week to discuss ways of working together to promote various ways of ethical living. Both charities were conceived by the Dartington Trust and following a couple of sit-downs recently we have some interesting plans on the cards ranging from a 110mile walk around London to a joint nature writing competition and a regular blog from Yarner to feature on this website. Well that's the blog done, I best go for a walk.

Jon will be doing a sponsored walk along The Green London Way, 28 May – 2 June 2012. More information here.

Jon Every is a botanist, working as Care Taker and Education Officer at The Yarner Trust.