Noah or Mad Max in a future dystopia?

Dr Tim Foxon        Photo: Sally Bavage

Sally Bavage writes:
A new partnership with Café Scientifique this year saw an appreciative audience of Café and LitFest regulars explore some key issues around surviving the delivery of our future energy needs at the same time as reducing carbon emissions.  Introduced by Dr Tim Foxon, Reader in Sustainability & Innovation in the Sustainability Research Institute, School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, the session provoked some lively debate.

We all know the main scientific facts concerning the relentless rise in global carbon dioxide emissions, the projected temperature rise of between 2 to 5 degrees Centigrade by the turn of the century and our ever-increasing demand for energy. Mix this with some more information on the developing economies, the role positive feedback could play in an exponential further rise and the extreme weather becoming, well, even more extreme. More often.  Very few scientists of international standing deny the figures; interpretation is a more subjective and emotive issue.

Tim gave us a factual run-through of key considerations in our energy needs, then posed the question: Who will decide?  The Markets?  Central governments?  Or communities?  The Thousand Flowers strand of thinking (Let a thousand flowers bloom is a common misquotation of Chairman Mao Zedong's Let a hundred flowers blossom) but signifies that the answer may lie in a diversity of approaches.  We need to use our scientific, technological, political and social skills to change the habits of a lifetime before the life becomes shortened and unstable. There seem few scenarios with a soft landing.

Fire and flood?  Drought and pestilence.  Mass migration and resource wars. Fleeting images of Noah or Mad Max in a dystopian future are called to mind.  Politicians will not be pouring oil on troubled waters but burning the oil and stealing the water.  The price of carbon may turn out to be one that mankind can’t afford to pay.  A more positive future is possible, but humankind will probably need to overcome its collective addiction to consumption and economic growth to achieve this.

A sobering thought as the audience filed out to the bar.  

From the audience:

Very enjoyable and some food for thought.

Great to link Café Scientifique with LitFest, to increase involvement with both.

A very clear exposition of crucial issues looking forward to 2050 and beyond.

I wonder what Headingley LitFest will be like by then?

'Wounded' shortlisted!

Emily Mayhew is appearing at 7pm in Headingley Library on Tuesday 18 March to read from and talk about Wounded. From Battlefield to Blighty.

This has now been shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize - see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookprizes/10660055/Wellcome-Book-Prize-shortlist-announced.html

Gillian Clarke on 20 March

Tales from the Wood

James Nash                        Photo: Sally Bavage

… Ireland Wood, to be precise.  Wednesday 26 February saw the last school in our current group of primary schools complete their writing of poems and stories with a performance assembly.  ‘LitFest: Surviving’ once again harnessed the talents of local writer/poet James Nash (“the best poet”, it said on the birthday card the year 6 youngsters joyfully presented to him).

We had excerpts read to us of some beginnings, some middles and some cliffhanger endings of the poems and stories they had crafted with the support and guidance of a professional artist for whom class teacher Adrienne Amos had nothing but the highest of praise.  We even had one of the stories that Heather had been inspired to write, along with others, for the Radio Two 500-word story competition.  

Their work was displayed across the whole of the assembly hall for all children in the school to see, a fantastic model for others to follow. Three whole afternoons of writing were not enough, said one youngster shyly and the young man in the wheelchair threw up his arms with joy when he had read his contribution out to the audience. The clay head used by James to inspire the budding writers worked its magic once again.     (Sally Bavage)

Exhibition of historic photos of the wartime hospital.

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Photo by Theo Wilcocks

Photo by Sally Bavage

Thanks to all of you who climbed up the stairs to the Ridge Room in the Headingley Heart Centre yesterday evening. I hope to see you again at one of the LitFest events, soon. The exhibition is there for six weeks, so anybody using that room for a class or a meeting will get a chance to study the photos. Isn't that long 1917 panorama amazing! Have you noticed how nearly all the people in it (about five hundred of them) are either squinting, screwing up their eyes or looking down at their knees because the summer sun came out just as the shutter clicked. And why were five members of the kitchen staff, wearing white linen pancakes on their heads, placed right in front of the high-ups like Lt-Col Harry Littlewood and Matron-in-Chief Euphemia Innes?

The Story of Dorothy Wilkinson

A Yorkshire Post feature today - a shortened (too shortened) version of the true story of Dorothy Wilkinson. The full version will appear in Stories from the War Hospital.  Go to this link - http://bit.ly/1bcUgLZ










This is Dorothy in 1917. Photo was taken in a studio shortly after she first became a VAD (nursing member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment) who was sent to work at Beckett Park.