2024 Climate Festival

The 2024 climate festival was approaching rapidly! And Chris, the local spider in the web, seemed to have the organisation formally under control. My task now was only to prepare a presentation. And there were two of us presenting, so the idea was as well to make sure the two talks combined well.

We had good intentions! We had a phone call. And I said I would send her my slides from last year, and then she would send me a draft of what she would present. And then we could tweak according to need. But life got in the way, and I had to finalise my slides in the very bank holiday weekend of the festival, without having seen what my co-presenter had in mind. But at least I knew she was a biologist with an interest in extinctions.

Preparing the slides

The festival started at 11. I decided to show up shortly afterwards. I wasn't talking until 1 pm, but there was a moss walk at 11:30. I like moss! So I wanted to join.

When I got there it was already very busy. Such a good sight! And the moss walk was very popular as well; there was a veritable herd of us heading up the bicycle path, with hand lenses around our necks. It was run by the same ladies who had been talking about moss at the event in Penrhyndeudraeth. It was great fun! I will dedicate a separate blog post to that.

Busy already! Pic by Gwyrddni

The stands outside the community centre 

When we got back it was almost time for me to present. And there was a good crowd in the side room where that would take place! Some familiar faces from last year, but also quite some additional ones. And I was really glad that when I spoke, they would just interrupt me for questions. It got very lively! I really enjoyed it. And there also was discussion afterwards.

My talk; pic by Gwyrddni

Then the other lady, Alison, spoke. What she said was also very interesting. Her main message wasn't actually about extinctions. What actually argued is that we know enough to know what to do to prevent them. And that is where the gains can be made. Of course you can do more research on extinction; different locations, different species, new extensions due to changing circumstance. But what will that get you? More knowledge, and nothing happening. She argues scientists should increasingly get out of science and focus their energy on making those with the power to actually change things do so. I think she has a point!

Her talk and the following discussion overran a bit. The next thing on the timetable was a climate quiz, but a lot of people had run out of steam by this time. I knew the lady who had organised it, so I wanted to participate. We all took a little bit of time out in the fresh air, where I found my fellow bike enthusiast Pete. And then we went back into the admittedly stuffy room for the quiz. There were only three participants! But we had fun. And I won a pencil.

By then the whole event had come to an end. We helped Chris put the room back to the state he had found it in. And then I went home.

We will still have Chris for another year with another festival. And after that his funding will run out. He hopes that by then, we will be able to do it without him. But we are all people with busy jobs! I find it really helps that he just regularly calls meetings. If you wait for us to do that, we wait until we have time for that sort of thing, and that never happens. Oh well. We have another year to think about this and see how we can solve this. We might just sit together at the next climate festival, and put dates in the diary for a whole year worth of meetings. And then make it happen with volunteers only. That would be ideal!