Britain's Climate Change Targets

- Can we reach them and are they the right ones ?  Talk by Prof. Jim Skea OBE

We are delighted that Professor Jim Skea - one of the UK's leading authorities on climate change, energy and the environment - will be joining us for the inaugural event in BPEC's 30th birthday lecture series to help answer these questions and more.  Professor Skea will outline the thinking behind the UK's climate change targets, which are the first of their kind anywhere in the world, and will set out what we will have to do to reach them.

We are saddened to learn of the death of Eileen Daffern.

Eileen Daffern, born on New Years Day 1914,  spent over fifty years actively campaigning for peace and nuclear disarmament.   Her political ideas developed gradually as she experienced life working in the "colonies" in the 1930s.  Already radicalised by the second world war, it was the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 that caused her to become a nuclear pacifist.

Eileen came and settled in Brighton in 1960, and for many years was active in various local and national peace groups.  Throughout the early and mid-'80s as Secretary of the Sussex Alliance For Nuclear Disarmament (SAND) she worked hard to open up a dialogue with peace activists and official Peace Committees in the Soviet East.   She was one of the first members of the Brighton Peace Centre,  joining in 1982 and continuing her membership throughout her life.  She held BPEC membership no. 0009.

Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies, often using patterns that occur in nature to maximise effect and minimise work.

It aims to create stable and productive systems that provide for human needs, harmoniously integrating the land with its’ inhabitants

Did you know -  the word 'permaculture' is a contraction of permanent agriculture and permanent culture.

Bees need 5-a-day too and the widespread decline in honeybees, which pollinate about one third of the food we eat, may be due to a reduction in the plant life they feed on.

Honeybees on a 5-pollen diet are healthier than those nourished only by a single plant variety, according to scientists from the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA).

They are disease resistant, have better antiseptic protection, and produce more fat, than their single-pollen counterparts. Research suggests that 5-a-day bees create more anti-microbial chemicals and develop a stronger immune system.

Local recyclers are turning tonnes of milk bottle tops into cash for charity. Your semi-skimmed green top could end up as next year’s garden furniture.

Melanie Rees at The Green Centre, has been collecting bottle tops for 3 years. Melanie and team of volunteers have amassed 2 tonnes so far, and are raising money for Lupus UK.