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What we do:
A new ‘Environment’ Group finally got underway in January. We are trying to proceed by each member taking it in turns to introduce an environmental topic which interests them and which they hope will interest other members of the group. To date, thirteen U3A members have attended our meetings. Barbara Sanderson kindly agreed to start us off with a 20 minute talk about ‘Sustainable Brampton’. Barbara outlined the concept of Sustainable Development and the efforts Brampton has made to introduce plans to make the local community more self-sufficient.
Our second talk, in February, was by Andrew Walker, who introduced the concept of energy supply and domestic energy use. Andrew helped each of us to calculate our personal consumption of energy, the results throwing into sharp relief what we all need to do if reduced energy consumption in north Cumbria is to become one part of the UK’s national strategy to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources of oil and gas.
Our March meeting changed the subject yet again. For this meeting, Gordon Hurst had invited a speaker from the Lake Bassenthwaite ‘Reflections’ Project to talk to us about water management problems in the lake. The lake might appear beautiful but all is not necessarily as it should be in terms of its water chemistry and ecology. The lake’s problems were described wonderfully well by our guest speaker and promoted a far-ranging and very lengthy discussion which we were all sad to see come to an end.
Our April meeting continued the theme of water management when a talk was given entitled ‘What have we done to our rivers?’ This was followed in May by a local field excursion on the same theme to see how the Environment Agency collects data from one of its sampling sites on the River Eden. Members will appreciate from the range of subjects so far discussed that we are still surveying the broad range of local environmental issues. Perhaps we will eventually focus on one local environmental problem to examine jointly in more depth. If anyone wishes to join the group you would be very welcome.
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