Meet Polly and Dr Who's Tardis

Polly Higgins, who lives in Islington, just can't resist taking over Dr Who's Tardis for a show and tell adventure about climate change that will have you fired up for Highbury's CLIMATE CHANGE & ME conference on Saturday 11 October. Tickets for the event are free, just turn up at 11am at Highbury Fields School, Highbury Hill. Polly will be speaking at approx 11am (please arrive in good time).

In 2005 Polly gave up life as a practising barrister, fighting other people's fights in court, to go off and fight for what she believed in - the environment. She now advises on international environmental and energy legislation, works with TREC and is a regular public speaker. Recent engagements include speaking on climate change at a rave, briefing MPs on a clever renewable energy (Concentrating Solar Power also known as CSP) and speaking at the Climate Camp which was set up near the site of E-ON's controversial proposed new coal-powered dinosaur plant at Kingsnorth, Kent this August.

Polly runs Wise Women (Women in Sustainability and the Environment) network, founded the online eco-store called The Lazy Environmentalist, and blogs on her journey to discover what we need to do to save the planet. You can read about her progress here .

Funny weather?

We know about climate change, so let's do something in Highbury to tackle it...

Funny weather we're having this year in N5, N4 and N1 aren't we? One moment it's wet. Then cloudbursts. Then steamy hot. Then mizzle. It turns organising summer picnics on Highbury Fields, Gillespie Park or a rug in the back garden into more of a risk sport than a mealtime diversion.

The weather has been getting stranger for some years now though, and not just in Islington.

In fact if you look at the weather records it's fascinating seeing how often this month we're in right now has just been the warmest, or wettest, or driest - since records began in 1854. Check for yourself at bbc weather. As 2008 is an Olympics year it's quite human to want records to be smashed. But when it comes to the weather, it ought to be seasonal variation, not global change.

Most of us know that a build up of greenhouse gases is changing our climate, see how in the very detailed Stern Report here.

Carbon dioxide - which our homes and cars, schools and buses release by the tonne - is one of these greenhouse gases and it is helping to warm up the Earth's atmosphere. It's no comfort to know that carbon dioxide molecules have a long, long life - at around 100 years it's longer than we can expect. So every time we use a fossil fuel like carbon dioxide it's not just having an instant impact, it's going to keep on heating up the atmosphere for the next 100 years.

Some people talk about global warming. But here in the UK, in this bit of Islington, it's simpler to explain the variation in our weather if we blame it on a changing climate.

The expression "climate change" neatly explains that the weather is more unsettled (and generally warmer around here) but if in the future something went wrong with the warming Gulf Stream current that hugs the west coast of our island, making it a great deal colder, then no one would be embarassed.

We can start tackling climate change by making our homes more energy efficient. That way we also reduce the pain of all these rising fuel bills (nice), and try to shrink our own carbon footprint.
We cannot tackle climate change by claiming that the unreliable British summer weather is the reason we need to hop on a plane and take off to somewhere we think will be sunnier. But don't worry if you have - some treats are really hard to alter. The task of this blog is for us all in Highbury to share ways to tackle climate change that we can manage, whatever the weather.