Residents in South Bank and Holgate take part in Green Streets challenge

As world leaders prepare to gather in Copenhagen next week, people in York are teaming up to reduce their carbon emissions.

It is all about enlisting community spirit to change the way we behave, says Dr Gary Haq, a researcher with the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of York and co-ordinator of the Green Streets project.

“Eventually, we are all going to have to radically re-think our lifestyles,” says Dr Haq. “And we have to start rethinking them now.”

There was a great community spirit, which united neighbours and streets and whole communities, during the Second World War, he says. “And I think tackling climate change could really benefit from some of that kind of spirit now.”

Under the Green Streets scheme, residents living in two key areas of the city – Scarcroft Road and Holgate – are being encouraged to form teams in their street or neighbourhood, so they can work together to reduce their carbon emissions.

Their challenge in the first six months of next year is to reduce their emissions by ten per cent. Teams that succeed will win the chance of a prize worth £1,000 to share among the group.

The scheme is a joint initiative of SEI and the York Environment Partnership. And the aim – apart from helping residents in these two areas of York to cut back on their emissions – is to develop a better model for encouraging ordinary people to do more about global warming.

“Everybody can do something as an individual,” says Dr Haq. “But we find from research that a team provides greater support to encourage people to do more.

“It is easy to say ‘I’m going to give up’ if you’re on your own. Being part of a team gives you the support that stops you doing that.” It does more than just stiffen your backbone, however. There are some things we can do that can only be organised on a community or neighbourhood level, Gary says.

“Like car sharing – that’s something you could do at a street or neighbourhood level. You could have a community allotment – or it could even be something like borrowing or sharing tools. Being part of a group, a local group, can help you.”

That is why, over the last few weeks, Gary and his colleagues have been busily badgering residents in the two selected areas to sign up for a Green Streets team.

SEI research has produced a detailed map of York, showing which wards have the greenest attitudes, which wards have the highest carbon emissions, and which areas have the best potential for improvements (see panel).

Based on this research, SEI decided to target the Scarcroft Road area and Holgate for an initial pilot study.

Leaflets explaining what Green Streets is about were pushed through letterboxes. These were followed up with knocks on doors. “It was luke-warm calling rather than cold-calling,” Gary jokes.

Residents interested in trying to do more to cut their emissions were then invited to meetings, where their carbon footprints were calculated and they were encouraged to form neighbourhood teams.

From January, the teams – with the help of experts from SEI and advice from organisations such as the Energy Savings Trust – will have six months to reduce their collective emissions by ten per cent. “The teams who manage a ten per cent cut will go into a prize draw, and the winners will get £1,000- worth of vouchers to split between them,” Gary says.

The real incentive for those who attended a Green Streets meeting at Holgate Methodist Church last week, however, was to try to reduce their fuel bills – and to do their bit towards saving the planet.

Archaeology fieldworker Ben Gourley’s family clearly have a thing for flowers and plants.

His wife is called Holly; his daughters are Lily (aged four) and Violet (three weeks).

No surprise, then, to find the Gourleys signing up to Green Streets.

“Anybody who has children will obviously have concerns about climate change,” says Ben, who hails originally from Vancouver, but now lives in Murray Street, Holgate.

He and his family, Ben says, are “fairly hard-core recyclers”. “And we try to do our best to deal with a Victorian house. We have insulated it throughout, we have double glazing and all that kind of thing.”

But they have hit a bit of a ceiling. Short of cutting back on the annual flight to Vancouver to visit family, they aren’t sure what else they can do.

“But being part of a team is absolutely a good idea. On your own, everybody has an excuse. But if you’re going to do this as a community – well, there’s peer pressure, and we’ll all get to know each-other and it could make a difference.”

Eleanor Formby, a neighbour in Murray Street, agrees.

“I think we already do quite a lot of recycling, and it feels to me as if the other stuff we could do, like loft insulation, might be really expensive. But still I’m interested in what more they say we could do,” she says.

Climate change doesn’t worry her, exactly, she says. “But I’m aware of it. And if I can reduce my emissions, I’d like to.”

Facing up to the facts...

The scandal which broke recently about leaked emails exchanged between climate scientists has been touted by some sections of the media as evidence that climate change is not really happening.

In one, a senior climate scientist wrote to another scientist about two papers he regarded as flawed. “I can’t see either… being in the next (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report…. I will keep them out somehow,” he wrote, in an email sent in 2004.

But this was just a media storm, Dr Haq says. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that climate change is happening, that mankind is largely responsible – and that we have to act to avert it.

Even those who continue to deny climate change cannot deny that world populations continue to soar, Dr Haq said. And the earth’s resources are finite – which means that if we continue to waste them, they will one day run out.

“So even if you don’t believe in climate change, there is still a need to change our behaviour to find a more effective way of using the resources that we have.”

By reducing carbon emissions, that is exactly what we are doing.

Wealthier suburbs of York have larger carbon footprint

The average York resident has a carbon footprint of 12.58 tonnes of CO2 per year, according to research by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of York. That is the amount of carbon dioxide each of us produces, on average, every year.

That is slightly higher than the national average of 12.12 tonnes – an embarrassment for a city which likes to consider itself green.

There are some other interesting findings thrown up by SEI’s study of the city’s carbon footprint.

The study looked at each ward in the city. It found that often neighbourhoods where people had strong green attitudes and said they most wanted to do something about their environment were also areas with the highest carbon emissions.

“There is a tendency for those neighbourhoods which have a strong level of greenness to also have a larger carbon footprint,” says an SEI report.

“This indicates that while there is understanding of the importance of green issues and a willingness to be green, this is not necessarily translated into action.

“For example, the neighbourhood of Clementhorpe (Rural West York) has a strong level of green attitudes, but has a high carbon footprint.”

The York neighbourhoods with the highest carbon footprints include Dringhouses, Bishophill, Heworth Without, Wheldrake and Bishopthorpe – all, interestingly, generally rated amongst the wealthier areas of the city.

The neighbourhoods with the lowest carbon footprints include Heslington (partly, it is thought, because it has a large student population) and Tang Hall, Clifton, Westfield and New Earswick.

South Bank and Holgate were chosen for the Green Streets pilot study because it was felt that here there was the most potential for cuts in emissions. It wasn’t simply a question of green attitudes and carbon footprints, said Dr Gary Haq, of the SEI. “It was also about things like access to public transport, if homes are near a bus route, if it is favourable for cycling, the age of the housing stock, and so on.”

Green Street teams in these areas of York will have six months from January to June next year to reduce their carbon emissions by ten per cent.

It is hoped each team will meet at least once a month: and they will be able to call on SEI and the energy savings trust for advice and information. “We will be able to offer them advice on what they can do, what grants are available, and so on,” Dr Haq said.

The aim of the project is ultimately to come up with a model for tackling climate change at a local level that will enable efforts to be targeted in a way that will have most impact.

“It is a more targeted approach. It is about understanding neighbourhoods and using that understanding to identify the greatest potential for change,” Dr Haq said.

It is important that ordinary people do try to do their bit, Dr Haq said. Yes, next week’s climate change meeting of world leaders at Copenhagen is hugely important. Governments have to lead the way. “But we need individuals to change their behaviour as well. Everybody has to do their bit.”