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Climate Radio Report (2006-7) for Calouste-Gulbenkian Foundation
From Ed Baxter at Resonance Fm and Phil England at Climate RadioFunding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, National Lottery Awardsfor All and Polden-Puckham Charitable Trust enabled the production anddistribution of a year long weekly series of radio programmes dedicated toclimate change.
Production
More than twenty hours of programming were completed, made up as follows:Two Degrees Show
 –
20 half hour programmes.Low Carbon Show
 –
15 half hour programmes.One Planet Agriculture
 –
4 half hour programmes.Special one-off broadcasts
 –
2 hour long programmes.Jingles to promote Blackout Halloween event
 –
half a dozen brief jingles.All were produced by Phil England.
The Two Degrees Show 
 
was an agenda-setting programme taking on thekey strategic and political issues in a series of informed interviews with
experts. These included David Griggs (director Met Office’s Hadley Centre),John Schellnhuber (German government’s chief scientifi
c advisor on climatechange), George Monbiot (award-winning author), Caroline Lucas (GreenMEP), Stewart Wallis (director, New Economics Foundation), Ed Gillespie(founder of Futerra - sustainability consultants to DEFRA), Sam Craigs (SoilAssociation Chair), Mark Watts (principle energy advisor to Ken Livingstone),Rob Hopkins (Transition Towns founder), Martyn Williams (Friends of the
Earth’s chief parliamentary campaigner), Phil Thornhill (founder of the now
international Campaign Against Climate Change), MJ Mace and Jan Kowalzig(negotiators at the UN climate talks), Climate Camp activists, Mayer Hillman(carbon rationing advocate), Kevin Smith and Soumitra Ghosh (carbon trading
critics), Max Andrews (editor of RSA’s
Land: Art 
 –
A Culturual Ecology Handbook 
), James Marriott (campaigner with Platform), Richard Starkey andAlice Bows (Tyndall Centre), Phil Metcalfe (IPCC lead author) andDonnachadh McCarthy (low-carbon pioneer).
The Low Carbon Show 
was a series celebrating the multiple benefits of alow-carbon life. The programmes focused on postive, clear messages toencourage and normalise low-carbon behaviours. Going beyong the usual
“change your lightbulb” messages, the programmes focused on the
behaviours that will have the biggest impact on your carbon footprint such asflying less, eating more fruit and vegetables and less meat and dairy, takingup cycling and consuming less. The series started with a warning from MarkLynas, author of
Six Degrees 
, about the consequences of continuingbusiness-as-usual. It then provided a framework for low-carbon living with
Chris Goodall (The New Scientist calls his book “The definitive guide toreducing your carbon footprint”) and Mukti Mitchell (creator of what is widely
regarded as the best carbon calculator on the web). Other areas coveredincluded the Climate Change Bill (including an interview with thenEnvironment Secretary David Milliband), local food networks (with Julie Brownof Growing Communities), lifestyle rethink (author Tom Hodgkinson), local
 
farmers markets, slow travel, no-fly holidays, tranistion town initiatives, thePlanning White Paper, Climate Camp 2007 and the Centre for Alternative
Technology’s groundbreaking report
Zero Carbon Britain 
.
Distribution
The programmes were broadcast on London-based community arts stationResonance FM which boasts 85,000 regular FM listeners and 35,000 internetlisteners. The programme was broadcast on Tuesdays in the afternoon andrepeated on Saturday evening.As a result of two notices sent to the Community Media Association email list,a total of 21 UK community radio stations contacted Climate Radio aboutbroadcasting the shows. The programmes were made available to thissyndicate of stations through the weekly posting of the programmes to theRadio4All internet portal and a weekly email notification.In October a CD featuring 12 hours of Climate Radio programmes wasproduced and sent to all 84 OFCOM-licenced community radio stations in theUK.The programmes were also available to the network of internationalcommunity radio broadcasters through the Radio4All portal www.radio4all.net  For example, the well-regarded Pacifica Network station KPFK in Los Angelesbroadcast a couple of programmes and the Canadian online facility Ecoshockrebroadcast a number of the programmes. Programmes were also broadcastby Blast Furnace Radio (Pittsburgh, PA) and Radio Zero (Portugal).Most recently the Pacifica Network in the US has offered to make theprogrammes available to its 90 affiliate stations through its Audioport facility(see www.pacifica.org/programs/audioport). In November Climate Radio began podcasting through the Resonance FMsite. This is still at an early stage
 –
current download figures are 150 pershow. In October The Ecologist magazine approached Climate Radio with aview to podcasting the programmes. A show is now being posted weekly toThe Ecologist podcast archive and a weekly email notification is being sent to
the subscibers of the magazine’s email newsletter. The programmes are
currently being vetted by iTunes for podcasting which would extend theprogrammes reach considerably.All programmes were accessible within a few days of the original broadcastfrom the Climate Radio archive which has been kindly hosted and maintainedby Climate Outreach Information Network at www.climateradio.co.uk In October 2007 the archive home page received over 1213 hits with downloadsof a single particular programme peaking at 94 during that month.A total of 350 copies of two different CDs containing all the programmesproduced during the year have been produced for sale through theResonance FM site (the Resonance FM shop is relaunched in January 2008).
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