Glad to hear it.

If you’re anything like me, your inbox is pretty full of emails from groups doing great stuff. So I completely get it if you simply haven’t had the time or headspace to get involved in our campaigns recently. That’s no problem at all. To fill you in on what you might have missed, I’ve pulled together our highlights and current actions from across our live campaigns over the past six months below.

But don’t forget, if it’s easier for you to keep up with news on social media, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to get our campaign updates and actions straight to your news feed.

Car Free Cities

In July, Sandra and the rest of the Car Free Cities team have been focussing on Going Car Free 2022 - our project to inspire and support hundreds of drivers to switch up their journeys during the month of July. A huge thank you to everyone who got involved!

Beyond the UK:

Cities across the world are trialling new ways to reduce the number of cars on their streets - explore our newly updated interactive map to see how they're doing it.

Aviation

Environmental organisations have joined forces to urge the government to withdraw support for airport expansion.

Possible might be the stubborn optimists of the climate movement but we know that if climate hope is all we ever talk about, we ignore some real issues that need solving and jeopardise meaningful action. To tackle this, Ali has teamed up with research agency Green Gumption. Together, we've uncovered 20 years of failure to meet climate targets in air travel (due to misplaced faith in techno-fixes), shedding light on the urgent need for practical action.

What you can do:

Believe it or not, the government’s new strategy to tackle flight emissions doesn’t aim to reduce air travel - instead it does the opposite. With misplaced faith that technology will one day be ready to swap aeroplanes to zero-carbon fuel, the government is pushing forward with targets to increase air travel. If you haven’t already done so, please use our webtool to email your MP about Jet Zero today.

To reduce the UK’s carbon emissions, we need more people to take air travel seriously. Misplaced trust in aviation’s techno-fixes is holding us back - there is no way to fly planes without harming our planet. Will you help more people understand that the climate impact of flying won’t disappear without real government action by sharing our short video?

Onshore wind

Despite this government’s recent energy strategy showing a disappointing lack of climate action, we're not backing down. From removing policy blocks on wind power, to supporting households across the country to move away from gas boilers, there are concrete steps this government could (and should) take to reduce our environmental impact. So Possible supporters have been on the case, urging our MPs to take action for onshore wind and clean energy systems. 

With new evidence that new onshore wind projects can generate electricity nine times cheaper than current gas prices, thousands of us, once again, emailed our MPs asking them to help remove the blocks that are preventing the UK from making full use of this clean energy source. Through one-to-one emails, and last month’s free training session (thank you to everyone who came along!), Ali is continuing to support anyone who’s having trouble bringing their MP onboard, so do get in touch if you need help.

Clean heat

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is now live - so if you live in the UK, you can get £5,000 towards a new heat pump (see our heat pump FAQs for more information).

The importance of public parks is easy to see during these hot summer months.

But did you know, that parks have the power to keep communities warm through winter? Heat energy from the sun is stored in the soil beneath our parks. With a heat pump,* it's possible to capture this clean heat energy, and send it to nearby buildings, freeing them from dependence on gas boilers. Parks and greenspaces around Great Britain could supply 30GW of heat – which is about 10% of our total peak heat demand. If all of this potential was exploited, we could avoid over eight million tonnes of carbon emissions each year (the equivalent of taking around 2.5 million new cars off the road).

We want to see councils all over the country turn our local parks into clean heat powerhouses. We’ve put together guidance for local councillors to follow, but it’s always more persuasive coming from a local resident.

Fixing factories

Some of you might remember our vision for every UK high street to have its own fixing factory (a community hub to maintain and repair our things). Well, Dermot has been working with The Restart Project and Mer-IT to pilot two fixing factories in London and start making this vision a reality. Over the past six weeks we’ve been training up 11 local young people so that they can diagnose and repair common issues with laptops, tablets, and more (to find out more, see this article, or the Fixing Factory website).

Other

Over 30 organisations have joined us in calling out the BBC for the terrible question on climate in the #BBCOurNextPM debate (they asked what people at home can do to tackle climate change, when we need to know what the next prime minister will do).

Remember when a group of Possible supporters cycled from London up to Glasgow for the UN climate talks last year? Well, it was a huge success (our riders inspired their friends and family to make bold climate pledges, and loads of money was raised to support community climate action across the UK) - so we’re doing another ride in November - this time from Port Talbot to London. If you, or anyone you know, is interested in finding out more about joining the charity bike ride, click the button below.

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