Dr. Hugh Montgomery

Dr Hugh Montgomery – Institute for Human Health and Performance, What Can We Do, Working together to achieve Climate Change Goals with Government, Corporates and Neighbours/Friends

We need to change the way we spend our money when we can. Sometimes easier for richer people than poorer people. Poorer people have no choice where to spend their money, and very often they are spending it on staple. For those of us that are wealthier, we can choose where we bank. Does our bank invest in fossil fuels or does it not. The bank I’ve moved to, the Co-Operative Bank in Britain does not, which is why I bank with them. We can choose our electricity supplier. So in Britain we have a choice. I’m with a company called Good Energy, who get all of there electricity from renewables.

So there are things we can do as to where we spend our money, where we bank and the personal actions. We need to engage with the people we work with, at an individual level for them to do the same and at our corporate employer level, to change their behaviors. The way they do business locally and the way they run their businesses. But we need to engage with our governments to, because until we show our governments and business leaders, that we make demands, that we will support them for ambition, not penalise them. We will penalise them for doing the wrong thing, but then things won’t change because they are deprived of the permissive environment in which to work. You can’t expect a politician to make the big bold change if they are going to be unemployed in 5 years time, because people vote them out. It’s unreasonable to expect them to do the right thing. We need to make it clear that we support them in that. We need to do that very quickly.

He also discusses:

• Moving away from red meat
• Reducing gas heating