Welcome To The Green City

Greenpeace UK have launched an online virtual town called EfficienCity. It’s powered by clean and efficient (”decentralised”) energy. Based on actual communities in the UK, it aims to show that nuclear and coal powered power stations are not required.

It also aims to show how local councils, businesses and people are able to play a part in making the leap to a more sustainable future. The town is very interactive, with video case studies, animations and slideshows that explain how a clean and efficient energy system works. The tidal power animation was particularly interesting. Take a look at the Efficiencity, and you can read more about it here.

How to Save Someone’s Life

I was stunned recently to discover the ten other people around the same table as me for dinner couldn’t save someone’s life. I don’t mean the heroic ‘pushing someone out of the way of a bus’ sort of way, but basic first aid and CPR (cardio pulmonary resuscitation). It’s amazing that people just don’t know these skills in an age where you can get a trainer come to your place of work if you can’t get to a course elsewhere. In the ‘information age’ where news is instantaneous (or so I’m told) and you can watch videos of first aid on the internet, then why doesn’t everybody know how to do it?

The answer is probably laziness and lack of time, but in my job I’ve spoken to two people in the last week who have saved someone’s life by being in the right place at the right time - one was having a sedate game of crown green bowling when a man collapsed! The feeling they got from saving the person’s life wasn’t one of heroism but relief and thankfulness that they had the necessary skills to do it.

So why not learn those skills yourself? The British Red Cross runs courses, you can even type in your postcode to see where they do them near you. Go here to find the Red Cross or Red Crescent in your country. Or you can learn yourself. There is an online shop on the site where you can buy a book on first aid complete with the new CPR protocols - oh yes, they update and change things all the time, tourniquets to stop bleeding are now considered dangerous for example.

So why not save someone’s life? You could never need the skills but you just might.