Castle School awards evening - environmental warning (From This is The West Country)

Castle School awards evening - environmental warning

3:00pm Monday 6th July 2009

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IT was back to her roots for Rachel Gilmour, the guest speaker at The Castle School’s awards evening in Taunton.

Mrs Gilmour, head of strategic communications at the UK Environment Agency, used to live in the Taunton area, where she started her public affairs career at Taunton Deane Council.

She spoke about the environmental crisis facing us, saying it is far worse news than the economic slump we are experiencing.

She said: “Of climate change, a bad economy and more expensive energy…climate change is the most serious and the most difficult.

“I expect that the economy will eventually recover.

“But when it does, climate change won’t have gone awaye and the clock will be ticking faster.”

Mrs Gilmour said the challenge facing us all is “tougher and more urgent than we once though” and cannot be ignored.

But she said it was possible to do something by giving everyone the facts – “and give them hope too”.

She said: “Let’s start with you young people, because it’s the world you’re going to inherit and, let’s face it, we old folks have made a right mess of it.”

She added: “The current financial crisis gives us a huge opportunity to change the way we run our society, to challenge some of the ways we have done things that have helped us to get into the environmental mess we find ourselves in.

“It’s important that we take this opportunity.”

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