The Blue Earth Summit

We took the podcast to the Blue Earth Summit 2023 in
Bristol. Please check out our instagram feed @fortheloveofweather
to get a flavour of what we got up to. We captured and shared as
many speakers and guests as we could! We were absolutely blown
away by the amazing talks and conversations we had and most
importantly people’s willingness to give us their time to talk
about what they were passionate about.


The Blue Earth Summit is held over 3 days where Bristol
plays host to 5,000+ decision makers, industry pioneers,
provocative thought-leaders, sustainability trailblazers,
insightful solutionists and boundary-pushing start ups. It’s the
place to explore, meet, learn, collaborate and take
action.


FYI The Blue Earth Summit was incredibly busy! There is
back ground noise but hopefully you will take away something from
the mini podcasts we managed to record.


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Our first guest.


Meet Emma Askew @Emmaaskewuk, founder of @Earthminutesuk
. Their mission is to drive the future of environmental learning
and thinking, making it accessible to everyone but also sharing
it in a way that is sustainable.


Emma was quite simply so inspiring to talk to. She is
from the soil science sector which she said was a really
important inflection point for her. This is where she realised
there was a huge gap between the science she was working in and
the communications of the science.


Emma speaks so passionately about encouraging young
people into leadership early and building a connection with the
environment from a young age.


She says she has hope for the future and community is
where hope grows through community action.


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Our second guest.


Michael Cunningham is the founder of the 9trees Community
Interest Company, founded in 2018.


Michael was originally involved in conservation and
observed that while he was completing a lot of work, woodlands
were changing rapidly and not all conservation work was having
positive impact.


Michael decided he wanted to do something about this. He
worked out that each individual in the UK roughly emits 9 tonnes
of carbon into the atmosphere annually. Each tree (based on a
hectare of woodland) sequesters 1 tonne of carbon over the
lifecycle of any one tree and so 9trees was born.


Individuals or businesses can sponsor trees to create
woodlands or nature reserves that you can visit today and watch
flourish over time. Michael describes this as watching hope
grow.


So far the company has planted 15,000 trees but they plan
to plant 10,000 trees every year over the next few years and in
every county in the UK with Northern Ireland being the next
country to plant in.


You can find Michael’s company at
https://www.9trees.org and on instagram
@9treesuk


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Our final guest


Meet Sandra - chair of the West Bristol climate action
group.


Sandra talks about how small local changes are very
important nationally. She wants to create wildlife corridors
locally and between other towns.


Sandra’s message is that decarbonising in small ways adds
up to large changes.


You can find Sandra at
http://www.westbristolclimateaction.org