We had plenty of things to put on the stall at the Farmers Market, an excellent, eye-catching banner made by Esme and a steady stream of interested people. [See picture and report in the Courier]

Dee and Lindy looked after the stall while two of us interviewed people using a rather hastily put together survey and encouraged them to go to the stall/join if appropriate. We felt this was a useful exercise and it certainly showed that it would be useful to make people aware of peak oil and the implications of this. I wonder if doing it on the High Street on a non market day would produce a different result? 

We talked to 47 people, trying to pick out people we didn't know, and the results were as follows [numbers don't always add up to 47, probably because I forgot some ticks, and I haven't had time to do percentages]; 

1 Do you think human action is a main cause of climate change? 
        Yes 35      No 5        don't know 7 

2 How urgent is it to take action? 
        Very 35     fairly  9       not very 1      don't know  2 

3 How much do we need to reduce our carbon footprint in UK? 
        10% 1       30%  10         60%  22     90%  9      don't know  4 

4 Have you heard of peak oil? 
        yes  6      no  42          don't know  1 

5 Have you taken steps to reduce your own carbon footprint? 
        yes  42   no  4 

We asked people what they had been doing and had all sorts of answers. 

13 people mentioned using the car less and one didn't drive; two elderly gentlemen had quite an argument about wether public transport should be free or just cheaper. 

One had given up flying. 

At least 15 had tried to do something about cutting their use of energy and fossil fuels in the home by such things as low energy bulbs, insulation, more efficient boiler, switching off at power points 

There were several mentions of recycling and reusable shopping bags. 

Other things were local food, buying organic, composting, saving water, reed-bed sewage system at home and a windmill at work.