Words are one thing but actions always speak much louder. There’s a beginning in every thing. In street solar panels, too. A husband and wife duo is doing rooftop campaign to fund for street solar panels from economic crisis and climate change.
The husband and wife’s campaign on the roof for street solar panels
Married couple are prepared to sleep on their roof in the cold for a period of three weeks in a crowdfunding attempt to get solar panels installed in their street.
They will not be leaving the roof of their house until their crowdfunding goal has been completed. The goal of the couple, Daniel Edelstyn who is a filmmaker and Hilary Powell are to build a renewable power station that their whole street will be able to benefit from.
Publicity campaign from climate crisis
The idea for this campaign came from ideas that have been detailed by economist and author Ann Pettifor, and the Green New Deal. This is mot the first the couple have tried such publicity campaigns to prove a point or achieve a goal.
Previously that had taken over an old bank, printed their own money and blew it up, in order to highlight and bring to the forefront the connection between economics and the climate crisis.
Filmmaker Daniel said of the project:
“We decided that we would try and turn our street into a power station, which is the kind of it’s an idea from one of the writers of a book called “The case for the Green New Deal”, a writer called Anne Pettifor and she said that every building should be a power station, and we really liked that phrase.”
“We decided to take it in a liberal way, and rather than waiting for some perfect government to come along, we would basically do our own type of our own hyper local Green Deal and then argue this is what should be happening everywhere,”
The couple campaign’s achievement so far
In roughly 7 days they have achieved nearly 50% of their initial fundraising goal, and are determined that they can exceed this target if they campaign hard enough.
Daniel added: “It’s going quite well, we’re raising the money, but really the goal is £100,000 and there’s another three weeks off the crowdfund, I have the feeling that we will probably have to get that if we get that far.
“Even though it got to like £26,000 quickly, it definitely slowed down on the last day a little bit. We’re picking up other little bits of press now as the word gets out, hopefully the crowdfund will bulge.
If we get to £100,000 before three weeks are up, then we’ll come down.” The couple have 2 children of school age, aged 10 and 12 respectively, as well as 2 dogs, so it’s been a challenge for them to juggle their care of them, and maintain their focus on the goal.
The rooftop campaign isn’t without its hardships, and trials though. Daniel explained: “We’ve got a plastic sheet, but I mean, it’s impossible to stay fully dry up there.
In the evening even if it’s not raining, the air itself seems to carry a lot of moisture, and anything outside of the little of plastic sheets does end up wet in the mornings. We’ve now got goof sleeping bags. And we’ve under a blanket, and we’ve got the plastic sheets.
So those are the things that are friends out there. If you like and then you know we’re not having to stay up there during the day. Like I think that would be too much. We have to look after our children and you know walk the dogs and all the rest of it, but it’s not terrible!”
Economic cost of living crisis and climate change
Lastly Daniel added his thoughts in the relation between the current economic cost of living crisis and climate change:
“Right now, we’re at a time of economic crisis and what we learned when we were doing the film Bank Job is the last thing we should be doing is cutting public spending at this time, we should increase it.
If we were to actually invest in this green technology everywhere across the Britain, which is what we’re arguing for, it would see a major boost to the economy.
‘Lots more jobs would be created, and it would stimulate the economic system and what should be happening basically, that would deal with the cost of living crisis. It would deal with the climate crisis as well, that’s the message,” Daniel explained.
“If people agree with what we’re saying, and they want to see this happening first on our street and then moving out from there, right the way across Britain, then please do get behind.
Words are one thing but actions always speak much louder. So this is us really putting ourselves out there on the roof.”
Closure
Installing street solar panel will create more jobs to be free from the current economic crisis and tackle climate change as well. The married couple started a campaign and its effect will spread like ripples in a lake.
Source: MyLondon
