My New Project: 80,000 Hours

I haven’t been posting here for a while as I’ve been very wrapped up in a new and exciting project, which I can finally reveal is a campaign called 80,000 Hours.  I’ve been coordinating a media preview in which we launched our research on the ethics of career choice today.

We made the top spot on BBC online’s education section, and also had the final spot on the BBC’s today programme with Ian Hislop.  Our combined reach was between 5% and 10% of the UK population within the first day of our research launch!

We ran a provocative media campaign to get people to start discussing the issues and prompt a conversation in the media.  On my Facebook wall alone there are almost 100 comments on the ideas, with some very vigorous debate, and we hope that this discussion will continue into the future.  We’ll be launching the organisation properly later this year, but until then check out our brand new website.

Our aim is to get people to pursue the career in which they can help the most people in the world.  We hope that this campaign will get people to at least start thinking about this question.

Support the ‘Age of Stupid’ wind farm

UPDATE:  The easiest way to write to the planning officer is here.
___

For those of you who have seen the Age of Stupid (here’s a trailer for those who haven’t), Piers has resubmitted his proposal for Airfield Windfarm in a much scaled-down format (only three wind-turbines now) and could use some letter-writing support.

At this stage, the most positive thing that you could do would be to write a letter of support to the planning officer;

Peter Bull
Planning and Housing Services
Bedford Borough Council
Town Hall
St. Paul’s Square
Bedford
MK40 1SJ

RE: Application No. 08/02692/MAF

If you want to invite as many of your friends/family to do the same this all helps.

Let’s see if we can get this proposal approved at last!

Are you ProWind?

Some facts for you:

• 79% of Britons support the idea of developing wind farms with just 8% opposed.
• 74% of British bill-payers are in favour of the Government’s ambition to generate 20% of the UK’s electricity from renewable power sources by 2020
• 69% of Britons support construction of wind turbines in their local area.

This week I began working on a new campaign that Dom Rowland and I were inspired to start after seeing Franny Armstrong’s Age of Stupid.  The campaign, named ProWind, does what it says on the tin.  It it links up local pro-wind groups in order to create a grassroots network of pro-wind campaigners.  When a wind turbine proposal is submitted for planning permission, we hope to have a group of local campaigners ready to back it.  ProWind aims to support these campaigners by helping them to represent the silent majority.  We will help their local campaign to reach the national media, and also allow other pro-wind individuals in the UK to support their cause financially.  We will also put them in touch with sympathetic experts that are keen to help their cause, such as a planning lawyer willing to work pro-bono, or an experienced graphic designer.

The amazing thing about the opinion polls above is that they were all published before 2005—yes before climate change became an issue of national public concern.  Today I would expect these numbers to be even higher.

It is time that we had a national group to go up against the likes of WindWatch (I can’t bare to link to them so their URL is here: http://www.wind-watch.org/).  Don’t worry folks—it’s coming soon!