Matt Szabo is currently working as an MEA Project Manager helping deliver Staffordshire Moorlands District Council's ‘Project Carbon'. As a member of the Low Carbon Communities team, the post entails working on the ‘front line' of energy advice and public engagement around climate change. The role combines previous experience as an educator, climate change campaign worker, and local authority consultant.

Professional Interests: Helping stimulate environmental awareness at any levels of society I have access to. Main-streaming the low carbon message.

Qualifications: PhD: Environmental Ethics and Moral Philosophy (University of Manchester) MA: Environmental Philosophy (University of Manchester); BA Photography (Staffordshire University); PGCE Religious Studies (Manchester Met.).

Skills: De-mystifying complex ideas and professional jargon and helping people understand the bigger ecological picture. Happy to work with a number of partners, learn their respective languages, and get them talking the same language.

Where I've come from: Genetically - England and Hungary; geographically - ‘The North'. 

I like: Being outside, mountains, climbing, music, food, drink, ideas, socialising and solitude in equal measure.

A moral I live my life by: I (personally) interpret ‘energy efficiency' as a contemporary moral obligation rather than a technical problem to be solved.

How I'm trying to live more sustainably: I down-shifted long before I ‘moved-on-up'. Currently, trying to live a comfortable, stylish, but frugal family lifestyle and trying to be happy to do so. My partner is like-minded so the latter is achievable.

I believe the greatest threat to our current society and environment is: The under-regulated global free-market.

My 'dirty secret': I occasionally fly (and often drive) to climbing and walking areas. I look forward to personal carbon credits whereby I can legitimately trade these ‘carbon treats' against other aspects of my lifestyle.

It may surprise you to know but . . . I arm-wrestled Arne Naess on my 30^th birthday. He was 85, he cheated (with a tickle), and he won.

If things had turned out differently I might have been . . . A Buddhist monk.