Climate change & climate action

1 June 2023News

Japanese bank withdraws from pipeline

A major Japanese bank, the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), has been forced to withdraw from financing the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). This has been claimed as a win by the #StopEACOP coalition of over 260 civil society organisations.

The 900-mile-long heated pipeline, a project of French oil company Total and Chinese oil company CNOOC, threatens to displace thousands of families and farmers from their land and rip through numerous sensitive biodiversity…

2 April 2023Review

Cambridge University Press, 2023; 454pp; £11.99

This book explains how we could use existing technologies, such as wind turbines and heat pumps, to create a worldwide energy system based entirely on wind, water (tides and waves) and solar power (WWS).

Such a system would help solve three major crises: the air pollution crisis (which currently claims some seven million lives a year); global warming (overwhelmingly caused by fossil fuels); and energy insecurity (dramatically illustrated in the fallout from Russia’s invasion of…

2 April 2023Letter

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Last issue, you reported on South Lakes Action on Climate Change’s legal challenge to the government’s approval of the proposed huge new coal mine at Whitehaven in Cumbria. (PN 2664)

I’d like to add to what Friends of the Earth are quoted as saying about the climate and employment impacts.

Figures of 500 jobs in the mine have been contrasted…

2 April 2023Letter

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It was a great relief to read in your last issue the editorial entitled XR, ‘Don’t Overpromise!’ (PN 2664) It really was spot on. We are active members of our local group and are glad that the London events beginning on 21 April will, for the first time, involve peace and other campaigning organisations. But you hit the nail on the head in that title.

1 February 2023News

Eco groups file applications in high court

On 13 January, Friends of the Earth (FoE) and South Lakes Action on Climate Change (SLACC) filed applications in the high court to take legal action against the government over the construction of a new coalmine in Cumbria, in North-West England. The two organisations have co-operated in designing their legal challenges to dovetail rather than overlap.

The reason for their request for a judicial review is the decision of Levelling Up secretary, Michael Gove, to grant planning…

1 February 2023News in Brief

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was among thousands of campaigners arrested on 17 January during protests in Germany at the expansion of the Garzweiler open-cast coal mine.

Greta was arrested in the village of Lützerath, which had seen a violent eviction by riot police the week before. Lützerath is scheduled to be swallowed up by the expansion of the mine.

The Green party, which is part of the German government, said the activists should accept the compromise which…

4 January 2023Blog

Join 100,000 in London on 21 April to surround Westminster demanding a sustainable future

This is a moment of huge potential

On one hand, there are many reasons to feel the future is bleak: recent failure of COP27,  vicious attacks on migrants, unravelling living standards, widening inequality, crashing biodiversiy, and extreme weather events brought about by worsening climate conditions to name a few. On the other hand, there is a unique opportunity to unite across divides for effective action, and there is an amazing potential for change. 

Along with the peace…

1 December 2022Feature

Three possible joint campaigns for the peace and climate movements  

Should the peace and climate movements be trying to work more together and, if so, how?

These were two of the key questions posed at the recent ‘War and the climate emergency’ dayschool in Oxford that brought climate and peace campaigners together to learn and reflect in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It’s not hard to find common ground shared by the two movements.

For example, as PN’s editor, Milan Rai, has noted, Russia’s criminal invasion of…

1 December 2022News in Brief

Despite the severity of the climate crisis, oil and gas companies around the world are still on a massive expansion course.

That’s the conclusion of the latest authoritative GOGEL survey of oil and gas exploration and development, in a report launched on 10 November at the COP27 climate talks in Egypt.

GOGEL (the Global Oil and Gas Exit List) is a public database maintained by 51 respected NGOs including Urgewald of Germany.

GOGEL monitors the activities of 901 companies…

1 December 2022News

New campaign needed to support financing for the Global South

‘The ultimate test of this COP is that it has responded to the voices of the climate vulnerable by establishing a fund for loss and damage.’ That was Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s minister for climate change, speaking at the closing session of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on 20 November, on behalf of most of the Global South – she was representing the G77/China* group.

Here in the UK, Friends of the Earth welcomed the fund as ‘a first step towards wealthy nations providing loss and…

1 October 2022News

Extra captions added to Shell-sponsored exhibition

On 10 September, some extra captions and exhibits were added to the Shell-sponsored carbon capture exhibition at the Science Museum, London.

Artist Darren Cullen (AKA Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives) ‘thought it was weird that an exhibition about carbon capture, paid for by an oil company, didn’t once mention that 81% of all the carbon ever captured by this technology has been used by oil companies and pumped back into oil wells to help extract more oil’.

He decided to correct…

1 October 2022News in Brief

British prime minister Liz Truss and her new government are planning to approve a massive new oilfield in the North Sea: Rosebank.

If it went ahead, Rosebank’s annual CO2 emissions would be more than those of the 28 lowest-income countries in the world combined.

#StopRosebank, the new campaign from the people who brought you the successful #StopCambo movement, has launched a petition aimed at Truss and her business secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg:

1 October 2022News

Climate campaigners in Westminster actions

On 2 September, Extinction Rebellion (XR), the climate change direct action group, carried out actions at the Westminster parliament in London. Three XR members glued themselves to a chain inside the chamber of the house of commons. Two other campaigners held large banners reading: ‘Citizens Assembly Now’ and ‘Let the People Decide’.

Meanwhile, another two XR activists D-locked themselves by their necks to the gates to the members’ car park and an eighth rebel climbed up the…

1 August 2022News

Gallery protests demand end to new oil extraction 

On 23 July, the ‘We All Want to Just Stop Oil’ coalition held a ‘mass swarming march’ in Central London. Groups set off from 11 separate locations, causing much traffic disruption, and all converging in Parliament Square for an authorised symbolic mass sit-down. Real Media, who filmed the event, reported that 1,000 people took part.

The coalition is headed by the climate action group Just Stop Oil (JSO). Other members include CND, Disabled People Against Cuts, Fuel Poverty Action,…

1 August 2022News in Brief

Over 400 teachers have said they will not be taking their students to a new gallery at London’s Science Museum if it continues to be sponsored by the massive coal company, Adani, and they will boycott any exhibitions sponsored by fossil fuel companies.

Currently, the Science Museum is sponsored by oil and gas giants Shell, BP and Equinor as well as by Adani.

Fossil Free Science Museum, which organised the open letter, says: ‘These companies are pushing the world further towards…