Climate change & climate action

1 December 2011News

British climate change activists blocked from entering the US

Unsilenced, John Stewart and Dan Glass speak on aviation resistance to a US audience in San Jose University via Skype

A new US-wide activist network is to be set up to oppose the soaring growth of aviation in America.

This exciting development follows the Aviation Justice Express tour in which John Stewart and I were invited to share the great British people’s victory against Heathrow’s third runway with people in the USA. The invitation…

1 December 2011Review

DVD 90 mins . Available for £10 + £2.50 p&p from justdoitfilm.com

Emily James spent a year embedded in the environmental direct action movement with groups like Plane Stupid, Climate Camp, Bike Block and others, gaining their confidence and trying to capture the passion, commitment, and excitement of putting direct action into practice.

The resulting film is a dense, fascinating, fast-moving work in which we meet and follow a variety of individuals, and hear stories from their lives as activists. We see them in action at the Vestas wind turbine…

1 December 2011News in Brief

Fossil-fuel consumers worldwide received about six times more state subsidies last year than were given to the renewable-energy industry, the International Energy Agency said on 9 November.

Aid to cut the price of petrol, gas and coal rose by more than a third to $409bn, compared to only $66bn of support for biofuels, wind power and solar energy.

1 October 2011Review

The Global Warming Reader (OR Books, 2011; 400pp; £14.00); Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand (Earthscan, 2011; 192 pages; £14.99)

Despite UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s 2007 warning that climate change “is the defining challenge of our age”, since the Copenhagen summit global warming has fallen off the political agenda. No better time then to read these two essential and accessible books to enlighten and inspire action.

Divided into three sections – Science, Politics and Meaning – The Global Warming Reader is an edited collection of 36 seminal scientific papers, newspaper articles and book chapters. Famous…

1 October 2011News

1252 arrested at US tar sands protests.

There were 1,252 arrests during a fortnight’s protests in Washington DC against a proposed 1,700-mile pipeline designed to ship more than 830,000 barrels a day of oil from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to Texas, USA.

Sit-ins were held outside the White House in Washington DC from 20 August to 3 September, leading to the arrest of top climate scientists, Texan and Nebraskan landowners, Canadian First Nation leaders, former White House official Gus Speth, NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen…

1 October 2011News

Welsh activists take action on transport.

On 9 July, 17 enthusiastic young cyclists from Dyfodol (The Welsh Youth Forum for Sustainable Development) set off from Corris in Gwynedd on a five-day, 160-mile bike ride to Cardiff.

Funded by The Co-operative, this is the fourth consecutive year for the Carbon Cycle, and numbers continue to grow. The ride was to increase awareness and call for better cycling provisions in Wales and raise sponsorship money for Project Mongolia, a collaborative venture between young climate activists…

1 October 2011News

Skillshare draws over 100 participants.

This year’s Coal Action Scotland Outdoor Skillshare event brought over 100 people to a gathering in rural South Lanarkshire to share skills, ideas and experiences about all aspects of life and activism, and to increase mutual capacity for effective action.

For four days, the Talamh housing co-operative became a hive of mini-projects, massive marquees, geodomes and inclusive participatory skillsharing.

The diversity of people was truly inspiring. People came to South Lanarkshire…

1 September 2011News

Hywel Davies casts a skeptical eye over plans to revive coal mining in Wales.

My father was a coal miner in the Llynfi / Maesteg valley from 14 to 26; both my grandfathers were colliers in that valley; and a great grandfather was a miners’ agent and founding committee member of the South Wales Miners Federation which preceded the NUM.

People of my generation greatly admired the mining traditions of our Welsh communities. It was a particular privilege for me to have been trained as a journalist in the Heads of the Valleys and to have become editor of the weekly…

1 September 2011News in Brief

In July, Camilla Berens was fined £200 and Michelle Jackson £95 after pleading guilty to obstructing the highway. In April they blockaded all four lanes of the A302 outside the HQ of EDF energy company and alongside the grounds of Buckingham palace for six hours, using tripods, in protest at EDF’s plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK. The demo was organised by the “EDF Boycott Campaign”.
For brilliant video of event, see:…

1 September 2011News in Brief

On 17 July, Greenpeace activists, many dressed as polar bears, staged a sit-in at the Edinburgh HQ of Cairn Energy, and demanded a copy of the company's plan to deal with potential oil spills in the Arctic where they are drilling for oil and gas. Cairn Energy got an injunction the following day preventing Greenpeace publishing pictures of the protest. The injunction backfired against Cairn when hundreds of people broke the court order on behalf of the environment group by posting the photos…

1 September 2011News in Brief

The 20 climate activists convicted of conspiring to shut down Ratcliffe coal power station had their convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal in July, following the revelation earlier this year that the CPS had not disclosed evidence gathered by undercover cop Mark Kennedy which could have been useful to their defence. The ruling described Kennedy as “arguably an agent provocateur.”

1 September 2011News in Brief

17-18 September, campaigners will pitch near Blackpool for Camp Frack, a climate camp-style effort to burst the bubble of hydraulic gas fracking in the UK. Two activists scaled Blackpool Tower in August to drop a banner announcing a new anti-fracking website, www.frack-off.org. Fracking is a dangerous and highly polluting form of gas extraction which is banned in France.

1 September 2011News in Brief

The Huntington Lane camp in Shropshire has been evicted after more than 18 amazing months of disrupting UK Coal’s construction of an open-cast coal mine on the site. $1.8m action In the US, activist Tim DeChristopher was jailed for two years in late July following his fake $1.8m bids for oil and gas drilling licences in the final days of the Bush administration. The judge stated that DeChristopher’s sentence had been increased because he had spent the trial process encouraging mass civil…

1 September 2011News in Brief

1 September 2011News in Brief

The clerks of the Houses of Parliament have taken the unusual step of publishing online a letter to Lord Monckton, UKIP climate sceptic, asking him to desist from claiming to be, or to have ever been, a member of the House of Lords.