Climate change & climate action
The climate crisis is a racist crisis. That was the message of a Black Lives Matter UK protest at London City Airport on 6 September, when nine activists used a tripod and chains to close down a runway for over six hours, grounding over 130 flights.
The action sparked two debates. One was about the relevance of climate change, aviation and pollution to the anti-racist struggle.
Black Lives Matter UK (BLM) said: ‘Black people are the first to die, not the first to fly,…
Good news. On 22 September, an East London pension fund with assets of £735m became the first local government pension scheme in Britain to decide to exclude all fossil fuels from its investment strategy (over the next five years).
The chair of the Waltham Forest pension fund committee, councillor Simon Miller said: ‘Not only does this mean the fund will not be invested in stranded assets but [it] will be actively investing in cleaner, greener investments to the benefit of our…
‘We’ve put up with noise and dust from the pits – we’re used to it. We shouldn’t grumble about a few turbines singing in the wind’. These words were spoken in 2000 and, 16 years later, the community wind farm turbines in Mynydd y Gwrhyd, 20 miles north of Swansea, are due to be commissioned by December.
Community benefit society Awel (Welsh for ‘wind’) is funding the scheme through shares (raising £1.27 million to date) and Welsh government loans of £4.…
We had arranged to meet up at the Manhattan Gourmet Restaurant [in New York city], a glorified deli at 57th and 6th, right above the F Train station, with the Chase bank looming across the avenue. We carried our toad heads in a big sack.
It was a working-class place with a lunch crowd shouting their orders, lots of laughter. The folks were service workers, spiffily…
On 14 May, as part of an international climate action, 2,000 campaigners entered and shut down the massive Welzow-Süd opencast lignite coal mine, and its coal-loading station, in Lusatia in eastern Germany. The protest escalated on the following day as more protesters shut down the nearby Schwarze Pumpe lignite power…
Ever since 2007, I have been writing in Peace News about opencast coalmining in Wales, climate change and local injustice.
My particular target has always been the 11-million-tonne Ffos-y-Frân mine near Merthyr Tydfil. At a rough count, I have written and/or edited 12 articles about Ffos-y-Frân for Peace News over the last nine years. Over the same period of time, I have also campaigned and taken direct action against opencast coalmining in Wales.
Alerted to the travesty of…
In early May, the Reclaim the Power (RtP) network organised ‘End Coal Now!’, a protest camp and occupation of the 11-million-tonne Ffos-y-Frân opencast coalmine near Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales. An early appraisal of this action could yield valuable lessons for social movements taking action this year and beyond.
End Coal Now! was followed by the occupation of a lignite coalmine in Welzow in Germany…
In July of last year, 13 climate activists occupied Heathrow airport’s northern runway for six hours, causing around 25 flights to be cancelled. On 24 February, the Heathrow 13, who were found guilty of aggravated trespass and being unlawfully airside, were given suspended sentences of six weeks in prison. This means that if they commit another ‘offence’ in the next 12 months, they will be sent to prison for six weeks for the runway occupation, as well as being sentenced for any new ‘crime…
An open letter from the radical peace movement to the radical climate change movement.
Five Christian climate protestors arrested in Whitehall on 30 November for writing in whitewash and black paint on the wall of the DECC (department for energy and climate change) have had their trial date set for 31 May and 1 June.
On the first day of the Paris climate negotiations, the five painted ‘Dept for Extreme Climate Change’ in black letters on the DECC wall, which they had whitewashed. They…
After the consortium Miller Argent had their proposal for a six-million-tonne open-cast coal mine, Nant Llesg near Rhymney, rejected by Caerphilly council last summer you would have been forgiven for assuming that, after years of the scheme being hotly contested, that was the end of the matter. Not a bit of it.
Despite the strength of resistance to the proposal locally as well as across Wales and…
Not surprisingly for many of us in Wales, two ‘Machtivists’ are among the ‘Heathrow 13’ climate activists who are on trial as we go to press.
The Machynlleth area in mid-Wales has a proud environmental and climate activist record. Machtivists organised the first Camp against Climate Change in Merthyr in 2009, in support of the residents struggling against Ffos-y-Fran opencast coalmine, and they are involved in the ongoing battle against further mining described elsewhere on this…
On 7 December, indigenous activists from across the world kayaked down the river Seine to protest against the removal of the protection of indigenous rights as a crucial aspect of the climate treaty being negotiated in Paris. The push back against indigenous rights was led by the US, EU, Australia – all states with a rich past and present of colonial exploitation of people and land – who feared that the protection of indigenous rights might create legal…
Friday started in an airy industrial squat just outside central Paris, with two men arguing whether the type of tear gas used by the French police has ever been implicated in the deaths of protesters.
The people being trained to form a human barricade practiced linking our arms through backpack straps (see p20), locking our legs together when sitting down, ducking our heads to minimise…