On 23 June, Climate Siren activists hung banners on the gates of Buckingham palace. PHOTO: Peter Marshall
The human race may be pushing the Earth towards a rapid, catastrophic and irreversible ‘state shift’ leading to mass extinctions, according to a paper by 22 leading scientists published in the world’s top scientific journal, Nature, in the run-up to the failed Rio+20 environment conference. The Nature paper set out possible measures for avoiding or limiting the state shift, which may…
In December 2011, South Lanarkshire council approved Scottish Coal’s proposal for a huge open-cast coal mine near the village of Glespin.
This was the nineteenth open-cast-related consent they had given, but they took this particular decision with no consultation whatsoever. Indeed the community were not even informed about it at the time.
Residents have an ongoing…
‘Hold this a moment, while I staple these.’ Ninety minutes and nearly a mile later, I was still holding aloft the mid-section of the giant green dinosaur, and being used as cover by some masked youths making a grab for some plastic barriers. ‘If the police move in to arrest people, I’m off,’ the hind legs told me.
Several hundred people – variously dressed as Robin Hood and giant flowers – had met outside the Grange Hotel near St Paul’s cathedral, venue of the UK Energy Summit, for…
Between 12 and 24 May, trade unionists and climate activists from the One Million Climate Jobs Campaign will be touring the UK in a Climate Caravan inspired by the Trans African Climate Caravan of Hope of 2011.
This month’s British Climate Caravan is demanding massive government investment to create one million new ‘climate jobs’.
Climate jobs are not ‘green jobs’ in the national parks or in pollution control. Climate jobs actually cut emissions of greenhouse gases: insulating…
On 29 January, as part of an Occupy-style protest, six Fuel Poverty Action activists barricaded themselves into meeting rooms on two floors of the British Gas offices in Staines, Middlesex.
The protests were part of Fuel Poverty Action’s ‘Winter Warmup’ weekend, drawing attention to a situation where a large portion of the population must choose to either ‘heat or eat’.
Protesters also held demonstrations in Cambridge, Leeds, London, Manchester and Swindon, targeting the ‘Big…
Over 350 people, most of them on their bikes, gathered outside the office of the Scottish government in Edinburgh on 11 January. They came to support Stop Climate Change’s campaign to increase funding for cycling and walking instead of expensive road-building programmes that will increase Scotland’s carbon footprint.
Scotland has shown global leadership by setting the most ambitious emissions reduction targets in the world, including a target to reduce Scotland’s emissions by 42% (…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
