Climate change & climate action

Fifteen members of the Welsh Youth Forum on Sustainable Development (WYFSD), Gwerin y Coed (the Woodcraft Folk in Wales) and representatives of other youth organisations spent five days in the saddle, cycling from Machynlleth to Cardiff Bay to hand deliver a petition to Jane Davidson, Minister for the Environment, Sustainability and Housing. Delivered at the Welsh Assembly Government building on Wednesday 22 September, the petition called for better cycling provision in Wales.

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“This is not a rally, a demo or a march,” read the flier. “This is mass direct action that aims to disrupt the flow of oil into London. Welcome to the Crude Awakening.” Crikey.

Following a prompt early-morning rendezvous at Euston (the website had warned that we would be leaving immediately), half-an-hour of standing around waiting (which my affinity group utilized to staple-on our home-made polar bear masks), and some fun-and-games on the tube (“Like the badger mask mate!”),…

20 climate change activists are facing trial on 22 November, after being arrested in a night-time police raid in on the eve of their attempt to shut down E.ON’s Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal power station on 13 April. The activists, who are pleading not guilty on a necessity defence, face up to three months in prison for aggravated trespass.
114 campaigners were arrested in the pre-emptive April raid. In January another six of the 114 go on trial for the same “offence”; they are pleading not…

PN: In your view, can we halt runaway climate change without overthrowing capitalism?

GC: I hope so – because if we can’t then it looks like we’re well and truly stuffed.

PN: Why?

GC: I think the burden of proof is on those who say that we can’t – not least because if they’re right then this severely limits the range of strategies that it’s sensible to pursue.

Some activists simply assert that it’s impossible, as if it’s a self-evident truth.

Too often the…

PN: How do you see the relationship between capitalism and climate change?

CC: I think they’re inherently linked because capitalism can only exist with continual growth based on turning natural resources, i.e. bits of planet, into money. And the way it does that is by chopping it up, excavating it, turning it into product, burning it, disposing of it. Basically whatever it takes, we’ll degrade, and that leads to climate change.

PN: Can we stop runaway climate change without…

PN: Can we halt runaway climate change without overthrowing capitalism?

BC: No, it’s impossible. Short answer. Well, I really don’t believe it’s possible at all, because, for a start, the way capitalism is set up is based on growth, and it would basically disintegrate without growing. And so, a planet is finite, and all the resources that capitalism depends on are finite, so it’s not going to last, it’s not sustainable. But before it’s actually stopped by the laws of the physics, it’s…

PN: In your view, can we halt runaway climate change without overthrowing capitalism as well?

PT: I think you’d have to take the first question, which is a quite valid one, which is: ‘can we halt runaway climate change.’ There are serious reasons to think that we won’t be able to and that we’re too late already…. It could be a more complex question in that, if we ever get into a situation in which something that dire is happening, we’ll be doing all sorts of things like geo-…

PN: Can we halt runaway climate change without overthrowing capitalism?

EJ: It’s interesting that you talk about overthrowing capitalism because I think there’s a commonly used expression—overthrowing or dismantling or smashing—and I think that can sometimes be a little bit inaccurate about the nature of capitalism, which is a social relationship, an economic relationship that we are all participating in and reproducing on a daily basis. So I liked John Holloway’s description of how…

PN: In your view, can we halt runaway climate change without overthrowing capitalism? If not, why not? Or, if we can, why do you think that is possible?

MA: In theory, yes – capitalism has a built in drive to accumulate – and a structural incapacity to count effects on the environment into market valuations. So left to its own, with regulation, etc., it is not just incredibly harmful and destructive of human potentials, productive of poverty, and so on – but it also so violates the…

A careful new report from CND demonstrates that replacing the Trident nuclear weapons submarine system will actually cost more jobs than it generates, and that cancelling the project gives Britain a golden opportunity to use its industrial skills for a green economy.

Recent weeks have seen a furious struggle within the military establishment, as the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has struggled to plan for the 10%-20% cuts being demanded. Because the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition…

The Climate Nine activists associated with Plane Stupid who closed down Aberdeen airport back in March 2009 have received their sentences. They were found guilty of a breach of the peace at Aberdeen sheriff court, where they had faced up to five years in prison, but instead received fines of up to £700.

Expert witnesses testified that urgent and direct action is necessary to stop runaway climate change and that the aviation industry, as one of the fastest growing sources of CO2…

On 12 September, 40 climate activists occupied a new site in Happendon Wood, South Lanarkshire, Scotland to set up the Happendon Wood Action Camp (THWAC), to help defend the wood from destruction by Scottish Coal.

The Scottish Resources Group (SRG), which owns Scottish Coal, have applied for planning permission for a mixed-use development on this land (which is in an area of Great Landscape Value) in the Douglas Valley, but they intend to mine the area first.

It is…

On 12 August, environmental protesters stopped the giant oil company Shell from drilling a borehole in the sea near Rosslare in south-east Ireland. A bagpiper and drummer led local people and Shell to Sea campers in a low-tide march to one of the drilling rigs where they danced around the drill casing, then huddled round in a group hug, effectively shutting down the drill until late in the afternoon when security guards forcibly removed the remaining huggers.
Meanwhile Shell to Sea…

At dawn on 31 August, four Greenpeace protesters in speed boats evaded a flotilla of armed Danish navy and police boats in Baffin Bay, and climbed an oil rig owned by Cairn Energy, to demand that the company end its dangerous drilling in the Arctic. After 40 hours' occupation, shutting down the rig, harsh weather forced the activists to descend from the hanging tents they had erected under the platform. They were then arrested.
See www.greenpeace.…

“Give me the directions. There’s loads of people here”, the kilted figure said into his mobile phone, turning to us to make an announcement: “They’ve taken the site and need as many people there as quickly as possible. I’ll take you.” At 10pm it was still 14 hours before activists were scheduled to take the site for the 2010 Climate Camp, but after a gruelling 12-hour journey on the Megabus we had finally made it to Edinburgh’s Forest Café.

Unfortunately, our guide had overestimated…