Climate change & climate action

I went to the UN Climate Negotiations in Poznan in December as an International Youth Delegate, hoping to help sway the negotiators from their positions of bad science and inaction to build our future in consultation with young people.
But, day by day, bad news filtered through to the IYD: the US, Canada and New Zealand voted against keeping the clause protecting indigenous peoples’ rights in the policy on deforestation; Australia decided not to announce their emissions reductions…

On 6 December, two of us from Wales joined with a larger group to blockade the runway at Stansted Airport. I’ve now been sentenced for this action at Margam magistrates’ court.

This is the statement I gave to the judge explaining my actions:
“On 6 December I felt that I had no other option but to join 56 other worried citizens on a taxi-way at Stansted airport, directly halting the emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and drawing attention to the absurdity of…

This year saw some outstanding court victories, including a legal breakthrough in Nottingham on 14 January when 11 East Midlands activists were allowed to present a legal argument known as “defence of necessity”. They had shut down the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power plant in 2007.

The big court wins of the year were the 10 September Kingsnorth Six victory, securing an acquittal on charges of causing £30,000 worth of damage to Kingsnorth power station, and the 11 June Raytheon…

It has been intriguing in recent weeks to follow the various, and largely more coherent, debates and discussions that have emerged in the wake of the Climate Camp, and also as the discussions about Transition that the Trapese Collective’s “Rocky Road” document stimulated have rumbled on. A recent piece from Peace News by Kelvin Mason entitled “When Climate Camp Comes Home”, drew on his reflections as an activist who attended previous Climate Camps and also as someone with an involvement in…

On 10 September, six Greenpeace activists won a historic legal victory after they were found “not guilty” of criminal damage by a jury at Maidstone crown court – after admitting causing £30,000 worth of damage to a smokestack at Kings-north coal-fired power station.

The legal defence was mounted by Michael Wolkind QC, barrister Quincy Whitaker, and Mike Schwarz and Catherine Jackson of Bindmans Solicitors, and supported by testimony from, among others, the world’s most eminent…

China, which spent £6bn on green energy projects last year, may soon become the world’s largest investor in renewable energy.

The ministry of public security has listed pollution as one of the top five threats to China’s peace and stability. In 2005, China experienced 51,000 riots or demonstrations of 100 or more people protesting against pollution – according to official estimates.

Li Junfeng, an energy expert at the National Development and Reform Commission said in…

A “Transition Initiative” is a community working together to address this BIG question: “for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?”
An Initiating Group raises awareness, connects with existing groups in the community, builds bridges to local government, forms groups to…

Climate Camp has rightly been described as both “the world’s most organised protest” and “the most important protest of our time”. The severity of the climate crisis that is looming is not easy to imagine. If we do see a temperature rise of 4C above pre-industrial levels, up to half the world’s species could die out, and our descendants will face apocalyptic consequences.

The Camp is the confluence of several streams of organising going back decades. It demonstrates, among other…

On 26 July, over a hundred environmental activists and local residents met in a small church on the edge of Heathrow to discuss future action against the proposed third runway.

Predictably, the Evening Standard, reported that “hardcore activists” were preparing “a new wave of non-violent ‘attacks’ on the airport which could culminate in an invasion of Heathrow’s runways”, while the Hounslow Chronicle claimed that a “new breed of ‘grey haired, middle-aged’ protesters are gearing up…

I’ve been to the last two camps for climate action, and both were transformative experiences. At Drax in North Yorkshire in 2006, the sense of building a politically, socially, technologically, environmentally and educationally viable community in and for a week shifted my whole gut-feeling about the difficulty of changing society: it can be done, it can be fun, and it’s immensely fulfilling to be part of. Instead of policing our society, we had the irresistible Tranquillity Team in pink…

There was always a sense that the third incarnation of the Climate Camp had to push the boundaries of what we, and the authorities, thought possible and avoid “another year, another camp” mentality. People have always walked for change – Gandhi’s salt march, the Jarrow crusade, the Aldermaston marches… and so the idea emerged of a Climate Caravan, a physical movement of people connecting together the history and geography of popular resistance and environmental protest.

It all…

Presenter: And to be clear, you would be in favour of saying to E.ON: “If you want to build this station, you have got to provide carbon capture and storage for it, for the emissions.”
Brown: There’s work to be done, to scale up carbon capture to the level you would be able to use it on a power generation plant. We don’t want to stop building the Kingsnorth station until everything is ready. We build Kingsnorth, and then, at the earliest possible date, we’d retrofit it with carbon…

The third and biggest British Camp for Climate Action fed, watered and educated perhaps 3,000 people from 3-11 August, sparked actions around the country, triggered 100 arrests and two prison sentences and culminated in a massive day of action against the proposed new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Essex.

Climate Camp highlighted the importance of the Kingsnorth decision as a key indicator of whether or not Britain is serious about avoiding catastrophic climate change (see…

On Saturday 21 June, a toddler in a child-seat and twenty cyclists from the Welsh Youth Forum on Sustainable Development, Gwerin Y Coed (Woodcraft Folk) and Grwp Beic Aberystwyth completed the 157 miles from Machynlleth to Cardiff to publicise the need for cycle-lanes and provision for bikes on public transport.

At the Senedd, where they delivered a petition, cyclists were welcomed by Leanne Wood AM and Gordon James of FoE Cymru. Although cyclists endured some hostile motorists, they…

The best thing was probably shovelling the coal out of the train onto the lines. It was both fun and satisfying. The coal wasn’t in the train any more and it definitely wasn’t going to be burned.

The worst thing about the whole experience – for me – was not being given our books in the police station. For others, it was their houses being raided, and lots of stuff taken, including flatmates’ possessions. (Only people living in Wales didn’t get raided.)

There were three groups…