Climate change & climate action

The UN COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen in December was a shambles. The little that was agreed reads like a paltry preamble to a treaty that never was – global average temperature rises should be held below 2oC; carbon emissions must be cut, but in a way that does not hinder economic progress of the developing world; a fund should be established to help poorer countries adapt to the threat of climate change (with an initial annual outlay of only $8bn, or about a third of what Shell…

The forced eviction of the Mainshill Solidarity Camp ended on 29 January, with over 70 people resisting the eviction, 45 arrests and a huge number of defences that kept the National Eviction Team busy for five days. At the same time digger-diving shut down the nearby Ravenstruther coal terminal for the third time in a year.

Mainshill Solidarity Camp was set up in June 2009, acting with local groups against proposed open-cast mining and its detrimental effects on public health. All…

I’m neither a summit-hopper nor a pacifist, yet the plan for mass nonviolent action at the COP15 Climate summit in Copenhagen caught my imagination.

“Using only the force of our bodies”, went the call-out by the Climate Justice Action network, “we will overcome any physical barriers that stand in our way” to “push into the conference area and enter the building, disrupt the sessions” and hold a “horizontal” assembly.

Images of the raid on the Dharasana salt works, 21…

First prize in the Copenhagen Greenwash Awards must go to Siemens and Coca-Cola for branding the host city “Hopenhagen”. Siemens set up a faux city, brightly lit in a mendacious green, extolling unsustainable technologies including super-fast electric sports cars. Coke posters proclaimed the mega-corp’s sugar- and exploitation-suffused product as “hope in a bottle!” Hopenhagen makes you sick.

There was never any hope of mitigating climate change or attaining climate justice via…

The chief constable of Kent, Mike Fuller, admitted in the High Court on 12 January that his police had conducted illegal “stop and searches” on 11-year-old twins, Dave Morris and other activists at the August 2008 week-long Climate Camp at the Kingsnorth power station. Police had already been heavily criticised for brutality towards protesters at the camp by officers who hid their badge numbers and for using loud music to stop activists sleeping.

The High Court was told that the…

On 16 June, Manchester Plane Stupid disrupted an airport industry conference using helium balloons reading “Happy Retirement”. The balloons floated to the top of the Manchester Central conference venue where they remained with their attached rape alarms ringing loudly.

This occurred just as the industry delegates were posing for a photo shoot for the launch of a new carbon reduction scheme at European airports – which will not include emissions from aircraft. The Airports Council…

Even for those who expected nothing, COP15 was still a huge disappointment; a body-blow to a stricken planet, its environment and its politics. For this we owe a “special” thank-you, as per usual on matters of war and justice, to the USA. For people who put their faith in Barack Obama, he proved more Judas than Jesus, for thirty pieces of silver read dirty piles of petrodollars. Nevertheless, there were signs of hope: ourselves, the climate justice movement.

Here participants in last…

What was the “breaking news” I promised at the beginning of the last posting? Well, yesterday I sat in on a discussion group that decided to put forward a major proposal to the council of War Resisters International, suggesting an investigation of the feasibility and desirability of WRI addressing the extent to which climate change, and in particular the threat of runaway climate change, affects the anti-militarist and social justice struggles it is currently involved in, or supporting.…

The climate conference in Copenhagen is a turning point in world history. The protests in Denmark and around the world before and during the conference are therefore of enormous importance.

As a species, we are now fully conscious of the effects of our actions on the world’s climate and therefore on all the interlocking ecosystems on which human and other forms of life depend. At Copenhagen, the world’s governments could give their informed consent either to a scientifically-…

Rich countries and corporations have grown wealthy through a model of development that has pushed the planet to the brink of climate catastrophe. They have over-used the planet’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

Drastic measures now have to be taken to prevent runaway climate change, making it impossible for poor countries to grow their economies in the same way. Put another way, the rich world has “colonised” the earth’s atmosphere. This process has mirrored and perpetuated…

Climate Justice Action is a new global network of people and groups committed to take the urgent actions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change. The network is open to individuals and groups that agree with our Networks Goals, Principles for Working Together and Call To Action.

Among the many groups that are part of the network are: Climate Watch Alliance (Nepal); Focus on the Global South; Friends of the Earth (Engand, Wales and Northern Ireland); Human Rights Defenders…

Within this book, there’s a thoughtful treatise against climate change struggling to get out. It never quite makes it, which is a shame, as Alastair McIntosh has some important things to say. One of the main problems is structure. Part one deals with the science of climate change and political dilemmas; part two, with a spiritual response.

The trouble with this approach is that the book becomes neither one thing nor the other, particularly when the style veers between dense analysis…

Meat production is responsible not for 18% but 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study by a former lead environmental adviser to the World Bank and a current adviser. In a Worldwatch Institute report, Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang argue that the methane, land use and respiration impacts of billions of farm animals have been underestimated .
They estimate that farm animals cause 32 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, more than the combined impact of…

Only 41% of Britons accept that climate change is largely human-made, according to a Populus poll for The Times in early November.
Only 28% of Britons believe climate change is “far and away the most serious problem we face as a country and internationally”.
Despite this scepticism, there is a clear majority of 69% to 26% supporting limits on CO2 emissions and making companies pay for their emissions, even if this results in higher prices for goods and energy.

Global warming is likely to be “at the top end of the IPCC [International Panel on Climate Change] scenario”, according to professor Corinne Le Quéré of East Anglia university, leader of a Global Carbon Project study into the Earth’s (declining) capacity to absorb carbon dioxide.
“If the agreement [at Copenhagen] is too weak, or the commitments are not respected, it is not 2.5C or 3C we will get: it’s 5C or 6C – that is the path we’re on,” said Le Quéré on 17 November.
A rise of…