If you were suffering from asthma, would breathing car fumes be a good treatment? If you were suffering from climate change would you choose to build six new power stations fired by coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel we have found?
The greed and short sightedness of government and business knows no bounds. As climate chaos bites, their answer is to go full steam ahead with fossil fuel expansion.
Whatever happens to oil supplies, we know for sure that there is enough coal in the…
Can wearing a T-shirt be a crime? This was the question we set out to answer on the opening day of Heathrow’s Terminal 5 on 27 March.
I was one of hundreds of people dressed in bright red “Stop Airport Expansion” T-shirts in the International Arrivals Hall that morning.
BAA, which runs Heathrow, was unveiling its grand new terminal before the global media, as a stepping stone to a third runway and a sixth terminal.
We wanted to create a visible sign of public opposition…
Surrounded by kit, I sit facing my friends, cheeks burning so red that they suggest I am overtired. I shake my head, avoid eye contact, unsure how to admit my feelings.
Finally I break, tension flooding out: “I don’t feel prepared; I don’t think I can do it….” I was terrified our actions would be too extreme, that people wouldn’t relate to us…. So many paralysing thoughts.
This is what it’s like when you cease to keep your head down; these are the agonies you experience when…
Ffos-y-fran is the biggest open-cast mine in the UK. Situated on the outskirts of Merthyr Tydfil, it is just 36 metres from some homes and near a nursery school. Legislation requiring a buffer zone of at least 500 metres for such schemes is pending but not set to be made retrospective.
Dust, smoke and noise from Ffos-y-fra will exacerbate health problems in a town that already has the lowest life expectancy in Wales. Mining is set to continue, 7am to 11pm, for 17 years.
“…Man-made climate change is scientific fact, but consensus about its social meaning is still a way off. Why are we doing so little about it? Can resource use be uncoupled from quality of life? Is humanity's desire to consume really stronger than its desire to survive?
This activist-academic initiative is welcome, though parts of it are idealistic, polemical and woolly. The editors propose unspecified radical change in response to global warming and do not try to engage with liberal…
Two days apart in late February, two groups protesting against plans to expand Heathrow took their protest aloft, first at Heathrow and then the House of Commons.
On 25 February, four Greenpeace protesters managed to get onto the airfield at Heathrow and climb on top of the 8.15pm British Airways flight from Manchester. There they unfurled a very large banner saying: "Climate Emergency – No Third Runway – Greenpeace".
A Greenpeace spokesperson said the protest had highlighted a "…
Climate campaigners won an important victory at the end of January when multinational oil company Shell was ditched as sponsor of the annual Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine `Wildlife Photographer of the Year' exhibition.
The campaign against Shell's sponsorship of the exhibition was co-ordinated by direct action group Rising Tide and was part of its Art Not Oil campaign which seeks to end oil industry sponsorship of arts and culture. Art Not Oil used creative direct…
On 12 February, Rob Hopkinsm the “co-parent of the Transition Town movement”, spoke in Machynlleth about peak oil and climate change.
Although climate change gets press attention, if not meaningful political action, it's peak oil that will hit us soonest.
The age of plentiful oil and cheap transport is drawing to a close. Implications for our communities are enormous, especially with respect to food supply dependent on road haulage.
Rob noted that (west) “Wales is a…
On 25 February, the ten East Midlands activists who shut down Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal power station in early 2007 were found guilty by Nottingham magistrates court, and fined. (See PN2494.)
The defendants had been allowed to enter a “defence of necessity”, arguing that their action was lawful because of the perilous circumstances caused by CO2 emissions.
The judge said that shutting down a power station was “a step too far”, and that “necessity can easily become simply a…
East Midlands climate change activists who managed to shut down Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant for several hours in early 2007 won two significant legal victories in a Nottingham court in January.
In a trial which began at the magistrate's court on 14 January, the 11 activists (some defending themselves) were allowed to put forward an unprecedented legal defence, and to call as a defence witness an earth systems scientist who said the defendants' taking action attempting to make large…
"Sitting on my sleeping mat, nestling a cup of tea, dry and cosy in waterproofs and thermals, I erupted into giggles as my friend passed me a biscuit. What was so funny? It sounds like your average camping trip. Except that we were perched on top of a Komatsu 3000, one of the seven-metre-high, 250-tonne diggers being used to open-cast mine 10.8 million tonnes of coal at Ffos-y-Fran in Merthyr Tydfil."
This snippet of Cath's account comes from the 5 December 2007 occupation of Ffos-y-…
Why do we need another book on climate change? According to George Marshall, because climate change is “the greatest moral challenge we have ever faced” but is generally presented in a way which is “baffling, boring, and irrelevant” (oh, and we're all in denial about it anyway).
He aims - by presenting only the bare scientific facts, and concentrating on the essential issue of how to come to terms with the problem we face and reduce our personal emissions - to give us a book which…
On 12 January Plane Stupid activists staged an innovative “reclaim the ice” protest on the British Airways-sponsored rink at the Natural History Museum in London.
Around 30 protestors donned penguin outfits and wielded “BA Fly, penguins die” placards. After 20 minutes, the protestors were forcibly removed by BA security.
“Spokespenguin” Tamsin said: “We love ice too, but the ice in our own home is melting as a result of global warming.
“BA is a major lobbyist for the…
The Natural History Museum's decision to accept the giant oil company Shell as a sponsor for the “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” exhibition caused outrage recently, not least from the environmental campaigning group Rising Tide.
The NHM justified its position by claiming that Shell is taking steps to change its ways and address environmental issues.
Truth after liesWhen the “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” exhibition came to Wales, it was hosted by Aberystwyth Arts…
