Climate change & climate action

3 October 2006Comment

Established: The campaign was founded in 2001 by Phil Thornhill as a response to the growing urgency of climate change action.
Aims and Objectives: Its aim is, firstly, the ratification of the Kyoto protocol by all nations - including those who have refused to sign: the United States and Australia. This is, however, only the first step. The world's governments must be encouraged to adopt a sustainable energy policy that does not allow the rampant polluting of the biosphere with carbon…

1 October 2006News in Brief

Twenty-four activists from aviation campaign group Plane Stupid were arrested on 24 September after occupying an operational taxiway at Nottingham's East Midlands airport.

Calling airports “carbon factories”, a Baptist minister lead the airport shutdown protest against climate change. In a press release, the group made clear that safety was paramount during the action - hence a taxi-way rather than runway occupation - and said that the police had been immediately notified that this…

1 September 2006News

As PN went to press, activists from climate change group Reclaim Power had blocked the main entrance to the Hartlepool nuclear power plant in Teesside.

Using locks and other equipment, six activists successfully closed the main entrance and unfurled a large banner with the words “No More” on 29 August. The action was in response to government and nuclear industry plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations and coincided with the Climate Action Camp. The camp…

1 May 2006News

Gas-guzzling cultures are driving the route to environmental disaster and fuelling resource wars - changing a few lightbulbs at home just isn't going to cut it. Participants in the Camp for Climate Action this summer will work together to take action on the "biggest challenge" currently faced by humanity.

Are you feeling the shadow of climate chaos breathing a little closer this spring? Even the government's own chief scientist has agreed it is the biggest challenge we face. The current trajectory of our fossil-fuel burning society is preparing a disaster on a scale which is pretty indescribable. Not only is it an ecological disaster, but the growing fight for resources is the major reason behind most of the world's current wars...

Given all this, one might wonder why there has been…

16 December 2005Feature

On Saturday 3 December, around 10,000 people marched through London to demand urgent action on climate change. This was part of a global protest taking place in more than 30 countries, demanding urgent action from world leaders at the Montreal Climate Talks - and specifically for the US and Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Hundreds braved the rain to turn out for a march in Edinburgh, with participants reporting a very positive mood: one marcher commented, “I think we where all…

1 May 2005News

On 14 April the Greenwash Guerrillas (GG) worked outside the Annual General Meeting of British Petroleum to prevent the public from being contaminated with greenwash (dangerous profit-seeking environmental whitewash).

While most shareholders, hypnotised by the surfeit of friendly green BP logos, by the thought of ever-greater dividends, and by the prospect of a free lunch, brushed aside warnings (both personal and planetary) and marched into the meeting, at least two shareholders…

3 March 2005Comment

In a pre-emptive attack on the US, the Campaign Against Climate Change organised a march in London on 12 February to draw attention to the Kyoto protocol - which came into force on the 16th.

The US, Australia, Monaco and Liechtenstein are the only developed nations that have failed to ratify the treaty. We decided to give Monaco and Liechtenstein a little leeway, and marched past the Australian High Commission (Ozzies are the biggest producers of greenhouse gases per capita) on the…

1 March 2005Feature

February's climate change protest march in London brought back my memories of the huge protest march to Hyde Park after the recent third western invasion of Iraq in under a century.

As the then Deputy Chair of the Liberal Democrats it fell to me to address the largest war-time peace protest ever on behalf of the party in Charles Kennedy's absence. I had been urging Kennedy to tackle the issue of oil driven wars for some time but here I had an opportunity to address the issue myself…

1 June 2004Review

Transnational Institute TN Briefing Series No 2003/1. Available for free download at http://www.tni.org/reports/ctw/sky.pdf

Any TNI production merits close attention, and this handsomely produced, tightly argued and informative briefing is no exception.

As stated in the introduction;

The Kyoto Protocol has begun laying the foundation for a completely new global marketplace in greenhouse gases. Six gases... will be traded interchangeably in the brokerage houses and trading floors of the world markets. These `environmental markets' are being left to the private sector and neo-liberal government…

1 June 2004Review

Flamingo, 2004; ISBN 0 00 713939 X; 341pp; £16.99

High Tide is the result of three years spent travelling the world in search of evidence that climate change is taking place now.

Lynas's travels include the experience of ducking England's increasingly excessive downpours; surveying the damage of melting permafrost whilst gathering local opinion on the oil industry in “baked” Alaska; and sealing all windows as unprecedented dust storms whirl in China.

Alongside excellent photos, Lynas's stories show that…

1 June 2004Review

European Television Centre, 2004; 75mins, format VHS/PAL; contact etcfrance@aol.com for prices/availability

With even the Pentagon now facing up to the reality of the threat of climate change, we might spare a thought or two for those who are likely to first feel its effects. The people of Tuvalu may have the unhappy distinction of becoming the world's first climate-change refugees. Trouble in Paradise is a snapshot of their increasingly precarious life.

The group of Pacific islands known as Tuvalu constitute the world's second smallest nation, after the Vatican. Its 11,000 inhabitants are…