Why climate activists should focus on threats to people’s lives
contribution by Climate Sock
A nice little paper was published last month in Nature Climate Change, which needs to be taken seriously by anyone campaigning on climate change.
The paper draws on the 2010 poll by the Understanding Risk Group, and shows that “those who report experience of flooding express more concern over climate change, see it as less uncertain and feel more confident that their actions will have an effect on climate change”, and that “these perceptual differences also translate into a greater willingness to save energy to mitigate climate change”.
A week excuse
Contribution by Danny Chivers
You really couldn’t make it up. March 21st – 27th has been designated as a “Week of Action” on climate change in the UK. The eco-warriors behind this rebellious project? Why, it’s those well-known champions of environmental justice: Tesco, EDF Energy, and the Royal Bank of Scotland. I honestly don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Tesco, whose entire business model is based on the mass transportation of goods halfway across the globe, and on driving a race-to-the-bottom in environmental and labour standards in farming worldwide. EDF, who operate two of the five biggest coal fired power stations in the UK. And RBS – RBS! – who are the UK’s leading investor in fossil fuel projects.
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Greens should resist the temptation to celebrate rising petrol prices
Petrol prices are going up. This hits people in the pocket – hard. At a time when most people haven’t had a pay rise in years, this is particularly tough. But, traditionally, greenies have argued in favour of more expensive fuel – right?
We need to put fuel prices up in order to wean our society of oil? Right? Well, I’m not convinced. Greens are often percieved as a party who are not on the side of ordinary people. Green taxes became emblematic of that.
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Why direct action to prevent global warming still matters
contribution by Robbie Gillett
Another trial concluded last week, with six environmental activists being found guilty of aggravated trespass for an airside blockade at Manchester Airport last May. This came as little suprise to those of us involved.
Successive court cases at Drax , Aberdeen, Ratcliffe and now Manchester have all seen attempts to employ related or similar ‘defences of necessity’. This is a common law defence which stipulates that defendants who attempt to stop emissions to prevent death and serious injury from climate change may be acquitted.
Do these successive guilty verdicts mean we’re wrong to be worried about climate change?
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More good news for those worried about global warming
contribution by Climate Sock
It’s not so long since I argued that the economy was bringing down concern about the environment. The data indicated that, across a range of countries, people were becoming less worried about climate change (and other environmental issues) at around the same time that national GDPs were falling.
This suggested an explanation for the recent fall in concern about climate change, since it didn’t assume that people spend much time pontificating about climate change, as the other explanations do. But the last two climate polls I’ve seen suggest that maybe things have started to change.
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Manc airport trial against climate activists begins
In May 2010, 17 campaigners took direct action at Manchester Airport, temporarily shutting it down.
They did this to stop some of the 5 million tonnes of carbon emissions produced annually by the airport and in opposition to plans to destroy local homes in order to expand the World Freight Centre.
Six of the climate protesters involved who breached airside security at Manchester Airport are to go on trial at Trafford Magistrates Court from today, Monday 21st February.
They will plead not guilty to the charge of aggravated trespass, after they formed a human circle around the wheel of a Monarch Airline jet last May 2010. The trial begins ten years after Manchester Airport opened their second runway in February 2001, following some of the largest environmental protests of the 1990s.
The defendants will argue that they acted to try and prevent death and serious injury by attempting to stop emissions from the Airport.
During the trial, which is expected to last three to four days – the defence will call expert witnesses including Professor Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre and experts on health and the effects of climate change.
People from across Manchester have pledged to take direct action to stop the expansion plans, and the threatened homes in Manchester have been ‘twinned’ with the village of Sipson which which would have been demolished to make way for the Heathrow expansion.
Witnesses for the defence at the trial will include a local Lib Dem Councillor and John McDonnell, the Labour MP for the Heathrow area. Supporters from the ‘Manchester Airport on Trial’ group will gather outside court on the first morning (9am on Monday 21st February) with a large paper aeroplane.
Kerry Williams from the ‘Manchester Airport on Trial’ group said,
Manchester Airport said 50,000 jobs would be created with the second runway, which failed to materialise. Ten years after its opening, the aviation industry continues to overstate its economic importance whilst avoiding paying taxes and creating more emissions and more noise. It’s time to put a stop to the industry’s special treatment.
The defendants have received a number of statements of support from national politicians, journalists, lawyers, organisations and individuals including Zac Goldsmith MP, Caroline Lucas MP and John Sauven, director of Greenpeace.
From a press release
How does ideology frame media reporting on climate change?
contribution by Bárbara Mendes Jorge
Climate change is no longer a mere “scientific” concern of temperature rises or adaptation, but also an economical, political and cultural issue. The media, the medium in which most people get information on climate change from, can choose, or are forced, to frame it in one or all of the above ways.
Whilst the above seems obvious, what did not seem so clear to me when I decided to analyse reporting on climate change for my MSc dissertation, was how the right-wing and left-wing media differ in the way they report on climate change.
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Why the Green Investment Bank has become another gimmick
Today’s FT has an important story – it looks like the much touted Green Investment Bank is actually going to be a modest Green Investment Fund, or more accurately, a Green Investment Gimmick.
According to the report, the ‘Bank’ will be granted a £1bn budget (with another £1bn coming from asset sales) to distribute. This £2bn of new investment is meant to help plug the green investment gap in the UK. But as the FT notes, the energy sector alone needs green investment of at least £200bn over the next ten years.
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Understanding climate science and the weather
contribution by Tim Fenton
In support of his urging that people should have an intelligent position on the subject of economics, J K Galbraith explained that not to do so effectively ceded power in that subject area to those who did take an intelligent position, or who claimed so to do. A recently controversial subject area where I would urge anyone to take an intelligent position – for the same reason – is in the area of weather and climate.
On climate, the best attitude to take for anyone who really wants to gen up is to be thoroughly and genuinely sceptical: that means to be in “show me” mode (the denial lobby aren’t really sceptical, as they have already made their minds up).
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Why climate talks in Cancun failed miserably
contribution by Kirsty Wright
After two long and dispiriting weeks, the Cancun climate talks drew to a close in the early hours of Saturday morning. Expectations for the Cancun meeting were always low after the disaster that was Copenhagen.
So what did this supposed “deal”, that lead some to calls of “we can can can in Cancun” as the talks drew to a close, actually produce?
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The politics of England’s surviving windmills
I recently spent a couple of days visiting some of England’s surviving windmills with a couple of friends. Though it was a holiday rather than a deliberate exercise in political education, two political points came out clearly.
One, which I’ve blogged about previously, is how the windmill not only used to be a key part of the English landscape but also, in its horizontal axis / vertical sail form, is an English invention.
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Gambling on Blackjack is how our food supplies are priced
The financial crisis has exposed the danger of unregulated financial markets and bankers getting it incredibly wrong, and how we suffer the consequences of those actions.
But what happens when people gamble with food?
Since the 1990s, the architecture of regulation set up by Franklin Roosevelt to prevent financial speculation on food has been systematically torn down by recent governments in thrall to lobbyists from Wall Street and the City of London.
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How the BBC gave free rein to global warming deniers during ‘climategate’
contribution by Hengist McStone
I’ve found quite an extraordinary broadcast from last year which examines bias on the BBC’s coverage of the climategate story less than two weeks into the affair.
Essentially the programme suggests there may be a pro-green or pro-climate science bias, by inviting two denialists on to the programme to ask why hasn’t the BBC given more ‘skeptical’ coverage to the story.
What is extraordinary is that this was broadcast on Decmber 4th 2009 when no facts were known about the email leak.
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Why isn’t Dan Hannan MEP more open about his links to the Tea Party?
contribution by Hengist McStone and Sunny Hundal
There are conflicting accounts of whether the Tea Party Movement, in the United States is grassroots or not. The recent film (Astro)turf Wars shows a slick, well-funded machine manipulating deluded activists across the country.
One writer in the UK who thinks he knows the truth is Daniel Hannan MEP, who blogs for the Daily Telegraph.
“The Tea Party is that rare beast, a genuinely spontaneous popular movement.” Mr Hannan insists, dismissing the claims of astroturfing.
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How you can help us kick Big Oil out of the arts
contribution by Sophie Allain
The oil industry has an image problem: oil slicked birds, gas flares in Nigeria and eye watering profits paint an ugly, but pretty representative picture of their business. And so it follows that in a bid to bolster their brands they stamp their logos across art institutions across the capital.
But a growing protest movement is targeting oil sponsorship in the arts as a way to undermine the PR campaigns of oil companies.
Platform, an art/activist organisation are launching a campaign to force oil out of the arts.
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Climate change denialists take issue with Darwin too
contribution by Tomas Rawlings
Yesterday was Fossil Fools day – when a small clique of climate change deniers gather at Parliament to decry logical and the scientific method.
Yet the ever thinning ranks of even vaguely credible people associated with climate denial has finally jumped the shark with an article that once and for all lays bare the real thinking behind climate denial; not science but pure naked ideology. Strip away the ideology and all that’s left is profit.
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Boris talks a lot about climate change, but will he spend the money?
The Mayor’s latest draft of his Climate Change Mitigation and Energy Strategy was published last Friday without so much as a whisper in the press.
This worthy wishlist sets out how London could cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by 2025, creating tens of thousands of jobs in the process.
But there are snags:
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Join us and get organised: your planet needs you
contribution by Hanna Thomas
I first heard about Climate Rush in January 2009. I was despairing about the ability and intention of our world’s governments to do anything about climate change.
With the spectre of the Third Runway and Kingsnorth looming then, what a welcome invitation it was to attend a (very civilized) sit-in at Heathrow and show our dissent with tea, cake, blankets and Edwardian garb!
Almost three years have passed, the world has changed yet internationally climate change negotiations are still stuck. It’s the penultimate day of yet another UN climate change conference, and still nothing is expected to change.
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What’s behind the rise of German Greens?
According to polls the German Greens, who already have the most MPs they’ve ever had, are seeing an unprecedented rise in the polls seeing them neck and neck for the first time with the SPD, the German version of the Labour Party.
So what’s to account for the rise which, like in Sweden, does not seem to have effected other parties to the left of the centre?
One explanation is that the new right-wing coalition’s decision to extend the life of existing nuclear power stations has hit a nerve in a nation that has had a vibrant anti-nuclear movement for many decades.
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Right-wing prayers that the BP oil spill will just ‘vanish’
contribution by BenSix
A couple of months after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill the media proclaimed a near-miracle had taken place. It’d gone! The oil had gone! Up and down the coast, it seemed, trawlers could gather up their nets and birds could spread unblemished plumes. Soon enough anti-environmentalists were forcing humble pie down our beleaguered throats.
Rush Limbaugh savoured in the knowledge that – as he’d blindly asserted – “the earth is amazing regenerative” while James Delingpole crowed over this apparent vindication of his baseless disbelief.
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You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or RSS feed.
» One of Labour’s thousands of grassroots warriors
» Can private companies really offer us cheaper healthcare?
» How food shortages will bring more global unrest
» How the police are trying to smear protesters in Bristol #stokescroft
» Why climate activists should focus on threats to people’s lives
» The end of the Telegraph as the paper of record
» Blue Labour founder: “Labour should involve EDL supporters”
» Is it tactically wise for Osborne’s critics to predict a recession?
» Electoral reform: only a broad alliance can keep Tories out
» Is Libya slowly turning into a Vietnam-style conflict?
» Why a double-dip recession is looking increasingly likely
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