Climate change

Ban private jets!

Private jets are something like ten times more carbon-emitting than normal commercial flights and fifty times more than trains. They are a significant part of the reason that half the emissions from aviation are caused by the activity of 1% of the world’s population - almost entirely the extremely wealthy. Despite European governments’ professions of concern about climate change, private jet flights taking off in Europe increased by 64% last year, with emissions from them more than doubling to over 3m tonnes of CO2. As in so many bad things, the UK leads the way. Here the number of flights...

A workers' plan to shut down oilfields

North Sea oil workers have done something that no government or fossil fuel company has even attempted: they have devised a plan for shutting down the oil fields and transitioning to renewable energy. The Our Power report has emerged from a coalition of environmental groups and trade unions working closely with offshore workers. The plan involves investment in retraining and infrastructure so that oil rigs can be decommissioned in the UK and we can build the wind and marine energy we need for the future. The collaboration between workers and environmentalists started with a survey organised by...

Did Sadiq Khan spy on climate activists?

The openDemocracy website has revealed how Sadiq Khan’s London administration worked with a security firm to target youth climate change campaigners, seemingly spying on them. When supporters of left-wing group Green New Deal Rising tried to attend an event at the O2 to challenge the mayor over his environmentally damaging Silvertown Tunnel project, security not only barred them but already knew their names. Both the Silvertown Tunnel itself and this latest information are yet more reasons for the London labour movement to call Sadiq Khan to account. • openDemocracy report here

When the lakes run dry

Without immediate emergency measures, one of the Western Hemisphere’s keystone ecosystems is at risk of collapse. The Great Salt Lake in Utah, USA, has lost 73% of its water since 1860 and scientists have warned “without a dramatic increase in water flow to the lake in 2023 and 2024, its disappearance could cause immense damage to Utah’s public health, environment, and economy.” The saline lake provides habitat for ten million migratory birds and is the only significant body of water in North America’s most arid region. It is running dry mostly due to local farmers extracting water from...

Windfall tax served only to boost fossil-fuel rise

Shell made £32.2 billion profit last year, double last year's total. BP made £23 billion. A big chunk of these profits comes from the £60 +billion household energy-bill relief scheme, which has provided insufficient support for the poorest this winter whilst securing vast profits for energy companies. That £60+ billion has been added to the government's £2.5 trillion debt leading to screaming headlines in the right wing press calling for further cuts to public services and working-class living standards. From its £32.2 billion Shell paid out just £134 million on "windfall tax" or 0.3%. BP paid...

Protest against Bristol airport expansion

On 4 February 250 people protested in Bristol following a High Court ruling to allow Bristol Airport to expand, dismissing campaigners’ appeal. This ruling is a blow both to local democracy and to the climate. The local councils have repeatedly rejected the expansion, but have been overruled by central government. The government’s own advisors, the Climate Change Committee, have advised against net airport expansion. No- or low-emission flying is not viable on any scale in the near future — despite green-washing claims — so any serious attempt to curb climate change must seek to restrict, not...

COP15 fails to slow extinctions

December’s COP15 summit on biodiversity, delayed for two years by the pandemic, brought together every nation on Earth (except the US and the Vatican) to agree a target of “30 by 30”: 30% of the Earth to be “protected for nature” by 2030. COP15 president and China’s ecology minister Huang Runqiu claimed this year’s (non-binding) agreement as an “historic moment” comparable to the Paris climate accord of 2015. This boosterism should fool no-one. The Paris deal is yet to have any effect in halting year on year increases in CO2 emissions, let alone reducing emissions or reducing atmospheric...

Getting out 100,000 on 21 April?

After four years of a strategy of forcing change by filling the world’s jails with climate activists, Extinction Rebellion have “quit” that scheme. In a New Year’s message they declare a temporary “shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic... to prioritise attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks.” They hope that the shift to non-confrontational tactics will help them put 100,000 people on the streets for their next demonstration on 21 April. XR’s strategy of seeking mass arrests never really made much sense. If XR activists are now rethinking then this is a...

New coal can still be stopped

Even by its own standards, it is difficult to see why the government has given permission for a new coal mine near Whitehaven in West Cumbria. The mine is set to extract 2.8 million tonnes of coking coal a year and has been promoted under the silly slogan: “great coal, great steel, Great Britain”. But British steel-makers say it’s got high sulphur content and they cannot use it. Over 90% will be exported. Even here there is a shrinking market, as Europe shifts to electric arc furnaces and renewable energy. Michael Gove justified his decision with the brazenly denialist claim that the mine will...

Climate change will force mass migration

“When temperature rise exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius (which could occur by 2026), some three billion will be living in places that regularly experience conditions beyond the human habitable range...[and] we are extremely unlikely to keep below 1.5 degrees C.” Gaia Vince in her book Nomad Century lays out the science in stark terms: we “face a very hostile world, characterised by a belt of uninhabitability swathed across most of today’s most populated regions... This is a completely new situation for our species, one in which our expanding population must deal with an ever-shrinking zone of...

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