The best way to halt Global Warming in its tracks is to “soften” the volume of international trade.
The Recession has done a fine job in securing just that aim, but if the fabled “green shoots of recovery” are just around the corner/mountain, then we will need pragmatic approaches to keeping trade in its place, lying flat in the dog basket.
Terry Leahy, the CEO of Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in Britain, spoke at the 5th June 2009 conference “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution”. His mood was ebullient, it seemed to me.
“We’re going to miss all the targets we set ourselves.” I think he might have been referring to both the Kyoto Protocol and the UK / EU 2020 targets, so I don’t know why he seemed so buoyant about it.
At the conference “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution” on 5th June 2009, Stelios Haji-Ioannou ended up flying by the seat of his pants.
“I’m usually [cast as] the Devil. People are trying to find a high-profile industry [to target]…[they choose] airlines.”
Anthony Giddens spoke at the conference called “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution” on Friday 5th June 2009.
For someone who is normally so high-falutin’ in his academic contortions, he was remarkably pragmatic.
Adair Turner must be a bundle of nerves, sitting, as he does on both the Financial Services Authority and the Climate Change Committee.
He’s often asked to speak on behalf of ideas that are shaky, like cracking down on the banks with stronger regulation, whilst avoiding blaming the banks themselves for the financial crisis :-
Britain is not Fair. The division between rich and poor is getting wider, and the number of those at the bottom of the stack is rising. This is going to have a significant impact on the ability of people in Great Britain to adapt to Climate Change policy.
Social measures must surely include public investment in de-Carbonising each home. At costs 100 times less than the announced new Nuclear Power programme, and an order of magnitude cheaper than the Carbon Capture and Storage demonstration projects, I think this shows excellent value for money as well as ethical rectitude.
If you or anyone you know is young and unencumbered (you know, without kids or other dependents, like an employer for example) and living in London E17 (England), please, we need you to help us roll out the Transition Waltham Forest project :-
The British political system is currently reeling from a scandal so far-reaching and so widely-spread that it seems hard to know what shape it will take in the future.
Government Ministers and their opposite numbers in the other Parties are being thrown from their ranks, and even their “safe seats”, back home in their Constituencies.
Although December 2009 is more than six months away, in reality the World has seven weeks of further negotiations before the main details of a Global Climate Treaty must be agreed for delivery at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP) in December 2009 in Copenhagen Denmark.
At our best, we humans, when faced with crisis, we club together and act collectively. We invent new shared ways of doing, being and providing for ourselves. We pay attention to the needs of others. We give. We receive. We share. We eat together.
Ed Miliband wants a Climate Change social movement, and it is going to appear in force, but it won’t look the way he wants or expects.
In the interview article below notice that Ed Miliband is going to publish a Climate Change manifesto shortly, outlining the UK negotiating position for the December United Nations Climate Talks.
That means that the UK negotiating position for Copenhagen in December has already been decided.
The green “trade show” UK Aware was held at the exhibition centre Olympia 2, West London, England on 17th April.
I was talking with the lady from Good Energy. First of all we discussed their proposal to offer a dual fuel tariff, and the fact that there is still no green gas available to domestic customers.
It seems that the not-so-secret Security Services and Police so-called Intelligence have been listening in at Climate Camp national gatherings and spin-off direct action groups (colour me un-surprised) :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/13/nottingham-police-raid-environmental-campaigners
Good Friday. The start of the special Christian weekend when we remember brutal, inhuman torture and a completely unnecessary death.
With the emergence of the social movement around Climate Change and Energy policy, it was to be expected that campaigners and protesters would come up against the ruling systems of the day.
Why is the Government in the United Kingdom so poor on Climate Change and Energy ?
Why have they signed the Climate Change Act without a clue as to how to implement it, and are delaying any obvious low-cost actions, kicking it all into the long grass ?
I got on the train yesterday evening with a very gentle fellow, who was reading a free newspaper intently.
I noticed he was carrying a camera with quite a large lens, so I said to him, “You can’t believe anything you read in the papers”, trying this gambit to get him to spill about what he was doing.
He gave a non-commital response, and we didn’t strike up.
1st Apriil 2009
SPACE 1
2pm : Trading our way into Trouble – How carbon trading hasn’t worked so far, why it’s not going to work and the problems it’s causing in the Global South (CarbonTradeWatch).
3pm : Plenary (all together session) – “Their solutions / our solutions” – with starting contributions on “their solutions” and an open discussion on “our solutions”.
I’m getting reports of people with an outline plan to take a skinny dip in the fountains in Trafalgar Square.
Apparently, to raise the profile of Carbon Trading, they’re going to paint themselves with some kind of black paint, or black marker pen, and splash about shouting something like “Carbon Trading doesn’t wash !”
The London Press today have been thumbscrewing public opinion down against the G20 demonstrations – with fear-laden messaging and nasty tagging of protestors as “violent”.
I’ve overheard several conversations today between various casually dressed office workers moaning about tomorrow’s happenings.
STOP PRESS : Just received a text “Big Brother is turning off CCTV for the day. Don’t forget to bring your own. Please forward this text.” What can go on when nobody is watching ?
I’ve just been at one of several G20 Climate Camp convergence spaces this evening to get the full briefing.
I expected Police presence on the door, and yes, once again they were illegally photographing people coming and going from a public meeting.
The “protest community” have a very stark choice about options for non-violent direct action and other forms of demonstration this week. Either you do something to entertain and amuse people, or you do something to annoy.
At a stretch you might even manage to do both, but for the most part it is an either-or situation. Do you hold a street party in fancy dress, or do you try to blockade something, lock on and shut it down ?
Do you publish a newspaper pulling apart current Economic, Energy and Climate policy ? Or do you set up a tent outside the London Climate Exchange and refuse to leave ?
At first glance the two news articles seem to be about completely different subjects, but I can assure you they are both about Climate Migration.
The Observer, in a two page spread, complete with photographs of schoolchildren, outlines that Britain’s population is set to rise, as drought sets in, in different places of the World, and the heat picks up.
Britain, because of its historical global interference during its Empire days, will be assumed to be responsible for accepting a wide range of Climate Refugees.
Some of us will be arrested. Some of us can’t afford to be arrested. But all of us are committed to some kind of direct action on 1st April, Fossil Fools Day 2009.
We are going to shake things up.
We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to our children, our neighbours, the dirt-poor drought-ridden farmers in the Global South. Even the wretched polar bears.
Fundamentally, I believe in tolerance. But since I’m tolerant, I’m not going to preach it. However since I’m a fundamentalist about tolerance, I’m not going to tolerate anyone preaching fundamentalism.
It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to understand the tension implicit in those last sentences. And yet Christian Anarchists live with this complex, tortuous position every day, while remaining really well-balanced, considering.
It seems that everyone is going to turn the lights out for Earth Hour tomorrow 28th March 2009 at 8.30pm. Even Las Vegas :-
https://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_12004849
Will you join us ?
https://www.earthhour.org
https://www.blackoutbritain.org.uk
We want to see your darkness, and the Earth living in Climate peace and harmony. It starts with a collective effort, no matter how token, because we need to act together, all of us, to sort this mess out.