Here are some of the climate actions that have taken place in the UK since our last issue. The major event was the acquittal, on 16 November, of the HSBC Nine: XR women prosecuted for £500,000 damage done to windows at the headquarters of HSBC bank in London in 2021.
The other major event has been the continuing Just Stop Oil (JSO) slow walk campaign in London, mostly marching from Trafalgar Square to Whitehall.
JSO claim there have been 612 arrests between 30 October and 22…
In mid-November, around 30 folk from a range of direct action/civil resistance groups came together in Yorkshire to begin developing deeper collaboration for more effective and coordinated strategy for climate justice direct action.
Groups included Animal Rising, Christian Climate Action, Defend Our Juries, Earth First!, Fossil Free London, Greenham Women Everywhere, HS2 Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Palestine Action, Quaker Roots, Reclaim the Power, Trident Ploughshares, XR Cymru, XR…
Nonviolent direct action by climate activists has almost ground to a halt recently, in the face of large numbers of such activists being put on trial and being given heavy sentences.
Insulate Britain ended its campaign of road obstructions in 2022.
Just Stop Oil’s only actions since June have involved slow marches in Exeter and Leeds, holding up traffic in its campaign to get the UK to stop giving licences for new oil and gas fields.
Extinction Rebellion (XR) suspended…
On 26 June, Ocean Rebellion brought a puppet oil tanker, belching a vile fog of heavy fuel oil (HFO) smoke, to the headquarters of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) on Lambeth Road in London. Inside, where the photo above was taken, delegates were sipping drinks on the first day of a conference to revise the IMO’s climate strategy.
Ocean Rebellion were protesting against the fact that the IMO is not aiming to halve shipping greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, but only by…
Due to the impacts of global warming, ‘human movement on a scale never before seen will dominate this century and remake our world.’
This is the central proposition of this important popular science book. Gaia Vince, an honorary senior research fellow at University College London, believes we are on course for a 3 – 4 °C of temperature rise by 2100, with tens of millions of people forced to leave their homes by mid-century.
Vince points to some African cities: by 2030, Dar es…
Three successes for climate activists occurred in June. On 16 June, the group Feedback was granted the right to a judicial review.
They had challenged the UK national food strategy for not have a plan to cut meat and dairy consumption, arguing that the strategy failed to take into account ministers’ duties to cut carbon emissions as set out in the Climate Change Act 2008.
The high court had refused Feedback a judicial review; the court of appeal has now decided they can…
One in 10 flights leaving UK airports are now private jet flights, which can be up to 30 times more polluting than standard flights – but someone on a standard flight could be paying more tax than someone on a private jet.
One in five private jet flights don’t need to pay ‘air passenger duty’ at all, and most of the rest only pay the standard rate.
Find out more in Jetting away with it: How private jets pollute the most and pay the least, a new report from Possible,…
The longest sentences yet imposed on climate activists were handed down on 21 April, at Southend crown court, when a jury found two Just Stop Oil activists guilty of causing a public nuisance. Judge Shane Collery KC sentenced Morgan Trowland, 40, to three years in prison and Marcus Decker, 36, to two years seven months, to ‘deter’ copycat actions.
The two were arrested last October after they had climbed 200 feet up onto the QEII Bridge over the Dartford Crossing in East London,…
Another good idea from Possible is to make sure that wheelchair users, pushchair-pushers and disabled pedestrians are not blocked by the hundreds of thousands of on-street charging points for electric vehicles that are going to be built in the next few years.
Currently, a Possible investigation has found, many charging points are being installed on pavements, blocking footways, rather than on extensions of the kerb into the road, which is the recognised best practice.
For these…
The climate action group Possible (formerly 10:10) is proposing a ‘frequent flyer levy’ which would go up with the number of flights – or the air miles travelled – by each passenger.
Someone taking their fourth flight of the year would pay a higher tax on that flight than someone on the same plane who hasn’t yet flown that year.
Possible point out that just 15 percent of people who fly frequently take 70 percent of all UK flights, while more than half the UK population don’t…
A major Japanese bank, the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), has been forced to withdraw from financing the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). This has been claimed as a win by the #StopEACOP coalition of over 260 civil society organisations.
The 900-mile-long heated pipeline, a project of French oil company Total and Chinese oil company CNOOC, threatens to displace thousands of families and farmers from their land and rip through numerous sensitive biodiversity…
This book explains how we could use existing technologies, such as wind turbines and heat pumps, to create a worldwide energy system based entirely on wind, water (tides and waves) and solar power (WWS).
Such a system would help solve three major crises: the air pollution crisis (which currently claims some seven million lives a year); global warming (overwhelmingly caused by fossil fuels); and energy insecurity (dramatically illustrated in the fallout from Russia’s invasion of…
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Last issue, you reported on South Lakes Action on Climate Change’s legal challenge to the government’s approval of the proposed huge new coal mine at Whitehaven in Cumbria. (PN 2664)
I’d like to add to what Friends of the Earth are quoted as saying about the climate and employment impacts.
Figures of 500 jobs in the mine have been contrasted…
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It was a great relief to read in your last issue the editorial entitled XR, ‘Don’t Overpromise!’ (PN 2664) It really was spot on. We are active members of our local group and are glad that the London events beginning on 21 April will, for the first time, involve peace and other campaigning organisations. But you hit the nail on the head in that title.
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On 13 January, Friends of the Earth (FoE) and South Lakes Action on Climate Change (SLACC) filed applications in the high court to take legal action against the government over the construction of a new coalmine in Cumbria, in North-West England. The two organisations have co-operated in designing their legal challenges to dovetail rather than overlap.
The reason for their request for a judicial review is the decision of Levelling Up secretary, Michael Gove, to grant planning…
