Climate change & climate action

The idea that we have entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene – an era characterised by humanity’s impact on the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and wildlife – involves a drastic re-evaluation of humankind’s relationship with the natural world.However, the authors of this book insist that we have not just woken up to this fact in the last few decades. Indeed, far from being ignorant of the human imprint on the earth’s ‘living tissue’ – including the other species that occupy it – we have…

On 7 March, a US district judge refused the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s attempt to stop oil flowing through a part of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) near their reservation.

The Sioux thought they had won on 4 December when the US army corps of engineers stopped construction of DAPL for alternative routes to be considered. Then, on 24 January, US president Donald Trump signed an executive decree ordering the secretary of the army to expedite approval of the pipeline – without a…

On 26 January, the hands of the Doomsday Clock moved 30 seconds closer to catastrophe.

‘It is two and a half minutes to midnight’, announced the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board, warning that ‘world leaders were failing to act with the speed and on the scale required to protect citizens from the extreme danger posed by climate change and nuclear war’.

In 2016, according to the board, ‘the international community did not take the steps needed…

With its black and yellow cover, featuring silhouettes of security cameras and other paraphernalia, at first glance this book looks intent on scaring the reader. Even the word ‘dispossessed’ in the title has classic horror film connotations. And perhaps this was the intention of the contributors, academics and activists who, in dismay at the failure of climate talks in 2009, came together for a seminar to discuss what should be done. The resulting papers comprise this volume, with…

On 13 December, Southwark council became Britain’s second local authority to divest from fossil fuel investments.

The cabinet member for finance, modernisation and performance, Fiona Colley, made a ‘commitment’ to divest the £1.2bn pension fund from fossil fuels long-term, a decision based on ‘ethical practice’ and on ‘the financial risk of investing in traditional energy sources, which will ultimately become obsolete’.

Fossil Free announced that global commitments to…

Responding in May 1977 to the British government’s Bullock Report on industrial democracy, Noam Chomsky quoted the Dutch left-Marxist Anton Pannekoek. Pannekoek wrote decades earlier that the workers’ revolution ‘is not a single event of limited…

As PN went to press, North Dakota police were reported to be using rubber bullets, tear gas, water hoses and percussion grenades against hundreds of ‘water protectors’ standing up to the Dakota Access oil pipeline which threatens sacred places, land and water belonging to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.

On 17 November, representatives of indigenous peoples from Canada, the Marshall Islands, the Arctic and other regions held an action at the COP22 climate talks in Morocco…

On 22 October, around 60 British climate campaigners assembled in the autumn sunshine at the vast cooling towers of Drax power station in North Yorkshire. We were there to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the first Climate Camp, held at Drax, and to once more call for Drax’s closure, and an end to both coal and large-scale biomass burning in the UK.

Climate protesters were at Drax 10 years ago because, in burning 13m tonnes of coal and emitting over 20m tonnes of CO2 every year…

How should we respond here in the UK to the Trump presidency? For a number of reasons, we should not focus on Trump himself – on boycotts of outlets that carry Trump-branded goods, for example.

Following Erika Thorne’s wise words elsewhere in this issue, we can focus instead on those leadership can help us turn back the dangers that confront us, those who are most threatened by Trump’s rise.

There are some inspiring things happening in the US.

I was moved…

The climate crisis is a racist crisis. That was the message of a Black Lives Matter UK protest at London City Airport on 6 September, when nine activists used a tripod and chains to close down a runway for over six hours, grounding over 130 flights.

The action sparked two debates. One was about the relevance of climate change, aviation and pollution to the anti-racist struggle.

Black Lives Matter UK (BLM) said: ‘Black people are the first to die, not the first to fly,…

Good news. On 22 September, an East London pension fund with assets of £735m became the first local government pension scheme in Britain to decide to exclude all fossil fuels from its investment strategy (over the next five years).

The chair of the Waltham Forest pension fund committee, councillor Simon Miller said: ‘Not only does this mean the fund will not be invested in stranded assets but [it] will be actively investing in cleaner, greener investments to the benefit of our…

‘We’ve put up with noise and dust from the pits – we’re used to it. We shouldn’t grumble about a few turbines singing in the wind’. These words were spoken in 2000 and, 16 years later, the community wind farm turbines in Mynydd y Gwrhyd, 20 miles north of Swansea, are due to be commissioned by December.

Community benefit society Awel (Welsh for ‘wind’) is funding the scheme through shares (raising £1.27 million to date) and Welsh government loans of £4.…

We had arranged to meet up at the Manhattan Gourmet Restaurant [in New York city], a glorified deli at 57th and 6th, right above the F Train station, with the Chase bank looming across the avenue. We carried our toad heads in a big sack.

It was a working-class place with a lunch crowd shouting their orders, lots of laughter. The folks were service workers, spiffily dressed…

On 14 May, as part of an international climate action, 2,000 campaigners entered and shut down the massive Welzow-Süd opencast lignite coal mine, and its coal-loading station, in Lusatia in eastern Germany. The protest escalated on the following day as more protesters shut down the nearby Schwarze Pumpe lignite power…