Climate change & climate action

The consortium Miller Argent have submitted a planning application to Caerphilly council for the Nant Llesg open-cast coal mine. If Miller Argent obtain planning permission, Nant Llesg near Rhymney will mine up to nine million tonnes of coal and be responsible for approximately 20 million tonnes of CO2.

Local opposition the United Valleys Action Group (UVAG) say this will be a disaster in terms of climate change. UVAG also know the impact of the dust and noise from mining on…

Since creating the post-religious Church of Stop Shopping in 1999, the Reverend Billy has held services in churches, community centres, forests, fields, parking lots, shopping malls and – above all – inside brand-name stores across the US and Europe, preaching against consumerism, and for economic and ecological justice.

The creation of actor Bill Talen, the Reverend Billy is…

Balcombe, 22 September. Photo: Gabrielle Lewry

On 16 September, a high court judge adjourned an application by the West Sussex county council to remove anti-fracking protesters from Balcombe after describing it as ‘flawed’.

Justice Beverly Lang said there was a need to consider the protesters’ right to peaceful assembly.

Demonstrators have been camped along London Road…

We are of the generation who came of age in the 1980s, terrified that the world might end at any moment through nuclear holocaust. In the decades since then, the people of the world have grown less frightened of a nuclear war.

The risk is still there, as the number of nuclear weapon states increases, and conflicts continue around nuclear tinderboxes, but the fear has declined.

Recent studies suggest that even a ‘small’ nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with each…

It’s possible for every person on the planet to have a good quality of life powered entirely by renewable energy, thus avoiding runaway climate change. That’s the message of ‘Two Energy Futures’, a new interactive website launched at the end of July by the UK Tar Sands Network, with evidence drawn from the Zero Carbon Britain: Rethinking the Future report from the Centre for Alternative Technology, and the book Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air by energy expert Dr David Mackay.

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No Dash for Gas spent months planning an action camp called ‘Reclaim the Power’ at the new West Burton gas power station near Nottingham, the power station we occupied for a week last autumn.

Then, just two weeks before the event, we made a momentous decision to change the venue and indeed the focus of our camp.

We realised that now is a crucial time for climate and fuel poverty campaigners to show solidarity with the people of Balcombe in West Sussex, and others around the…

While ‘[m]any people believe that America’s addiction to automobiles is a cultural problem’, in reality – as cartoonist Andy Singer explains in this wonderful ‘pictographic examination’ of the American transport system – the country’s ‘automobile addiction has more to do with politics, government agencies, and the [US] tax structure’.

Indeed, in the 1920s, most North Americans lived in cities, many of which had great public transit and inter-urban rail systems, leading the president…

The biggest-ever US demonstration against climate change
brought 35,000 activists from 30 states to Washington DC
in February. Photo: 350.org / project survival media

The world’s most important CO2 monitoring station recorded short-term CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere above 400 parts per million (ppm), a level not seen for three million years.

Measurements at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii (and elsewhere) show CO2 concentrations are now…

On 15 February, Washington DC police arrested 48 protesters in front of the White House, including Robert Kennedy Jr, former US president John F Kennedy’s nephew, and actor Daryl Hannah, at a demonstration against the massive XL pipeline project, which threatens to carry oil from Canadian tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico. Demonstrators had used zip-ties to attach themselves to the White House fence.

US president Barack Obama has…

A petition by the parents of one of the activists gained 50,000 signatures online in its first week, and a call has gone out to shut down the annual EDF Talk Power Conference on 1 May.

Two chimneys at the West Burton gas-fired power station were occupied last October by 16 ‘No Dash for Gas’ campaigners to protest at the government’s plan to build up to 40 new gas-fired power stations (see PN 2552-2553).

On 20 February, 21 ‘No Dash for Gas’ activists…

‘I think we may be about to get steamrollered.’

Fellow activist Emily Johns and I had just returned from a packed public meeting in Crowhurst, the small village northwest of Hastings that would be severely affected by the planned Bexhill-Hastings Link Road (BHLR). In the final evaluation the participants had been near-unanimous in saying how energised they felt by the meeting. One man even said that he’d never felt more optimistic about our prospects for stopping the road.
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Zombie roads hungry for public money gather outside the office of Hastings MP Amber Rudd, 30 October. Photo: Milan Rai

On 30 October, campaigners against the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road (BHLR) staged a battle between ‘road busters’ and ‘zombie roads’ outside the office of Hastings MP Amber Rudd.

Combe Haven Defenders wanted to highlight her role – and that of the chancellor, George Osborne, to whom she is parliamentary private…

I’ve protested against coal: helping to organise the Climate Camps at Kingsnorth and at Drax; debunking the hype about ‘clean coal’ for Corporate Watch; and taking part in a Coal Caravan visiting open cast sites across the North East. And, in a lot of ways, we have won on coal: Kingsnorth has been shelved, and existing coal power stations are coming to the end of their lifespans with new plans stuck at the starting blocks. But the answer hasn’t been the clean green future we’ve all been…

The Conservative-led government is committing billions to military spending while forcing through massive cuts in jobs and services, and reducing support for badly-needed green technologies.

The government has already spent £2bn on developing and deploying pilotless drone aircraft over the past five years, using some of them to kill an unknown number of Afghan civilians…

Fly and be Damned is nothing if not ambitious. It outlines what the author, Peter McManners, believes are measures which could usher in 'the third golden age of aviation'. An era where we could enjoy all the advantages flying brings without destroying the climate. He argues that the technology to make this possible could be developed if the aviation industry was incentivised to do so.

The key to facilitating change, McManners argues, is to make the necessary resources available to the…