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Check out Rail to the COP, a campaign by Youth for Sustainable Travel which aims to send a train full of young climate activists to COP26 in Glasgow this November. Find out how you can help here:

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The Rail to the COP campaign promotes and facilitates the transition towards a sustainable travel future. As its flagship initiative, Rail to the COP organises a Climate Train from Amsterdam to Glasgow, to connect and mobilize people on their way towards the international climate conference: COP26.

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Our weekend recommendation is this brilliant animation made by Climate Ready Schools: COP26 according to a kid! Give it a watch and a share, it's a great simple and easy to understand explanation of climate change and the importance of COP26, made by children, for children.

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Cop 26 According to a Kid Subtitles | Climate Change for Kids

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Climate Refugees is an organisation that advocates for the rights of the millions of people who are displaced by climate disasters every year.

Climate change is not currently listed as an official reason to grant refugee status, despite 60% of the 30.6 million people displaced within and across borders in 2017 being a direct result of natural disasters. All across the world the effects of the climate crisis are becoming more extreme and displacing more people every year, as well as putting more pressure on resources and fuelling conflicts such as the Syrian civil war, which started after a severe 3 year drought.

This means that climate refugees are often seen as economic migrants and are denied the same rights and protection as those fleeing conflict or persecution. You can follow the work of Climate Refugees on their website, and share and donate to their campaigns and advocacy.

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Through our COUNTRY REPORTS, we research, interview experts, vulnerable communities, travel to impacted regions and tell those stories because we think their realities should inform policy.

Significant scientific evidence exists to suggest that climate change is impacting our planet, posing adverse effects to human lives. However, we lack understanding on its contribution to displacement, details on issues faced and the numbers of people displaced across borders as a result of climate change in all its forms - from environmental degradation to natural disasters.

Climate Refugees exists to close that gap.

We believe that policies shift when field evidence is heard.

Read more about how we work.

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Through our COUNTRY REPORTS, we research, interview experts, vulnerable communities, travel to impacted regions and tell those stories because we think their realities should inform policy. Significant scientific evidence exists to suggest that climate change is impacting our planet, posing adverse effects to human lives.

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Our partner organisation, The Climate Fringe and the COP26 Coalition are recruiting for volunteers to support their actions and activism during COP26 in November! This is such a cool opportunity if you’re able to get into Glasgow even just for a day during COP - you can sign up for specific shifts and you don’t need any specific skills in order to apply. Find out more and apply before the 31st of July here:

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An interesting read about the movement against Big Oil which is gathering momentum at the moment.

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The world's patience with the fossil fuel industry is wearing thin. This was the stark message delivered to major international oil companies this week in an unprecedented day of reckoning for their role in the climate crisis.

In a stunning series of defeats for the oil industry, over the course of less than 24 hours, courtrooms and boardrooms turned on the executives at Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron. Shell was ordered by a court in The Hague to go far further to reduce its climate emissions, while shareholder rebellions in the US imposed emissions targets at Chevron and a boardroom overhaul at Exxon.

"There is no doubt that this week's news has been not so much a shot across the bows as a direct hit to the hull of Big Oil," says Mark Lewis, the chief sustainability strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management. "They will have to recognise now that no amount of patching up the hole will do; shareholders and society want the vessel completely overhauled."

Director of Dutch environment organisation 'Milieudefensie' Donald Pols reacts as he walks outside a court in The Hague. Photograph: Remko de Waal/ANP/AFP/Getty Images

For climate campaigners, the oil industry's "Black Wednesday" marked a turning point in the financial and legal consequences awaiting oil companies that do not act fast to take accountability for their role in preventing a climate catastrophe.

"It was honestly a really emotional moment," says Jasper Teulings, the former general counsel for Greenpeace International. The ruling by the Dutch court ordering Shell to cut its emissions by 45% within the next 10 years "shifts the debate" and could influence courtrooms across the globe, he told the Guardian.

"It makes clear that the onus is on the industry to act, and that it can be held accountable to take very specific steps. It's very relevant in legal terms because the ruling was very pure in its demand: it's not about money, it's about conduct. It was astutely reasonable," he says.

The basis of the case, brought by Dutch climate campaigners at Milieudefensie, was rooted in norms derived from elements of human rights law and the UN's Guiding Principles, which have "near-universal application" and could be used in cases against other major polluters.

"We're seeing a convergence of issues because, really, climate issues are human rights issues. I don't see any reason why these [arguments] won't be replicated elsewhere. Polluters can expect to see their day in court," Teulings says.

Shell has said it will appeal against the "disappointing" ruling, which calls for the company to align with the emissions targets set out in the Paris Climate Agreement. The decision could lead to years of legal wrangling and prove profoundly damaging to Shell's reputation.

"If they truly believe their strategy aligns with Paris, then there should be no problem complying with the court's demands," says Teulings. "Shell's decision to appeal is therefore irreconcilable. Therein lies the lie."

The court ruling will force Shell to slash at least a million barrels of oil and gas from its fossil fuel production every day, at a cost of several billion dollars a year, according to oil industry analysts.

Biraj Borkhataria, an analyst at RBC Capital, says: "To put this simply, this aggressive shift would have meaningful cashflow implications for Shell." He estimates that the sharp cut in fossil fuel production could cost Shell $6bn a year.

Increasingly, major institutional investors are also growing concerned over the cost of failing to act on the climate agenda. It marks the clearest sign yet that climate action is being treated as a major financial risk as well as an environmental one.

Exxon shareholders, including investment giants BlackRock and Vanguard, voted to oust at least two of the oil giant's board members in favour of candidates put forward by Engine No 1, an activist hedge fund founded less than six months ago, for failing to take the transition to low-carbon energy seriously.

At Chevron, more than 60% of investors voted in favour of a climate resolution from Dutch campaign group Follow This to force the company to reduce its emissions.

Eli Kasargod-Staub, the executive director of Majority Action, a shareholder group, said, after the twin US rebellions, that "for the first time in history, responsible shareholders have breached the walls protecting recalcitrant boards of directors".

"The ExxonMobil challenge is only the beginning of a reckoning for board directors who fail to make measurable progress towards decarbonisation and protecting long-term shareholder value," Kasargod-Staub added.

Among the fossil fuel industry's largest institutional investors, concern is weighted far more heavily towards the potential destruction of long-term shareholder value than the destruction of the environment. But they do expect executives to take a defensive stance against the risks of a greener world - which means investing in the green technologies of the future.

Within days of the oil industry's 'Black Wednesday' reckoning, credit rating agency Moody's warned that the credit risk of major oil producers had increased. The convergence of financial risk with the long-held concerns of climate activists could prove to be a crucial tipping point against climate action cynics.

Oil industry pundits have warned that forcing Shell to cut its fossil fuel production would simply shift its barrels of oil to smaller, private oil companies or larger state-owned oil giants, with little impact on global emissions.

This overlooks the endemic climate concerns taking hold in the financing of the fossil fuel sector, says Mike Coffin, a researcher at financial thinktank Carbon Tracker. Climate activist pressure "will be felt by the banks which finance these projects" and by the insurers that underwrite the risk. No matter which company is hoping to drill for oil, it will be viewed as a riskier prospect and capital will be restricted, he says.

The flow of capital once destined for fossil fuels into sustainable investments may even help hasten the inevitable trajectory of lower oil demand and dwindling market prices, which could force oil-producing countries to rethink their state investments too, Coffin says.

For longtime campaigners including Teulings, the compounding implications of the climate victories of the last week offer a rare opportunity for optimism.

"Anyone who cares about the climate has felt times of panic, and despair, and helplessness. The ruling is a beacon of hope," he says. "Perhaps that's the biggest impact; beyond the legal impact, and the concrete impact on carbon emissions, the ruling offers hope. It's what we've been waiting for."

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'Black Wednesday' for big oil as courtrooms and boardrooms turn on industry

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The world's patience with the fossil fuel industry is wearing thin. This was the stark message delivered to major international oil companies this week in an unprecedented day of reckoning for their role in the climate crisis.

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This is a really interesting article about the social and cultural changes that need to be made in order to tackle the climate crisis, reminding us that technological solutions on their own are not enough to fix the problems we face.

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e are living through what scientists call the Anthropocene, a new geological age during which humans have become the dominant force shaping the natural environment. Many scientists date this new period to the post-second world war economic boom, the "great acceleration". This rapid increase in our control over the Earth has brought us to the precipice of catastrophic climate change, triggered a mass extinction, disrupted our planet's nitrogen cycles and acidified its oceans, among other things.

Our society has come to believe that technology is the solution.Electricity from renewable sources, energy-efficient buildings, electric vehicles and hydrogen fuels are among the many innovations that we hope will play a decisive role in reducing emissions.Most of the mainstream climate-change models now assume some degree of "negative emissions" in the future, relying on large-scale carbon capture technology, despite the fact that it is far from ready to be implemented. And if all else fails, the story goes, we can geoengineer the Earth.

But the problem with this narrative is that it focuses on the symptoms, not the causes of environmental decay. Even if the technologies on which we pin our hopes for the future deliver as expected and do not lead to much collateral damage - both of which are huge assumptions - they will not have fixed our mindsets. This is a crisis of culture and politics, not of science and technology. To believe that we can innovate and engineer ourselves out of this mess is to miss the key lesson of the Anthropocene - that dealing with planetary-scale processes calls for humility, not arrogance.

Our civilisation is underpinned by extractivism, a belief that the Earth is ours to exploit, and the nonsensical idea of infinite growth within a finite territory. Material possessions as markers of achievement, a drive to consume for the sake of consumption, and blindness to the long-term consequences of our actions, have all become part of the culture of global capitalism. But there is nothing self-evident about these things, as indigenous peoples teach us.

Many indigenous groups got to know their natural environments intimately and sustained themselves over millennia, often despite harsh conditions. They came to understand the limits of what these environments could support, and they grasped that caring for the environment was simultaneously an act of self-care. Pacific islanders would designate no-go areas of the ocean to avoid overfishing, while high-altitude farmers in the Andes would rely on terraces that reduced erosion to grow their crops. It is not a coincidence that as much as 80% of the world's remaining biodiversity is located within territories inhabited by indigenous peoples.

Rebuilding our relationship with our planet does not mean abandoning the many achievements of our civilisation. Some of our technological innovations can help us treat the symptoms of the environmental multi-crisis. But addressing the causes means abandoning some of the assumptions on which our current society is built: infinite growth, the instrumentalisation of the natural environment and speciesism.

What does this look like in practice? Changing the collective mindset of a civilisation calls for a shift in values. It means educating our children about humility and connectedness, rather than vanity and individuality. It means changing our relationship with consumption, breaking the spell of advertising, manufactured needs and status. It means political organising, generating demand for a politics that sees beyond the nation state, and beyond the lifespan of the currently living generations - Wales has already started, with its Wellbeing of Future Generations Act.

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown just how fragile and myopic our civilisation is. While technology has played a huge role in finding a way out of the pandemic through the development of vaccines, it has also highlighted humanity's limitations as our societies became paralysed in the face of forces of nature more powerful than ourselves. And our chaotic response showed that technological prowess is no substitute for good political leadership. We must face up to the harsh reality that for all its achievements, our civilisation is deeply flawed. It will take a reimagination of who we are to truly solve this crisis.

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The climate crisis requires a new culture and politics, not just new tech | Peter Sutoris

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e are living through what scientists call the Anthropocene, a new geological age during which humans have become the dominant force shaping the natural environment. Many scientists date this new period to the post-second world war economic boom, the "great acceleration".

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Divest Strathclyde calls for the Strathclyde Pension Fund to divest from the oil and gas industries. Many of the councils in Scotland including Argyll and Bute Council invest their pensions in the SPF so this is really relevant and important to our area!

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Divest Strathclyde is the campaign to get the Strathclyde Pension Fund to drop investments in fossil fuel companies and other big polluters, and re-invest the money in ethical and sustainable alternatives.

The Strathclyde Pension Fund, managed by a committee of Glasgow City Council, has £508 million invested in fossil fuel companies - including fracking - meaning that the pension fund, which is meant to safeguard the future security of workers across the Strathclyde area, is helping fund climate disaster, the worsening effects of which we are already regularly encountering.

The companies that the fund invests in - including Shell, BP, Chevron, and Exxon Mobil - continue to operate in a way that is fundamentally incompatible with international agreements to limit global heating to under 2 degrees. It is widely agreed that the vast majority of fossil fuels must remain in the ground if we are to avoid catastrophic levels of warming but fossil fuel companies are continuing to seek out and exploit further reserves.

This also makes investment in these companies a major financial risk, given that their valuation is based on activities that cannot continue. Moving our money away from destructive companies and into climate solutions is one of the most important steps we can take, one that is already being pursued by hundreds of major institutions.

Who we are

Divest Strathclyde was founded by a group of local residents and is run entirely in a voluntary capacity. Campaigning has involved meeting councillors, gathering signatures for our open letter, staging protests, hosting awareness-raising events, getting press coverage, collaborating with other groups and campaigns, participating in marches, and much much more.

Our past successes include researching and making publicly available the funds continuing fossil fuel investments, getting national press coverage for our protests at City Chambers, getting a place on Glasgow City Council's Climate Emergency Working Group and getting divestment from fossil fuels included in the recommendations of this group.

How you can get involved

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Divest Strathclyde - Glasgow Calls Out Polluters

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Divest Strathclyde Divest Strathclyde Blogs and Content Read More Sign our Open Letter to support the campaign Read More Follow us on Social Media Facebook Twitter Youtube Instagram Glasgow City Council votes for divestment Watch Video An Alternative AGM to Divest the Strathclyde Pension Fund Read More Our Campaign Divest Strathclyde is the campaign to [...]

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Check out the Helensburgh Nappy Library! It’s a way for people to hire cloth nappies which babies grow out of fast, keeping costs down and reducing the amount of waste going to landfill at the same time. Check out their Facebook group today!

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Check out Paid to Pollute, an organisation that is taking the UK government to court over their public funding of North Sea Oil, a major contributor to the climate crisis. You can sign their petition which calls for the UK government to stop subsidising fossil fuel companies and make sure the polluter pays!

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The Case Against Public Money for Oil and Gas

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Support the case and help pull the plug on public payments for big polluters.

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This map, set up by Act Now, contains information and contact details for so many amazing initiatives in our local area from renewable energy sources to community food projects to electric car charging points. It's well worth a look!

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The ACT mission is to sustainably maintain, enhance and promote the coast and countryside of Argyll and the Isles. Why? Because it is a spectacular part of the world that everyone should be able to enjoy now and forever. Here you will find many organisations that share our values.

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For our members who are based near Glasgow or in the Central Belt - the COP26 Coalition is organising a Homestay Network which will give activists a place to stay during the COP26 talks in November. It's a way to provide environmentally friendly and affordable accommodation to those whose voices will make a huge difference at the talks, and we highly recommend signing up to the network if you live close enough to Glasgow!

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Host an activist during COP26 - and support the international climate movement.

The COP26 Homestay Network is an environmentally-friendly and affordable accommodation project for the UN Climate Conference in November 2021. It matches hosts across the central belt of Scotland with guests coming to COP26 from all over the world.

Those in and around Glasgow can list their sofa or spare room, and then be matched with a guest who needs a place to stay in November.

We're asking people across the central belt of Scotland to sign up as hosts on the Homestay Network. To become a host, visit climate.humanhotel.org to sign up and list your space.

More information - including sign up instructions - can be found here.

Because our platform has just launched, we're also collecting feedback on how to make it even better. If you'd like to give us your feedback while signing up to host, please fill out this survey. Thanks!
The COP26 Homestay Network has been developed in partnership by the COP26 Coalition, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, and Human Hotel.
Offer your venue or space
Do you own or run a venue in Glasgow? Do you want to be part of the biggest festival for climate justice in Scotland's history?
We want to hear from venues of any shape and size - from community cafes, places of worship, church halls, civic and community centres, art studios, exhibition spaces, corporate venues and music halls - who can help us with our vision.

We need venues for:

Civil Society Convergence Spaces (we have some, but we need more large scale venues, particularly with smaller spaces that can be used as meeting rooms)

Crash pad accommodation spaces

Meeting room spaces that organisations can book out for their use during COP

Office spaces / desks that the COP26 Coalition members can use for organising

Events of all kinds

Gigs and shows

Art exhibitions

If you'd like to help us, please fill out this short form giving a few details about what you can offer, and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

Volunteer with us

We will need a number of enthusiastic volunteers to make our November plans possible, from running Convergence Spaces across Glasgow, to stewarding at our mass mobilisations, to helping run our hybrid online and in person Global Gathering for Climate Justice.

We will be launching our call out for volunteers later on in spring 2021. To be the first to know about the volunteering opportunities we'll have on offer, please sign up to the Rising Clyde newsletter that comes out once a month.

Join a Working Group in the COP26 Coalition

The COP26 Coalition is always looking for enthusiastic people and organisations to help us in our work. We have different working groups that focus on different aspects - for example, the Logistics Working Group looks at things like sourcing venues and accommodation, and the Mobilisations Working Group is organising the November mobilisations across the UK. A full list of working groups can be found on our about page .

To join a Working Group, contact us here about how you'd like to get involved and what you'd like to work on.

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How can I get involved? - COP26 Coalition

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The COP26 Homestay Network is an environmentally-friendly and affordable accommodation project for the UN Climate Conference in November 2021. It matches hosts across the central belt of Scotland with guests coming to COP26 from all over the world.

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Take a look at this amazing series of portraits of youth climate activists from all over the world.

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Let These Stunning Photos of Young Climate Activists Inspire You

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Despite a year of lockdown, the kids are alright.

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If you're reading this on a smartphone or computer, chances are you have at least one old device you don't or can't use anymore still hanging around. It's a huge waste for these old or broken devices to go to landfill, especially as so many people struggle to access the technology they need for increasingly online lives.

Projects like The Restart Project have come up with solutions, such as repair skill-sharing, parts recycling and donation to local organisations which will ensure that the devices are redistributed to people who need them.

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During the pandemic, our need to stay connected remotely increased. But not everyone has an adequate device to access the internet. One poll of teachers revealed that 88% had students they believed were falling behind due to lack of access to online learning. And others are also in need of a functioning device.

Civil society has stepped up. Community groups and local initiatives across the UK ask people to donate their old laptops, computers and other electronic items. They fix and upgrade these devices and distribute them to locals in need, sometimes in partnership with a local small charity. This work is vital.

Here, we list computer reuse projects across the United Kingdom that accept individual donations, for reuse in the local community. The local dimension is important to us, as it ensures that laptops will be delivered fit-for-purpose. And that potential follow-up help exists nearby.

Depending on the project, your own volunteer time and knowledge can make a real difference! Ask a project near you. And many projects are looking for cash donations.

Lastly, if you have time, learn more about thorough data erasure on our Wiki. Projects do this for you, but you can use our Wiki to learn more and verify the process with the group you are donating to.

Quick jump links

England: East Midlands; East of England; London; North East; North West; South East; South West; West Midlands; Yorkshire and the Humber

England

Luton (Bedfordshire)
Luton Learning Link
Laptops, tablets, desktop PCS
Less than 5 years old

Fill in the form at the bottom of this page.

Students

London - City-wide pickups and drop-off in Camden

Laptops, computers

Fill in this form to arrange a collection or drop off.

Drop off point at The Fields Beneath by West Kentish Town station. TheFieldsBeneath.com
52a Prince of Wales Road,
Kentish Town
NW5 3LN

Local residents, giving highest priority to families with several children at and no computer devices in the home.

London - City-wide
REFEO (Refugee Education For Equal Employment Opportunities)
Laptops (with Windows 7 or above)
Apple laptops (any)
Tablets
iPads
Smartphones
Cables and chargers

Contact
Mariam Diakite to arrange a donation.

Refugees and asylum seekers

London - Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster
Ready Tech Go
Laptops, tablets, dongles

Fill in this form

Residents near the Imperial College White City campus can also fill in this form to book a drop off.

Local residents in need referred by another organisation

London - Lewisham

Laptops, tablets, desktops, monitors, smartphones, chargers and computer accessories

Email Damian or call 07939288079 to arrange a donation.

Students, families, individuals without digital access

Brighton
Tech-Takeback
PCs, Tablets, Laptops, Smartphones, Data Storage (Hard Drives, USBs, Memory Cards etc), Network Devices, Other Tech

Fill in this form or download The ZeroNet mobile app on iOS or Android to request a collection.

People in need. Distributed in partnership with digital inclusion charities including Digital Brighton & Hove and with local reuse charities.

Crewkerne and surroundings
Merriott Social Club
Laptops, tablets

Drop off in the green bin up the alleyway to left of front door of Merriott Social Club, Lower Street, Merriott
or drop off at North Perrott Fruit Farm Shop, North Perriott.

Local schools

Birmingham, Coventry, Solihull, Warwickshire
The speedy bear
Laptops, tablets, computers

Find drop off points or book a collection at Local schools and charities

Stafford

Laptops, tablets, desktop PCs, peripherals

Collection points:
Elev8 Highfields, Auden Way ST179TX - 9am to 2pm weekdays
Tranquility, Castlefields ST161BQ - 9am to 4pm weekdays
Contact Local families

Scotland and Wales

Quick jump links

England: back up to England

Edinburgh

Laptops, tablets, iPads, PCs, smart phones, cables, chargers, and routers

Drop off at 127 Leith Walk from 12-2pm Mondays-Fridays.

Glasgow
REFEO (Refugee Education For Equal Employment Opportunities)
Laptops (with Windows 7 or above)
Apple laptops (any)
Tablets
iPads
Smartphones
Cables and chargers

Email Mariam Diakite to arrange a donation.

Refugees and asylum seekers

Highlands of Scotland
Budding Engineers
Laptops, computers

Email Dave or call 07518098944 to arrange a donation.

families and students without digital access

Selkirk, Central Scottish Borders - ON HOLD
The General Store
Laptops, tablets, desktop computers

This project is currently on hold.

Message on Facebook to arrange a collection.

Local residents

You can download a CSV file of the organisations listed here (last update 22nd February 2021). Please attribute to us when you use it. The data is licensed as CC BY-SA 4.0.

The groups listed above are beginning to network, to share experience and skills, with the push coming from Digital Access West Yorkshire. Join the conversation on Twitter: #DigitalAccess2021 or join a Slack group hosted by London Tech Collective.

If you know of an organisation or project that we have not yet listed, please get in touch with us through the form below. We're looking for groups that accept individual donations, for reuse in the local community.
Please note that we cannot list schools, organisations or projects unless they have publicly accessible information about their initiative, such as a webpage.
If your school needs computers, please make your request to TechforUK or Business2Schools. If you need help starting your own scheme to receive donations, see Nominet's Reboot Project.

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Where to donate your computer to local people: community reuse projects in the UK - The Restart Project

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During the pandemic, our need to stay connected remotely increased. But not everyone has an adequate device to access the internet. One poll of teachers revealed that 88% had students they believed were falling behind due to lack of access to online learning. And others are also in need of a functioning device.

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The UK's target is to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, and the government produced a 10 point plan last year to set out how we will reach this. It's important we keep them accountable on this through our MP and other representatives.

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et zero. It's a simple enough concept - the notion that we reduce carbon emissions to a level where we are no longer adding to the stock in the atmosphere. More and more companies and countries are taking the pledge, promising to hit net zero by 2050, 2030 or even sooner.

But it is easier said than done. Industrial processes remain carbon intensive, as do agriculture and aviation. Even the sudden economic halt brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic this year will result in a mere downward blip in global greenhouse gas emissions.

The sharp decline in energy use at the beginning of the pandemic has not persisted. Government stimulus programmes have done little to prioritise green projects - barely 1% of the funds made available around the world will target climate crisis mitigation. Hopes that the virus would push us into radical action to reduce emissions have proved illusory.

This may make us pessimistic about the future - but that would be a mistake. The last six months have seen a growing realisation around the world that fully decarbonising our societies is technically possible, relatively cheap and potentially of major benefit to society, and particularly to less prosperous sectors.

A sensible portfolio of actions could reduce emissions, provide jobs and improve living standards in forgotten parts of the UK. It won't be completely painless, but this nine-step plan can transform much of the British economy.

1. Energy

Teesside Wind Farm just off the North Yorkshire coast. Photograph: Steven Roe/Alamy

Successful action will need to start with electricity generation. Britain has made surprisingly good progress in recent years, cutting CO2 from power plants by 60% in the last decade, largely as a result of the replacement of coal generation by wind and solar power. We should go much further because we'll need to generate far more electricity to meet demand from electric cars and from heat pumps for heating homes. If we increase generation by about 20 times from today's levels, it will give us sufficient electricity almost all the time, significantly reducing the problems arising from the unpredictability and intermittency of most renewable sources.

Is such as massive expansion actually possible? I have calculated that the UK would achieve this target by devoting about 5% of its maritime zone to offshore wind, 2% of the land area to solar panels and about 12% to onshore wind. These are large numbers, but far from impossible. BP, a recent convert to the importance of the expansion of global renewables, makes a similar estimate that wind and solar sources should also be expanded 20 times around the world to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

2. Batteries and hydrogen

Under the scenario described above, we will have far too much electricity almost all the time. Batteries can cope with some of this surplus but most of the power should be converted to hydrogen. Today, hydrogen is created from fossil fuels but it can be easily made from water using electrolysis. The gas can be stored to make electricity on the rare occasions when the available renewable power is insufficient. Hydrogen is hugely versatile; it can also be deployed to power vehicles, to provide the energy for steel-making and other industrial processes, and to act as the critical raw material for the chemicals industry.

In the last few months, major European countries have shifted strongly towards this plan. France and Germany have promised a total of €16bn to help build a hydrogen sector. Companies in Norway and Denmark have announced plans to create chemical plants to build zero-carbon liquid fuels made from hydrogen and using carbon dioxide captured directly from industrial processes. Italy's dominant gas distributor has begun mixing hydrogen into its pipelines while Spain's largest utility company is to build a facility to make the gas from solar electricity and use it to provide all the needs of a large fertiliser plant. Shell plans to take surplus electricity from North Sea windfarms to provide hydrogen for an oil refinery in the Netherlands. A Finnish partnership has suggested using the CO2 from paper mills to combine with green hydrogen to make substitutes for petrol and diesel while a French mill will be using it to make electricity when power prices are high. All this has happened in the last year and the number of announcements is speeding up across the continent.

3. Utilities

As a supplement to decarbonising the UK's energy supply, we also need to wrest back control of the energy networks from their current owners, often non-UK businesses owned by private equity funds. Many other countries, such as the US, have publicly controlled energy companies that can act to meet local needs and minimise the cost of gas and electricity. The UK should follow the example of Germany and offer the chance to local governments to run all the utility networks in their areas. So far, municipal energy companies have not been successful in the UK but they have never actually been able to own the pipes and wires within their towns and cities. This should change.

4. Efficiency

We need to complement the decarbonisation of energy supply with measures to improve energy efficiency. In the UK the crucial target is the poor insulation standards of almost all our housing. Policy has been lamentably weak in this area over the last decades. We now require programmes of deep refurbishment, working street-by-street across the country. This may seem expensive and difficult but could provide a much-needed boost to jobs and incomes in deprived areas. France is devoting a large fraction of its economic expansion plan to improving the energy efficiency of its homes and public buildings such as schools and prisons. We can also follow this example.

5. Motoring

Cyclists in London. Photograph: Lenscap/Alamy

The obvious other target is car use. Many European cities have pedestrianised large areas of their centres, introduced better cycling provision and improved public transport. As far as I know, none has reversed these changes. Taking cars out of cities is the single best way of reviving centres, reducing pollution levels and getting more people on bikes. Let's particularly embrace electric bikes, which use a hundred times less energy than a car. Detailed analysis in the Dutch city of Utrecht showed that spending on cycle lanes was more than repaid by lower health costs as a result of the population embracing an active means of getting around the urban centre.

6. Farming

Energy use represents around two-thirds of carbon emissions. Easily the next most important source of greenhouse gases is farming. Cows and sheep emit methane and fertiliser use creates nitrous oxide, both powerful greenhouse gases. Moving towards a diet dominated by plants is a vital part of the fight against the climate crisis. We'll probably never get a stable climate until meat has almost disappeared.

It is increasingly clear that we can make fully vegan foods that resemble meat for those who would miss the taste and texture of the real thing. Meat production dominates farming around the world and reducing animal numbers will give us space to introduce properly climate-friendly agriculture. That means farming that is less intensive and less dependent on herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers. It will also employ more people.

7. Reforestation

Sherwood Pines in Nottinghamshire. Photograph: Ian Francis/Alamy

We need a massive programme of reforestation. The UK woodland cover is little more than a third of that in other large European countries and the planting of mixed trees will help capture CO2, bring jobs back to the periphery of the British Isles, help control flooding and improve air quality, as well as providing greater opportunities for leisure.

8. Flying and shipping

In the long term we can probably replace the fossil fuels we use for flying with low-carbon alternatives made from captured CO2 and hydrogen. Today we should cut down our flying, either by taking the train or avoiding long-distance travel. This is costly and difficult for some people, but the "Flight Shame" movement, originating in Sweden, has helped push down passenger numbers, particularly in Germany. Flying really matters to your personal carbon footprint; your share of a return journey from London to New York will typically produce more CO2 than the emissions from driving a car for a year.

9. Carbon tax

Lastly, we should try to bring the reluctant oil and gas industries onside by instituting a tax on the production of anything that results in carbon emissions. Rarely in the past have businesses asked to be more heavily taxed. But today almost all large fossil fuel companies are pleading for a carbon levy that provides the necessary incentive for them to wean themselves off extracting oil and gas.

Fighting the causes and consequences of the climate emergency is neither particularly difficult or expensive. The net impact on jobs and living standards will be strongly positive. The programme will require direction from central government, and probably an effective carbon tax, alongside a willingness to hand over some powers to local authorities.

Perhaps this is the most contentious part of the programme I propose: the idea that Whitehall should recognise both that the free market needs some assistance when it comes to the climate crisis, and that devolution of real power to towns and cities could be beneficial to everybody.

Chris Goodall is an author and environmentalist whose latest book, What We Need To Do Now, assesses the steps needed to build a low-carbon world and was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize. He writes a weekly newsletter on low carbon progress around the world, available at www.carboncommentary.com.

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A nine-point plan for the UK to achieve net zero carbon emissions

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et zero. It's a simple enough concept - the notion that we reduce carbon emissions to a level where we are no longer adding to the stock in the atmosphere. More and more companies and countries are taking the pledge, promising to hit net zero by 2050, 2030 or even sooner.

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This article, following the US summit on climate change, looks at what emissions targets the major emitters of the world have set themselves and how likely they are to stick to those targets.

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It's not just the United States - other major polluters around the world have also been falling behind the climate goals they set for themselves under the Paris agreement.

Following the Biden administration's virtual summit on climate change this week, here's a look at where others stand, and what's preventing them from fulfilling their promises. In other words, who's been naughty, who's been nice, and who is still banking on more coal in their stockings this year.
China
China is the biggest emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases, responsible for about 28% of the global total. And it is by far the largest consumer of coal. Although many activists and scientists hoped the country's carbon emissions would peak by 2025 - giving the world a better chance to avoid the worst effects of climate change - that goal now looks impossible.

China's emissions have continued to climb since 2015, when its leaders signed the Paris climate agreement. President Xi Jinping pledged last year that the country would achieve "carbon neutrality before 2060." But Xi has offered few details on how China would hit that target.

During his speech at the climate summit, Xi said his country would "strictly limit increasing coal consumption" in the next five years and begin phasing it out in 2026. He did not announce stronger plans to reduce emissions in the near term and did not commit to stop financing the construction of coal-fired plants abroad. Under pressure from the United States, he did agree to a general statement saying that countries should announce stronger emissions reduction goals.
European Union
Leaders of Germany, France and other EU member countries were thrilled when the United States rejoined the Paris agreement - and for good reason. The 27-nation bloc has been among the most ambitious in reducing its carbon emissions, pressing ahead and urging other countries to follow through on their pledges after the U.S. withdrew from the Paris accord.

On the eve of the climate summit, EU leaders agreed to a landmark climate law that would increase their target, cutting their collective greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% from 1990 levels by the end of the decade.

It was a hard-fought agreement, reached after months of negotiations and only after wealthier countries promised to help finance the energy transition in eastern countries like Poland and Hungary, which are still heavily dependent on coal for power generation.

The deal still needs to be formally approved by each nation's government and the European Parliament.

Leaders in Brussels have said they view the bloc's transition away from fossil fuels as key to boosting Europe's post-pandemic economy. Yet environmentalists maintain that the EU's pledge is insufficient. An analysis by Climate Action Tracker, an independent group that evaluates global climate goals, estimates that the bloc's current policies put it on a path to reduce its overall emissions by about 48% by 2030.
India
Persuading India to increase its climate goal is likely to be a major challenge for the Biden administration. The country is the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter, after China and the United States, but it has yet to announce a new climate pledge for 2030, and it has historically been reluctant to commit to carbon emission reductions.

Leading up to the 2015 Paris agreement, India refused to agree to an absolute reduction in CO2 emissions. Instead, its leaders said the country needed to burn more coal to fuel its growing economy and lift millions of people out of poverty. Emissions would increase, they vowed, but at a slower rate than before.

In the years since Paris, India has slowed the expansion of coal-fired power plants - no new plants were built last year- and it has begun to embrace solar and wind power. Its government has pledged to generate 450 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030, five times its current capacity. But India's leaders still encourage coal mining and have argued against setting a tougher emissions goal.

During the summit, India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, did not make any new commitments to strengthen his country's climate pledge. Instead, he encouraged people in rich countries to make lifestyle changes to combat climate change.
Japan
In the early 2000s, Japan made significant progress in reducing its emissions by embracing nuclear power. That changed in 2011 after a massive earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, forcing the country to all but end its nuclear power program.

So Japan turned to coal. Today, the country is heavily dependent on fossil fuels and is one of the top three public funders of coal-fired power plants globally. It is also the world's fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

But domestic and international pressure in recent years has begun to push the county in a different direction. Last year, Japan announced that it would be carbon-neutral by 2050 and would reduce its reliance on coal.

During the climate summit, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga revealed plans to significantly increase Japan's target for cutting carbon emissions to 46% from 2013 levels by the end of the decade, up from 26%, an initial goal that environmentalists had criticized as unambitious.

"We will continue trying for an even higher cut of 50%," Suga added.
Canada
Canada also announced a stronger emissions target at Biden's summit.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to cut Canada's greenhouse gas emissions by 40% to 45% from 2005 levels by the end of the decade.

In 2015, the country's leaders pledged to reduce emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 - a goal that Canada was far from meeting before the pandemic. But a stagnating global economy and declining emissions have put it within sight, according to the Climate Action Tracker, though only if the country commits to taking more action.

That commitment has been a bit wobbly.

In recent years, Trudeau has tried to balance the desire to make fighting climate change a top priority with his support for the country's oil and gas industry. He has long supported the Keystone XL pipeline as part of an effort to prop up production in the oil sands, which is critical to Alberta's economy, but is an especially dirty source of energy. Shortly after taking office, Biden revoked the pipeline's cross-border permit.
Mexico
Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador addressed the climate summit but, as expected, he made no promises to increase his country's climate ambitions. Rather, he proposed a vast tree-planting program in southern Mexico and Central America, in exchange for which the U.S. government would grant Mexicans temporary visas to work in the U.S. and, ultimately, citizenship. The proposal is likely to face significant pushback.

Since taking office in late 2018, López Obrador has dismayed environmentalists by tipping the scales of the country's energy sector away from renewable sources and toward fossil fuels.

He has canceled major projects that would have transported power generated by renewable energy plants around the country and called for more investment in coal.

According to a recent Times report, he has pushed legislation that requires the energy grid to first take power from state-run plants - fueled in large part by crude oil and coal - before less expensive wind and solar energy. Experts say López Obrador's actions are rooted in nationalism and a desire to play up Mexico's role as a fossil fuel powerhouse.

Mexico pledged under the Paris agreement to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 22% below business-as-usual levels by the end of the decade. But the country's energy policies suggest its emissions will only trend upward.

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The U.S. is the biggest carbon emitter in history. Where do other nations stand?

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It's not just the United States - other major polluters around the world have also been falling behind the climate goals they set for themselves under the Paris agreement. Following the Biden administration's virtual summit on climate change this week, here's a look at where others stand, and what's preventing them from fulfilling their promises.

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Who do you bank with? Have you checked whether your bank invests in fossil fuels? With the growing movement towards institutions and local authorities divesting from the oil and gas industry, its important that we think about what our own money is financing too. The website Money Expert is a great resource for finding out which banks are ethical and which invest in fossil fuels, and what you can do about it.

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Current Accounts Ethical Banks in the UK

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Ethical banking is a way of continuing to carefully manage your own finances, whilst making sure you're not unwittingly supporting unsavoury industries in the process. We often forget that where we store our money has consequences beyond our own saving potential; banks use our earnings to make themselves, and sometimes their customers, richer by investing in various industries.

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We have been pressuring our local council to divest from the oil and gas industries, alongside Divest Strathclyde who are campaigning for the Strathclyde Pension Fund to divest from fossil fuels.

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Campaigners and pension fund members are celebrating the announcement that Glasgow City Council has endorsed a plan to end their £500 million investment in fossil fuels.

The motion was approved by a full meeting of Glasgow City Council today by a margin of 69 votes to 4 against. It represents the first time a Scottish city has set-out clear support for fossil fuel divestment.

Glasgow City invests in fossil fuels through the Strathclyde Pension Fund, the joint largest local government fund in the UK, run on behalf of 250,000 fund members in Glasgow and the West of Scotland.

The burning of fossil fuels is the biggest driver of the climate crisis, and fossil fuel companies are currently working to increase production. Calls for divestment have come from trade unions, local officials and national politicians.

Today's decision is not binding on the pension fund, it must be approved by the Strathclyde Pension Fund Committee. The outcome of this process is uncertain, but their deliberations will take place just months before the UN climate talks take place in Glasgow, and Committee members will be under considerable pressure to support action against climate polluters.

The campaign for divestment has been led by 'Divest Strathclyde', a group of local people and pension fund members in Glasgow and the West of Scotland.

Louise King, Divest Strathclyde, said :

"Glasgow City Council has taken the pragmatic and moral choice to support divestment as quickly as possible. Given that fossil fuel investments make up only 2% of the fund's investment portfolio, we believe that fast action is possible and call on the fund to make every effort to divest from fossil fuels now.

"This is a big win for the divestment movement, but this is not the end for our campaign. It's now the turn of the councillors on the Pensions Committee to make this decision binding. Until that is done, we will keep up the pressure to hold them accountable and ensure that they divest from fossil fuels as quickly as possible."

Ric Lander, Friends of the Earth Scotland, said:

"Glasgow City Council's decision will be of huge encouragement to everyone who's concerned about the climate crisis and fossil fuel pollution.

"The job isn't done, however. All eyes will now be on the councillors on the pension committee who have the power to end this £500 million gamble on pollution. In the year of the UN climate talks, Scotland can only be a beacon for climate justice if our politicians make brave decisions.

"Congratulations to the trade unionists, pension fund members and citizens of Glasgow who are pushing our politicians to speak out for climate action. We trust other councils are watching and will follow suit. Today's vote shows that with support from government and civil society action against polluters can win a better future for Scotland."

Stephen Smellie, Deputy Convenor of UNISON Scotland, the largest union representing local government pension fund members, reacted:

"It is encouraging that Glasgow City Council is expressing support for action on the climate crisis that is facing us. Instead of continuing to be part of the problem the Strathclyde Pension Fund should increase investments in sustainable alternatives - it would have workers' backing to do so. There is a moral, ethical and financial case to remove workers' pension funds from investments that will lose value as the world moves to a low-carbon economy which is less dependent on fossil fuels."

The Divest Strathclyde campaign began in 2015 and over that time members have spoken to hundreds of councillors and local people, protested at the city chambers, worked with trade unionists, gathered signatures from pension fund members, won pledges from councillors, picketed the Fund's AGM, put on events with international speakers and met with the First Minister.

In 2019 members took part in the Glasgow City Council's Climate Emergency Working Group which recommended the City divest.

Other councils in the former Strathclyde region have already supported a call for divestment from fossil fuels with West Dunbartonshire and North Ayrshire passing official motions.

In the last year New York State, the Welsh Parliament and the University of Edinburgh have made major announcements to divest from fossil fuels.

Cllr Kim Long, Glasgow City Council (Green) said:

"We are delighted that the motion was supported and that Glasgow City Council voted so overwhelmingly to stop investing in the fossil fuels that are destroying our planet. We know that in Glasgow, the climate crisis will impact the poorest communities the hardest - and all the money the city plans to spend on mitigating this damage is wasted if we keep pouring money into the very thing we know is making the problem worse. Local government pension funds are the single biggest public store of wealth in Scotland, so decisions like this can make a big difference."

Cllr Collette Stevenson, Depute Provost, South Lanarkshire Council (SNP) said:

"As the Chair of Strathclyde Pension Fund Board and in support of climate leadership, I fully support this motion for divestment. With COP26 arriving on our doorstep this November, the motion supporting divestment could not have come at a better time. I now believe that Strathclyde Pension Fund can be the first Scottish local pension fund to divest. By making a formal commitment to divest before COP26, the fund will give confidence to other pension funds in the UK and around the world to do the same. This is what true climate leadership looks like."

Cllr Jim Sharkey, Renfrewshire Council (Labour) said:

"I support divestment from fossil fuels and in view of Renfrewshire Council's policy on the climate emergency, I am sure my colleagues will want to adopt a very similar policy in this council."
ENDS
Contact:
Friends of the Earth Scotland
info@foe.scot

Divest Strathclyde
Louise King
louisemking1992@gmail.com
NOTES TO EDITORS
(1) IMAGES: Free to use images to accompany this story may be found at:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/110P_7aoJEcwmzx0oae8mlp0XJiFvghfM?usp=sharing

(2) Full text of original motion tabled. The text of the amended motion has not yet been published.

By Councillor Kim Long:-

Council:

- recalls its previous support for a transformative Green New Deal to respond to the climate and ecological emergencies;

- believes that a Green New Deal for the city region will require massive investment, and that the Council's own pension investments could play an important part in that;

- recognises that the Strathclyde Pension Fund supports low carbon initiatives through its direct investment portfolio, but is concerned that the Fund retains large holdings, worth in excess of £500 million last year, in fossil fuel industries that are driving the climate and ecological emergencies and perpetuating global inequalities;

- notes the Council's fiduciary duty as administering authority for the Strathclyde Pension Fund must be paramount in all decision making around the pension fund. Further notes the calls made over many years from campaigners on the issue of fossil fuel divestment and notes that many other major public and private institutions have already made and acted on commitments to fossil fuel divestment, demonstrating leadership on the climate emergency at the same time as protecting the long-term interests of their individual investors;

- believes that in the year of the COP26 climate summit, when the eyes of the world will be on Glasgow, the city and its institutions must show climate leadership; and therefore:

- resolves to write to the Strathclyde Pension Fund Committee, asking that it make a formal commitment to fossil fuel divestment prior to COP26, with the intention of divesting completely as quickly as possible, and no later than 2029; and that it further considers how it can reinvest the Pension Fund Members' hard-earned money to drive a green recovery for the Glasgow region.

(3) For more information about fossil fuels and divestment read:

Divesting to Protect Our Pensions and the Planet, 2021 Report
https://foe.scot/resource/divest-councils-2021/

Big Oil Reality Check - Assessing Oil And Gas Climate Plans
http://priceofoil.org/2020/09/23/big-oil-reality-check/

List of organisations and politicians who have divested:
https://foe.scot/campaign/fossil-fuel-divestment/commitments/

(4) Divest Strathclyde is the campaign to get the Strathclyde Pension Fund to drop investments in fossil fuel companies and other big polluters, and re-invest the money in ethical and sustainable alternatives.
https://www.gcop.scot/divest-strathclyde/

Friends of the Earth Scotland is:
* Scotland's leading environmental campaigning organisation
* An independent Scottish charity with a network of thousands of supporters and active local groups across Scotland
* Part of the largest grassroots environmental network in the world, uniting over 2 million supporters, 73 national member groups, and 5,000 local activist groups.

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Climate activists celebrate Glasgow City Council support for campaign to end £500 million fossil fuel investment - Friends of the Earth Scotland

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Campaigners and pension fund members are celebrating the announcement that Glasgow City Council has endorsed a plan to end their £500 million investment in fossil fuels. The motion was approved by a full meeting of Glasgow City Council today by a margin of 69 votes to 4 against.

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Climate Central has produced flood maps showing which parts of the world will be underwater at least once a year due to sea level rise by 2050.

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Sea level rise and coastal flood risk maps -- a global screening tool by Climate Central

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Interactive global map showing areas threatened by sea level rise and coastal flooding.

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Check out what Forestry and Land Scotland is planning for the Knapdale area in the next few years - lots of regeneration!

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The Knapdale land management plan comprises two forest blocks - Knapdale and Inverneill - which lie on the coast to the west of Lochgilphead. The local villages of Achnamara, Crinan, Tayvallich, Cairnbaan and Inverneill are all within or nearby the forest area.

There are several highly popular recreational areas and some of the lochans are important to a local fishing club. The area is nationally important in terms of its diversity of wildlife and native habitats. The forests also provide catchments for both public and private water supplies.

The majority of the plan area is within a National Scenic Area with the northern edge particularly visible. This is demonstrated by fantastic views both of the forest and the surrounding land and seascapes throughout the area.

Objectives

Our main objectives for the Knapdale plan are:

Continue to create a sustainable forest with a diverse range of species; balancing productivity with the area's natural heritage whilst taking into account resilience to future threats of climate change and disease.

Maintain and enhance the recreational facilities accessed within the plan area.

Improve public road resilience along the B841, Crinan Road.

Work with partner agencies, including Scottish Canals, and consider any necessary mitigation in the Potentially Vulnerable Area (PVA) for flooding around Lochgilphead.

Aim to restore ancient woodland sites with priority being given to the large areas of Sites of Scientific Interest (SSSI) within the plan; also to restore areas of peatlands and maintain the designated Special Protected Area (SPA). Also key wildlife species including black-throated divers, European beavers, red squirrels, osprey, marsh orchids and marsh fritillary butterflies.

Protect and build on previous successful works around the enormous variety of heritage sites, including 15 Scheduled Monuments.

Adopt low impact silvicultural systems (LISS) practices where practical.

Continue to protect both the tree crop and native woodlands to allow the plan to progress.

Timeline

June 2019: Public consultation event at Achnamara Village Hall

September 2020: Submission of plan to Perth & Argyll Conservancy for approval

Documents and maps

February 2021 update: Final draft Consultation Documents available for comment for a period of 28 days, until 28th March 2021. Any correspondence regarding these Consultation Documents can be referred to Scottish Forestry: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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The Knapdale land management plan comprises two forest blocks - Knapdale and Inverneill - which lie on the coast to the west of Lochgilphead. The local villages of Achnamara, Crinan, Tayvallich, Cairnbaan and Inverneill are all within or nearby the forest area.

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A report on a Material Transition, which addresses the need to examine how we extract the resources we need to transition to clean energy, and how this process can be more equitable.

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'A Material Transition: Exploring supply and demand solutions for renewable energy minerals' examines the potential widespread environmental destruction and human rights abuses unleashed by the extraction of transition minerals - the raw materials needed for the production of renewable energy technologies.

The report highlights what can be done to avert this devastation and sets out a pathway for a globally just energy future.

'A Material Transition' calls on the UK government to critically question resource use in any green recovery plans. Human rights abuses must be abolished from mineral supply chains and issues of over-consumption urgently addressed. Our high-intensity, wasteful and growth-oriented economy must be transformed so that humanity can thrive within ecological limits.

Leading environmental organisations in South Asia, ATM in the Philippines, and AEER from Indonesia, have provided in-depth case studies of nickel mining expansion in the region.

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'A Material Transition: Exploring supply and demand solutions for renewable energy minerals' examines the potential widespread environmental destruction and human rights abuses unleashed by the extraction of transition minerals - the raw materials needed for the production of renewable energy technologies.

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A potential way of addressing both the climate and inequality crises.

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There are lots of reasons that people choose farming and landwork as a career. In this post, LWA member Hamish Evans from Middle Ground Growers talks about his reasons and route into agroecological farming.

I am 23 years old. I have been born into a time of seemingly perpetual crises. I was active in the youth climate strikes, after learning this stark fact: at the current human 'development' trajectory, there will be very little life on this planet left by the time I am age 60, over one in 5 species will be extinct, forever gone, much of the planet will be uninhabitable, barren desert and plagued by extremes of weather, disease and pollution. This will cause over 1 billion people to migrate and exacerbate resource and territory wars. There will be no topsoil left (we are eroding it at such a rate that there are only 40 years left of decent topsoil due to our farming practices. This means almost no food production, even if the extreme weather allowed any. No soil life which feeds and sustains the rest of life.

Relatively micro-crises like Covid-19 and the increasingly prevalent pandemics, diseases and social crises are all rooted in ecological imbalance, and act as a warning sign of what's to come - a practice drill for when we really need to pull together and act collectively, although it may be too late if we don't do this in the coming decade (UN 2018). The human response can go in two directions: a great unravelling, mass extinction and exponential crises, or a great shift and intentional transformation of all our systems according to natural rather than anthropocentric economic laws. Both outcomes lead to massive transformation and overhaul of the existing paradigm - the former option is likely to be more violent, sudden and messy whilst the latter is a planned re-design and systemic shift in every sector and community.

The choice is one that we face both individually and collectively. Individually, we must ask which story we choose to live by. Living by the story of great transformation towards an Earth community allows us to be conscious healers and solution activists, be it in politics, farming, nursing, community work, tree planting or natural building. Living by a story of Business as Usual is blindness to the current and looming crises. Conversely, living by a story of inevitable collapse and doom is not useful or motivating, but paralyses real action and shifts responsibility away from being part of the solution. Our personal choice of what story to live by will impact upon and be impacted by the collective story. When a critical mass of people, communities, farms and movements adopt the story of the great transformation, it becomes a reality - this is how the future is continually bought into being by the present consciousness. The story needs to be collective to really make a difference, individual action is great but not enough. And yet it only takes a small and committed minority to provide enough leverage to spark historic changes - studies into social change show us that it takes only 3.5% of the population in active opposition and/or proposition to create structural change. By individually choosing to live by this new story of transformation, we create ripple effects in our communities, especially if our life work is rooted in the cooperative and collective spheres, such as community agriculture, co-housing, or local currencies.

How did this understanding of crisis and stories lead to my choice to commit my life to ecological stewardship and farming? After a dark chapter of eco-anxiety and despair, I was able to use these feelings to propel my activism in a curiously hopeful realism - knowing that the feelings were rooted in love for a planet I wished to save. At age 21 I was arrested for Non-Violent Direct Action in Extinction Rebellion protests and active in organising strikes, rebellions and direct actions in the ecological movement for an intense period of 3 years.

After somewhat burning out from purely oppositional activism - the saying NO to the current paradigm - I began to look for solutions and turn my focus to the propositional activism - the saying YES to the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. I had a background in Permaculture, working on organic farms and community agriculture. I also knew that our current industrial agricultural system was responsible for 30% of emissions and the majority of biodiversity loss as well as pollution, topsoil loss and dehumanised, soulless work. This reality intersected with an intuition that ecological growing (e.g. permaculture) is a major part of the solution - I now believe it to be the primary solution for land, soil, diversity and communities. Regenerative agriculture has potential to sequester more carbon than the human population emits, three times over. Small scale ecological growing has potential to respond to the health crisis facing humanity, and distribute healthy food equally, addressing both epidemic obesity (impacting 1-2 billion people) and poverty (1 billion are malnourished). This form of food production is nourishing in every sense. For the soil, for biodiversity, for communities, for our bodies, for the Earth, water and air.

Finally, ecological farming responds to the spiritual crisis that humanity faces - modern lives are dominated by rampant individualism, loneliness, meaninglessness, endless want, emptiness and boredom. Work is not satisfying or fulfilling for over half of the UK population. I have experienced this work dissatisfaction, emptiness and loneliness that comes as a shadow of this society's 'development'. I have, more recently, found an unbelievably nourishing life pattern where I feel content and fulfilled (and exhausted!) at the end of each day on the farm and the trainees, volunteers and co-growers on the farm have remarked similar soul revival. It is a feeling of aliveness and return to our whole selves. The beauty of this is that a small farm future will require more labour to be involved in land-based work, regeneration, food production and stewarding. In this sense, ecological farming and permaculture provide an appropriate response to the spiritual crisis as well as the physical/environmental imbalances we face.

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Ecological Farming as an appropriate crisis response - Landworkers Alliance

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I am 23 years old. I have been born into a time of seemingly perpetual crises. I was active in the youth climate strikes, after learning this stark fact: at the current human 'development' trajectory, there will be very little life on this planet left by the time I am age 60, over one in 5 species will be extinct, forever gone, much of the planet will be uninhabitable, barren desert and plagued by extremes of weather, disease and pollution.

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Scotland's Climate Assembly Interim Report

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Scotland's Climate Assembly Interim Report

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This report sets out 16 goals for the Scottish Government and calls for bold and urgent action now.

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Scotland's Climate Assembly is over 100 citizens from all walks of life tasked with examining expert evidence and agreeing recommendations for tackling the climate emergency in a fair and effective way. Our mini-Scotland's interim report, laid in the Scottish Parliament on 24 March 2021, sets out 16 goals agreed by consensus, and calls for bold and urgent action now.

Read the Interim Report here or download below.

Scotland's Climate Assembly Interim Report

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Scotland's Climate Assembly is over 100 citizens from all walks of life tasked with examining expert evidence and agreeing recommendations for tackling the climate emergency in a fair and effective way. Our mini-Scotland's interim report, laid in the Scottish Parliament on 24 March 2021, sets out 16 goals agreed by consensus, and calls for bold and urgent action now.

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This is such a cool video which shows what could happen if the US pulled off a Green New Deal, and it's beautifully illustrated too.

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A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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Brendan O'Hara MP statement about CEE Bill

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Brendan O'Hara MP statement about CEE Bill

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Our MP Brendan O’Hara MP

has been chosen as the SNP lead at COP26! This is really exciting news and shows that he has a genuine commitment to fighting the climate crisis. Here's a statement he made about the importance of the CEE Bill.

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This is a piece I have written in support of the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill campaign.

COVID-19 has revealed a great deal about the world we live in. It's shown us what works well-the vital role of our NHS, the kindness in our communities, and the life-saving scientific advances that have produced the vaccine. But the pandemic has also exposed elements that need fixing-and fast. Front and centre of these concerns is the dangers of climate change and the tragedy of ecological destruction: as Scotland begins to emerge from the pandemic, the climate-nature emergency must resume its place at the top of the political agenda.

As Glasgow prepares to host the UN COP26 conference in November, 2021 marks a unique opportunity for Scotland to be at the forefront of addressing these linked crises. COP26 is the most important summit on climate change since the 2015 Paris summit-and I'm proud to be co-lead for the SNP Westminster team in helping ensure that Scotland's actions on climate and nature are lifted up for other nations to strive towards.

It's for these reasons that I support the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill (CEE Bill) in Westminster. I'm proud to be amongst the first 100 MPs from across eight political parties in backing this revolutionary proposal. The CEE Bill is the only legislative plan before MPs that aims to address climate change while committing to restoring the UK's ecological landscape. It creates a viable environmental strategy that many of us in Westminster have been crying out for-and it does it by involving citizens in that process.

The scale and severity of the climate and ecological emergency is stark for all to see-gone are the days of climate denialism. 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have taken place since 2000. Worldwide, over a million species are now threatened with extinction; more than ever before in human history. Action is needed now before it's too late-but only last week MPs (again) called on the Westminster Government to provide detailed climate and nature plans before COP26-or risk the summit turning into an embarrassing failure.

In comparison, Scotland hasn't shied away from addressing the crises. The SNP Government and First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, were the first in the UK to declare a climate emergency. Scotland has comprehensive emissions reductions legislation which already accounts for aviation and shipping, as the CEE Bill proposes for the UK. Given Scotland's impressive record, I share the thoughts of so many of my colleagues who-during a recent CEE Bill debate-stated they hoped one day for Scotland to be an independent signatory to the Paris Agreement. Until then, COP26 is an immediate priority for the SNP-and Boris Johnson's administration must lead by example to ensure that warm words turn into radical action.

Yet, as things currently stand, the UK Government is falling short on many of its own targets. The Climate Change Committee's 2020 Progress Report found that only two of the 31 milestones for recommended actions have been fully achieved, with partial progress made on 15. 14 recommended actions-from replanting forests to insulating lofts-showed no progress at all. In addition, the UK is failing to meet 17 out of 20 biodiversity targets that were set back in 2010. This isn't good enough-and they must do better.

All of this demonstrates why the CEE Bill is so crucial. If enacted, it would create a roadmap for the UK to meet its obligations in limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels-while also conserving nature by restoring our soils and reducing species loss. The Bill would also create a representative citizens' assembly, similar to the one here in Scotland, that will bring together people from across the UK nations, empowering them to propose the steps needed for us to transition to a zero carbon society in a fair and just way.

31 SNP MPs now back the CEE Bill, representing the growing demand across Scotland for this much needed legislation to become law. The people of Scotland are serious about wanting urgent action to tackle the climate and ecological emergency, and I'm proud to echo their calls for action in Westminster. In this most crucial year for the planet, every day of inaction counts. It couldn't be more important that MPs from all parties join the 100 who already support the CEE Bill-and push to make it law. Check out the #climate100 on the CEE Bill website-and join the campaign to get your local representatives to back this vital legislation. Our shared future depends on it.

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The pandemic has exposed elements in our world that need fixing | Brendan O'Hara MP

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This is a piece I have written in support of the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill campaign. COVID-19 has revealed a great deal about the world we live in. It's shown us what works well-the vital role of our NHS, the kindness in our communities, and the life-saving scientific advances...

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Tayvallich was lucky enough to be one of only two communities in Scotland to be chosen by
Keep Scotland Beautiful to facilitate the creation of a community climate action plan. Over a period of several months the participants met to discuss what their community could do to reduce the impacts of climate change in the local area, and came up with a pragmatic and achievable plan for how to implement these actions.

The website is designed to showcase Tayvallich's Sustainability Plan and encourage others to do the same in their own communities. What can your community do to prepare for climate change?

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Creating a sustainability plan for Tayvallich

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Protest the Police Crime and Sentencing Bill

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Protest the Police Crime and Sentencing Bill

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The government is cracking down on our right to protest, with draconian new restrictions being rushed through Parliament. This will mean that even peaceful protests will be able to be shut down by police. The new laws are a response to the Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter protests.

Civil disobedience is one of the most effective ways to draw attention to an issue. Just look at what the global climate strikes and the Black Lives Matter marches have achieved. You can protest against these new regulations by signing this petition.

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Protester at a Black Lives Matter protest in London in 2020. Photo: Shutterstock

Please sign the petition rejecting the government's new crackdown on freedom to protest.
The coronavirus pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on our ability to take to the streets. Now the Home Office is busy preparing, in readiness for when public health restrictions start to ease, to make sweeping changes to public order legislation that will give the police extra powers to restrict future protests.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill announced today includes plans to "strengthen police powers to tackle non-violent protests that have a significant disruptive effect on the public or on access to Parliament".

Home Secretary Priti Patel's anger is aimed in particular at Extinction Rebellion and the rejuvenated Black Lives Matter movement. Last year she attacked Extinction Rebellion as "so-called eco-crusaders turned criminals" and denounced their direct action and civil disobedience tactics as "a shameful attack on our way of life, our economy and the livelihoods of the hard-working majority".

Patel has also condemned Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020 - some of the biggest seen in recent years. Although protesters took to streets that were largely empty because of the pandemic to demand racial justice and most protests passed without incident, Patel characterised them as "dreadful" and demonised those who took part in them "hooligans and thugs". The new Bill will increase the maximum penalty for criminal damage of a memorial - like the statue to Bristol slave trader Edward Colston toppled in June last year - from 3 months to 10 years.

Netpol's report last year highlighted, however, how it was Black-led demonstrations that were more likely to experience aggressive, more confrontational policing.

In the aftermath of a summer of demonstrations in 2020, Patel r equested a review by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue (HMICFR) to look at the way protests are policed and whether police forces should have new public order laws to protect "the rights of others to go about their daily business".

In the course of its consultation for the review, HMICFR indicated to Netpol that the government wants to challenge the perceived legitimacy of certain protest tactics by groups like Extinction Rebellion, as well as to give the police the power to more widely interpret whether protests like Black Lives Matter constitute "significant disruption" and are therefore likely to justify arrests.

Even before protests by Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter, the police seemed to believe that rights to freedom of assembly are "abused" by even minor breaches of the law, such as blocking roads. A much-delayed draft 'Protest Operational Advice' for local forces, produced by the National Police Chiefs Council in 2018 and based largely on the policing of five years of opposition to fracking, relied heavily on the notion that human rights protections for protests should not extend to activities that negate the rights of others, including companies.

As Netpol's Lawyers Group said in a submission at the time, there is absolutely no legal basis for such a claim, which would "constitute a doctrinal leap of massive proportions on current case-law principles". Nevertheless, there is ample evidence that the police have continued to lobby hard for tougher new laws.

The Home Secretary's plans look, on the face of it, like a combination of defending business interests and petty vengeance against political and social movements she dislikes. However, they are unlikely to frighten off many campaign groups from returning to the streets once the current restrictions end. With institutional racism and climate change still acutely critical issues, more arrests and more criminalisation therefore seems inevitable.

Resisting attacks on the freedom to protest

We are opposing planned changes to the law that threaten our right to protest and are calling on other organisations and individuals to join us.

However, in responding to these latest challenges, Netpol argues that unless we advocate for positive demands, the government will simply keep chipping away at our rights.

This is why we are also launching a new "Charter for Freedom of Assembly Rights", which calls on the government and the police to accept greater transparency and accountability for the way protests are policed. We are demanding police respect existing international human rights standards - or explain why they refuse to do so.

Amongst its eleven points, the Charter calls for:

Proper protections - not more restrictions - for the right to protest. This includes an end to treating direct action and civil disobedience as an excuse to shut down protests completely.

An end to routine surveillance of protesters. This includes strict limitations on the use of police video recording, use of facial recognition, and surveillance of social media sites used by campaigners.

An end to discriminatory policing of Black-led protests, which in particular disproportionately face excessive and violent interventions.

An end to targeting the most vulnerable. The police have a particular duty to protect the rights of young people, vulnerable and disabled people wishing to exercise their rights to freedom of assembly

Please sign the petition rejecting the government's new crackdown on freedom to protest.

Next week, we are formally launching the Charter for Freedom of Assembly Rights. Please ask your organisation to add its name in support of the Charter.

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Government announces new restrictions to the right to protest | Netpol

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Please sign the petition rejecting the government's new crackdown on freedom to protest. The coronavirus pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on our ability to take to the streets. Now the Home Office is busy preparing, in readiness for when public health restrictions start to ease, to make sweeping changes to public order legislation that will give the police extra powers to restrict future protests.

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Check out this film by Stop Climate Chaos Scotland about the injustices at the heart of the climate crisis. Scotland's Climate Justice Fund has been frozen for 5 years, yet extreme weather events have only increased in frequency and severity during this time.

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For years we have been warned that climate change will result in unprecedented global migration and huge numbers of climate refugees. But all that this 'crisis language' is achieving is an increase in anti-immigration sentiment and a framing of migrants as the problem.

The climate movement needs to connect the dots and provide safe and dignified routes for displaced people to reach safety, as well as working to ensure that the factors that caused people to leave their homes in the first place are being tackled. Climate justice needs to be at the centre of all environmental movements!

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As climate impacts escalate, more people will be forced to leave their home in search of safety and dignity. All indicators suggest that without urgent action, the current global policy responses to forced migration which include containment, exclusion, surveillance and detention, will be extended to those displaced by climate change. Every day, around the world, these policies give rise to human rights violations and rob people of their dignity.

Current narratives around climate and migration, often deployed by the global north climate movement and security think tanks are f eeding into the populist right-wing agenda and are potentially more detrimental than useful in supporting people that have been forcibly displaced. In order to ensure we don't amplify existing human rights abuses, we need to explore and redefine how we communicate around the climate migration nexus.

For the last few years reporting on climate and migration has been alerting us all to the accelerating climate crisis and the impacts that events will have on millions of people, forcing displacement and mass upheaval. This is now no longer a distant possibility, it's happening now.

There is no conclusive figure of how many people will need to move. No consensual estimate exists, let alone a commonly agreed methodology. As a result, predictions and estimates have become one of the most contentious issues in the debates on climate migration. Depending on the study, numbers oscillate wildly from 50 million to 1 billion by 2050 . The Global Report on Internal Displacement 2020 estimates that at the end of 2019 approximately 5.1 million were displaced as a result of disasters.

Those of us concerned about the climate change and impacts on migration have assumed that highlighting the scale of future displacement would trigger global, humanitarian responses and that it would spur governments around the world into action- to mitigate, adapt and prepare for climate impacts. There is no evidence to support this . However what we can be sure of is that over the last decade or so anti-migrant and anti-refugee actors have ramped up the 'fear factor' to increase their grip on domestic and regional politics and normalise further erosions to human rights in the policy responses to women, children and men who move in order to find safety. Inadvertently frames that use crisis language like 'mass migration', 'unprecedented migration', 'waves of migration' feed into this perceived 'fear factor' or 'threat narrative' and will be used to justify treating those that have been forcibly displaced by a rapidly warming world with walls, bullets, drones, cops, and cages." ( Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security' by Todd Miller).

The Climate movement must pay heed to the challenges of the migration movement, and not exacerbate them. We need to dive deeper into the subject area and to build wider movement understanding to improve how we communicate around climate and migration.

Humans have always migrated and it is highly likely to increase over the coming decades as a result of climate impacts. If we understand it better, are able to analyse data, predict hotspots and push back on dominant dangerous anti -migrant narratives we could actually start to build safe passages for migration with equity, dignity and humanity at the core of its principals.

Another dominant narrative around migration is the good versus bad migrant dynamic. There are those who are fleeing war, persecution for various grounds are good and there are those that are bad - like people who are deemed to be economic migrants and therefore less legitimate. Whilst absurd given the massive dependence on migrant labour in Europe, US and Australia, the right wing press love nothing more to attack foreign workers.

It's not necessarily helpful to create a new category of migration to categorise those displaced by climate impacts. It runs the risk of feeding into the narrative that some people have more legitimacy than others to migrate. We need to recognize forced displacement due to climate as yet another factor in the multiple reasons that people migrate but we need to integrate it and understand it as part of current global migration dynamics, rather than a stand alone reason.

There is a third factor which contributes to dangerous narratives around climate migration. Organisations working around the environment and climate crisis tend to be divided between those that see it as an interconnected humanitarian crisis and those that see it as an environmental crisis, where population control and closed borders would be appropriate responses . For the more conservative environmental organisations, supporter bases and funders may well come from a more conservationist, protecting nature perspective.

The Global North climate movement needs to address this, if we don't build climate justice deep into the work that we are doing to mitigate and adapt to some of the worst impacts of climate change we will be repeating history over and over again by recreating systems that have led to the current situation in the first place.

As Naomi Klein says in her book, This Changes Everything- "In the hot and stormy future we have already made inevitable through our past emissions, an unshakeable belief in the equal rights of all people and a capacity for deep compassion will be the only things standing between civilization and barbarism."

Those being displaced by climate events are being thrown into an already collapsing system and face the same dehumanising and cruel treatment that those seeking safety across the world are confronting.

Whilst many people do not want to leave their homes and livelihoods, migration is part of the solution and a form of adaptation to climate change. We need to ensure the climate movements' work supports people being safely able to migrate. Progressive movements need to tackle narratives by working together, sharing knowledge and building new opportunities for collaboration. The climate movement has a lot to learn from organisations working on migration and racial justice issues and needs to support and share its resources if it is going to be a useful ally and importantly, not a dangerous one. There are also many lessons from the climate movement that could help in advancing migrant support campaigns.

With COP26 in November and promises of far reaching climate action, organisations working with climate and migration need to come together to demand an approach to migration that is rooted in equity and dignity and will work to advance human rights for all.

Check out this briefing on Communicating Climate Migration , for further information or to discuss any of this please contact Brami Jegan and Kim Bryan .

For more climate movement news, follow 350 on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

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Dangerous narratives and climate migration

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As climate impacts escalate, more people will be forced to leave their home in search of safety and dignity. All indicators suggest that without urgent action, the current global policy responses to forced migration which include containment, exclusion, surveillance and detention, will be extended to those displaced by climate change.

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Framing Climate Justice have spoken to participants from all over the UK to get a better sense of how people think about the climate crisis and its links to social justice. You can see their findings and their recommendations on their website, along with resources for researchers, communicators and campaigners,

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A 12-month project bringing together organisers from across the climate movement to tell the stories that matter, and strengthen our movement in the fight for justice.

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An inspiring documentary about the Swedish teenager who started the School Strike for Climate movement back in 2018. It's undeniable that Greta Thunberg has played a hugely important role in mobilising and inspiring young people to get their voices heard, however it's important to remember that the youth movement involves thousands of young people from across the world who are often overlooked in the excitement around this one activist.

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Intimate documentary about a young girl who has become the voice of a generation.

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Argyll and Bute Council's Decarbonisation Plan

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Argyll and Bute Council's Decarbonisation Plan

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How will this affect you, your business or your local community?

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While there is a lot of great action going on to decarbonise our economy, it's important to remember that time is extremely short, and that if we do not reach net zero emissions by AT LEAST 2045, we will have no chance of limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees, a level of warming which is already having catastrophic effects across the world.

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Smoke billows from the Shanghai Waigaoqiao Power Generation coal power plant in 2016. China, the world's largest emitter, has promised to reach zero net carbon emissions by 2060. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)

The pledges countries made to reduce emissions as part of the 2015 Paris agreement are woefully inadequate, and the world must nearly double its greenhouse gas-cutting goals to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, according to research published Tuesday.

"The commitments are not enough," said Adrian Raftery, a University of Washington statistics professor and co-author of the study, published in Communications Earth & Environment.

The study found that even if countries were to meet their existing pledges, the world has only about a 5 percent chance to limit the Earth's warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) over preindustrial levels - a key aim of the international agreement.

Raftery and a colleague calculated that global emissions would need to fall steadily - about 1.8 percent each year on average - to put the world on a more sustainable trajectory. While no two countries are alike, that amounts to overall emissions reductions roughly 80 percent more ambitious than those pledged under the Paris agreement, he said.

In many respects, the race to slow the Earth's warming is a daunting math problem. Emissions have risen about 1.4 percent annually on average over the past decade, not including the abnormal plunge in 2020 driven by the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2019, the world logged the highest emissions ever recorded, at 59 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, a category that includes not only carbon dioxide but also methane and other climate-warming agents. If that trend continues unabated, scientists say, the world could begin to cross troubling climate thresholds within the coming decade.

The architects of the Paris accord and numerous world leaders have long underscored that the pledges made in 2015 were not enough to limit warming to acceptable levels. The expectation was always that nations would grow more ambitious with time, and there is evidence that is happening.

But as global emissions have continued to rise, as countries have failed to hit even modest targets and as the consequences of a warming world have become more tangible, the push for leaders to act more aggressively has become only more urgent.

'Tick tock': U.N. climate talks end with fresh doubts over global unity

"Time is running out,"Niklas Höhne, a German climatologist and founding partner of NewClimate Institute, said in an interview. "The longer we wait, the more difficult it will be to turn emissions downward."

Höhne is also part of the team behind Climate Action Tracker, an effort that tracks what cuts countries have vowed to take and how they are, or aren't, living up to those promises. He said that with the pledges countries have made, the world is currently on pace to reach 2.6 Celsius (4.7 Fahrenheit) of warming by the end of the century. But based on measures they have actually put into place, the figure is closer to 2.9 Celsius (5.2 Fahrenheit).

At either level, scientists say humans would be forced to grapple with ever more extreme weather events, crippling heat waves and wildfires, and disastrous levels of flooding that could leave some coastal communities uninhabitable.

The level of ambition necessary varies greatly between countries, Raftery said, noting that the United States would need to increase its existing goal by 38 percent to do its part toward achieving the 2C goal. The United Kingdom, which has already made progress on its promises, would need a boost of about 17 percent. Meanwhile, countries such as Brazil, which have seen emissions climb despite promises to scale them back, would need bolder action to make up for lost time.

Kelly Levin, a senior associate at the World Resources Institute, noted that Tuesday's study did not take into account more recent policies that some large countries have adopted or already begun to implement, and which could put the world on a more hopeful path.

"Given the recent momentum we have seen - for example, from the Biden administration's recent executive orders, to bans of the internal combustion engine in countries and by companies - their estimates, which are based on recent trends, are likely too conservative," Levin said in an email.

Still, she said, by any calculation there remains "a wide gulf between where emissions are headed today" and where they need to be to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The findings also echo those published late last year by the U.N. Environment Program, which said nations would need to "roughly triple" their current emissions-cutting pledges to limit the Earth's warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius. To reach the loftier goal of holding warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), that report found, countries would need to increase their targets at least fivefold, a change that would require rapid and profound shifts in how societies travel, produce electricity and eat.

A critical moment will arrive later this year when leaders from around the world assemble in Glasgow for a U.N. climate conference, which was delayed a year because of the pandemic. Presidents and prime ministers worldwide already are facing pressure to show up with more ambitious pledges in hand.

Some of the world's biggest economies have said they intend to do just that. China, the world's largest emitter, has promised to reach zero net carbon emissions by 2060. The European Union has said that by the end of the decade, it intends to cut emissions "at least 55 percent" from 1990 levels.

More than 125 countries, representing more than two-thirds of global emissions, have either adopted or are discussing a goal of reaching net zero emissions by the middle of the century, Höhne said.

The United States, which is rejoining the Paris accord after President Donald Trump withdrew from it last year, has not yet formally submitted a new pledge. But President Biden has made clear that he will aim to put the world's second-biggest emitter on a path to net zero emissions by 2050, while also decarbonizing the electricity sector by 2035.

"President Biden knows that we have to mobilize in unprecedented ways to meet a challenge that is fast accelerating. And he knows we have limited time to get it under control," U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry told an online summit last month.

How Joe Biden's surprisingly ambitious climate plan came together

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres has continued to press nations to go further and faster, as the world has already surpassed 1 degree Celsius of warming.

"The drive for net-zero emissions must become the new normal for everyone, everywhere," Guterres said in a speech Monday. "At the same time, all commitments to net zero must be underpinned by clear and credible plans to achieve them. Words are not enough."

Raftery said that while the findings of Tuesday's study might initially seem discouraging, he sees glimmers of optimism. Major countries are promising bold action, markets are moving away from fossil fuels, businesses are paying attention to climate concerns and upcoming stimulus funding could prioritize greener investments.

"I'm a bit surprised in a way to see it's not as hopeless as I would have felt three years ago," he said of the changes needed to alter the world's trajectory. "It's a heavy lift, but it's not impossible."

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Countries must ramp up climate pledges by 80 percent to hit key Paris target, study finds

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The pledges countries made to reduce emissions as part of the 2015 Paris agreement are woefully inadequate, and the world must nearly double its greenhouse gas-cutting goals to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, according to research published Tuesday.

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Do you have a pension? Do you know where your money is invested? Have a look at the

Make My Money Matter

website to find out what you, your employer and your pension can do to stop investing in the fossil fuels that are causing the climate crisis!

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Your pension is powerful. Greening it is 21x more effective at cutting carbon than stopping flying, going veggie & switching energy supplier combined.

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This article is about the opening of a new coal mine in Cumbria, which will significantly increase UK emissions and make it almost impossible to reach our target of net zero emissions by 2050. The opening of the mine also creates a false opposition between climate action and jobs - it is possible to create jobs without producing more emissions!

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The United Kingdom is facing strong criticism from climate change scientists and activists for its decision to move ahead with plans to develop the country's first deep coal mine in 30 years, despite warnings that doing so could destroy any chance of achieving the country's climate change target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

In a January 29 letter, the Climate Change Committee, an independent body that advises the UK government on progress toward emissions targets, said opening the mine would lead to significant increases in the UK's annual CO2 emissions. If the mine is allowed to operate through 2049 as is currently planned, the committee says the UK's goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, which many experts have said isn't fast enough as it is, will be in jeopardy.

The mine is set to be developed in west Cumbria, a county in northwest England that the Guardian reports "has seen years of redundancies and high unemployment rates" due to the closure of a major chemical plant and the decommissioning of a nuclear facility in the area. The Cumbria County Council, which approved the project, said it did so because it will create jobs in an area of high unemployment, according to the BBC.

But scientists and climate activists have slammed the decision to go ahead with the mine.

On February 3, Jim Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, wrote a letter to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson warning that continuing with the plan to open the mine showed "contemptuous disregard of the future of young people and nature" and would result in Johnson's "humiliation" at COP 26, the annual UN climate change conference which the UK is set to host in Glasgow later this year.

Hansen, who is famous for testifying to the science of human-induced warming before the US Congress way back in 1998, gave Johnson the option to be a part of changing history on climate change or face protests in the streets.

"In leading the UK, as host to the COP, you have a chance to change the course of our climate trajectory, earning the UK and yourself historic accolades - or you can stick with business-almost-as-usual and be vilified in the streets of Glasgow, London, and around the world," Hansen's letter reads.

In a response to Hansen, Johnson's government said it is leading the fight against global warming by "cutting emissions by more than any major economy so far," referring to ambitious plans to reduce UK emissions by 68 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, a reference point agreed upon by the more than 100 countries that signed the 2016 Paris climate agreement.

"We have already committed to ending the use of coal for electricity by 2025 and ending direct government support for the fossil fuel energy sector overseas," the letter reads.

But if the UK has committed to ending the domestic use of coal for electricity by 2025 and ending government support for overseas fossil fuel projects, how can it also be moving forward with opening a new coal mine?

Woodhouse Colliery won't be your average coal mine - or so the mining company says

Woodhouse Colliery - the name of the Cumbria mine project, which is operated by West Cumbria Mining - would be the UK's first new operational deep coal mine in 30 years. The last operating deep coal mine, in North Yorkshire, was capped off in 2016 - "bringing to an end centuries of deep coal mining in Britain," in the words of a BBC report at the time.

The Woodhouse mine, when opened, would reverse that trend. It will dig upcoking coal, also known as metallurgic coal, from beneath the Irish Sea in order to make coke, a " form of almost pure carbon" that is used to make steel. Coal from the mine will help power the steel industry in the UK and western Europe.

According to West Cumbria Mining, the coal will be "processed in a plant which is a 'building within a building' to further minimize noise, dust and light impacts." As a result, the company says the mines are " cleaner, safer to work in and more sympathetic to their environment."

In a March 2019 report,the Cumbria City Council claimed the mine would be carbon neutral - a term that refers to the state of producing net-zero carbon dioxide emissions, which is reached by eliminating the combustion of fossil fuels like coal, or by capturing or offsetting the carbon emissions through processes like planting trees. According to the Cumbria County Council's report, coal from the Cumbria mine will replace the need for coal from elsewhere, which it says makes it carbon neutral.

But a January 2020 report by Green Alliance, an independent environmental think tank and charity in the UK, threw cold water on the Cumbria mine's carbon neutrality claims. The report argues that according to basic economic theory, "an increase in a supply of a commodity, such as coal, would reduce the price, leading to increased demand, and therefore, increased emissions."

As a result of this increase in demand, the report's authors say the steelmaking industry will have less incentive to efficiently use or recycle the coal it uses. The industry would also be less likely to pursue alternative ways to make steel, such as through the Direct Reduced Iron Process which uses natural gas - still a fossil fuel, but one that is less polluting than coal.

In defense of the coal mine, the Cumbria County Council has also suggested that the coal produced would be used in the UK and EU, therefore ending emissions from coal imports. But according to the Green Alliance's report, the county council claims without evidence that having no transport emissions will make up for emissions produced by mining the coal.

The bottom line, the Green Alliance says, is that Woodhouse Colliery won't be carbon neutral with its plans to extract 2.43 million tons of coking coal per year. That will produce 9 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, a measure of greenhouse emissions based on their global warming potential, per year.

And that doesn't even include the emissions from extraction.

The UK government has bought into the false dichotomy of climate action versus jobs

The new mine will be located in Cumbria near Whitehaven, one of the UK's poorest towns, where 14 percent of households had financial difficulty paying heating bills as of 2018. So the appeal of 500 new jobs, which the mining company says Woodhouse Colliery would produce, is hard for some local leaders and citizens to overlook (though there is some local opposition).

"But it's not true," Tim Crosland, director of Plan B, a UK organization that supports taking legal action to fight against climate change, told me in an interview. Crosland disputed that the promise of "a few hundred precarious jobs in a dying industry" would be worth it to the people of Cumbria in the end. "We need good quality sustainable jobs for the future," Crosland added.

The government is afraid that canceling the mine is a choice between jobs and environmental concerns, Crosland told me.

"The government is sensitive to the perception that they seem to be sacrificing jobs to serve a metropolitan elite agenda," he said. "But if you actually look at the expert evidence from the International Energy Agency, the International Monetary Fund, Oxford University - not radical but mainstream thinkers - they say you create more jobs by investing in clean infrastructure."

Indeed, framing the need for continued investment in fossil fuels as important for jobs and arguing that moving away from fossil fuels will hurt jobs and the economy is a classic talking point the fossil fuel industry has used for decades to thwart climate action.

It's also one being used in the United States by the fossil fuel industry and its political and media allies to skew public opinion and obstruct the Biden administration's ambitious climate agenda.

There's still a chance the UK could reverse its decision

Ed Davey of the UK's Liberal Democrats has written a letter urging Alok Sharma, the UK's climate czar, to resign if Prime Minister Johnson doesn't rescind his decision to approve the mine.

Sharma, who will help lead COP 26 later this year, is reported to be livid over the decision to open the mine.

After all, the COP 26 summit is where the UK is meant to urge other nations to phase out fossil fuels. That'll be a lot harder to do if the UK itself just approved the development of a brand new coal mine right there at home.

But Crosland said it's possible all of this opposition might convince Johnson to reverse course. "We've seen that the one thing Johnson is, is susceptible to this type of pressure, if he reads the signs," Crosland said.

"If Johnson comes to believe that the Cumbria mine will jeopardize the prospects of the UK coming out of COP 26 with some sort of credibility intact, then I think there's a chance the government will change its plans," he said.

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The UK ended deep coal production in 2016. So why is it opening a new coal mine in 2021?

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The United Kingdom is facing strong criticism from climate change scientists and activists for its decision to move ahead with plans to develop the country's first deep coal mine in 30 years, despite warnings that doing so could destroy any chance of achieving the country's climate change target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

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Which search engine do you use? We highly recommend switching to Ecosia - it’s very easy to change, and Ecosia uses the profits from advertising to plant trees - over 119 million so far! It’s such a small change to make but it can make a really big difference!

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Ecosia - the search engine that plants trees

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Ecosia uses the ad revenue from your searches to plant trees where they are needed the most. By searching with Ecosia, you're not only reforesting our planet, but you're also empowering the communities around our planting projects to build a better future for themselves. Give it a try!

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This website Climate in Colour offers a brilliant way to educate yourself about the social justice side of the climate crisis! It's full of resources which aim to make climate conversations more accessible and more diverse, and they also run an interactive course on the colonial roots of climate change.

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Climate In Colour is an online education platform and community making climate conversations more accessible and diverse.

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Market Argyll provides a way to support local businesses without the extra effort of finding them individually, boosting the local economy and reducing emissions from travel and shipping! The network covers all kinds of businesses from independent food shops to art studios to accommodation providers, so if you have a business of your own it's a great idea to sign up too.

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All in One Place

Market Argyll is a virtual marketplace to host a wide range of local businesses, charities and service providers. From retailers to restaurants, wellbeing professionals to tradesmen, food & drink producers to artists and craftsmen...consider this your one-stop-shop and first port of call for everything Argyll has to offer.

Discover New Businesses

If you live in Argyll, you likely already shop local to a certain extent, in your own town or neighbouring village. But what about a bit further afield? Market Argyll makes is simple for you to search and find what you are looking for, filtered by location, category and keywords. So that hidden gem of a business is now under your radar, and you can easily see how Coronavirus restrictions are impacting their operations, if at all.

Support Local First

This platform connects you with businesses outside your immediate vicinity, as well as those on your doorstep, so you can consider a small business before an online giant!
By supporting small, we help our local economy thrive, making it an even better place to live.

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Market Argyll - Supporting Local, Together

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Argyll's virtual marketplace. Bringing local businesses & organisations together in one place to make it simple to support local. From food producers and farms to artists, retailers, and service providers - there's space here for everyone. Convenience & community wrapped up to help the local economy thrive.

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Did you know that the fashion industry produces 92 million tonnes of waste per year, while using up 79 trillion tonnes of water? We know that boycotting fast fashion completely isn't an option that's accessible to everyone, but Fashion Revolution's website has a range of resources, including how to find out where your clothes were made, keep big brands accountable, and further your own education about sustainability in the fashion industry.

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WE ARE FASHION REVOLUTION

For nearly 10 years, we have been campaigning passionately for a clean, safe, fair, transparent and accountable fashion industry. We believe in a global fashion industry that conserves and restores the environment and values people over growth and profit.

JOIN THE FASHION REVOLUTION

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We love fashion, but we don't want our clothes to come at the cost of people or our planet.

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We highly recommend you listen to  The Yikes Podcast! This is a podcast hosted by two students in Edinburgh, which covers huge and intersecting topics such as climate justice, health, feminism, and refugee and migrant rights in a nuanced and highly informative way. You can find them on Instagram or search the Yikes Podcast wherever you get your podcasts!

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We and our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for measurement and analytics purposes. By using our website and our services, you agree to our use of cookies as described in our Cookie Policy.

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Listen to The YIKES Podcast on Spotify. There's a lot to make us Yikes in this world. From the climate crisis to racism to activism and resisting oppressive systems, it can call get a bit overwhelming. Yikes is a podcast which leans into the Yikes of the world rather than letting it overwhelm us.

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Did you know that in the UK we throw away over 10 million tonnes of food per year?

Friends of the Earth

has put together a load of information on just how much food is wasted, what the impacts of this are for both people and planet, and how we can waste less food.

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Solving the problem of food waste | Friends of the Earth

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Find out the facts about food waste, and what you can do about it.

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These videos are short and informative, detailing how natural feedback loops are speeding up climate change in ways that haven't been accounted for in climate targets.

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The Earth is warming the Earth. In this series of five short films, learn why natural warming loops have scientists alarmed-and why we have less time than we think. Subtitled in 27 languages.

The Dalai Lama and Greta Thunberg launched these films in an online conversation for a global audience of over one million people.

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In this series of five short films, Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops, learn why natural warming loops have scientists alarmed-and why we have less time than we think.

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Whether you're plant-based or you enjoy meat and dairy, it's important to think about where your food comes from all year round. Eating locally and in season is the best way to keep the carbon footprint of your diet low, while keeping the quality of your meals high! There are loads of ways to check what food is in season at this time of year, starting with asking someone with a veg patch - but this website can also give you some hints on what you'll be able to buy locally each month of the year.

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Seasonal UK grown produce | Vegetarian Society

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The Vegetarian Society has updated its cookie policy. We use third-party cookies to personalise content, provide social media features, and analyse our traffic to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on The Vegetarian Society website.

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Instead of buying a new plastic bottle every time you need new cleaning fluid (even if the bottles say they are recyclable this doesn't necessarily mean they will be recycled), why not see if you can refill the bottles you already have locally? Many small shops in Argyll and Bute already offer this service, but if this is far away or inconvenient, you can also order refill capsules from companies such as Ocean Saver online so you don't have to throw those bottles away!

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Superior cleaning power. Zero polluting plastic.

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Thinking about yourself as an ancestor is important in the face of climate change, and Layla Saad's 'Good Ancestor' podcast explores this as well as many themes such as race, gender, spirituality and wellbeing.

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We and our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for measurement and analytics purposes. By using our website and our services, you agree to our use of cookies as described in our Cookie Policy.

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Ep047: #GoodAncestor​ Mikaela Loach on Climate Justice & Antiracism

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Listen to this episode from Good Ancestor Podcast on Spotify. In this episode, I speak with climate justice and antiracism activist, Mikaela Loach.Mikaela Loach is a climate justice activist, the co-host of The Yikes Podcast, writer and a 4th-year medical student based in Edinburgh, Scotland.In 2020, Forbes, Global Citizen and BBC Woman's Hour named Mikaela one of the most influential women in the UK climate movement.

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This article is about the changes that the members of the public who took part in the Citizens’ Climate Assembly have been making in their lives since becoming so much better informed about the climate crisis and how to solve it.

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t the start of 2020, Sue Peachey could never have predicted how her life would change over the next 12 months. She was one of 108 people to take part in the UK's first climate assembly earlier in the year, spending four weekends learning about a range of environmental issues before producing a final report of recommendations.

"The first weekend changed me really. I thought, 'Oh my God, [climate change] is really going to happen,' she said. "It made me want to learn and to live my life greener."

Her first step was to buy an electric car, something she admits she knew very little about. "The only electric vehicle I was aware of was a milk float," she laughed. She was frustrated by how difficult it was to find information, even from the car salesman at her local garage who couldn't answer her questions, but as soon she as she gave the electric vehicle a test drive she was "convinced it was definitely the way forward".

Next was to figure out a way to pass on what she had learned at the assembly, during which participants produced recommendations, including a tax on frequent-flyers, a ban on selling SUVs, and a cut in meat consumption.

When she saw some openings for councillors at her parish council in Batheaston, she decided to give it a shot. "I thought I could encourage and support my local community to make some greener choices," said Peachey, who has already used her role to help declare a climate emergency in the area. "I'm no expert and I probably can't remember half the things they told me [in the assembly], but all I know is climate change is real, it is going to happen and we all need to make changes to our lives."

She's not the only participant to have made major life changes after taking part. Linda, 59, who asked that her full name not be used, has decided to set up a sustainable secondhand clothing business after leaving her office job earlier in the year. "I didn't realise how much fashion contributed to climate change. I think 10% of annual global carbon dioxide emissions are from the fashion industry," she said. "I thought it was something I could address personally."

She has taken a business course to prepare herself for the venture which she hopes to get off the ground in spring, something she never anticipated earlier in the year. "My family can't quite believe what I'm going to be doing, but they're all behind me," she said.

Other participants' lifestyle changes have not been quite as drastic but have still had a profound impact. Max, 17, the assembly's youngest member, who also asked for his full name not to be used, became a pescatarian after learning how meat-eating was having a negative effect on the planet - despite the jibes of his school mates. "My friends thought it was stupid at first, but over time they've got used to it," he said. "I just saw how much carbon dioxide was released from each type of meat and I thought, 'Wow, this is something I need to think about a lot more'."

Charley Winter, 26, from Northamptonshire, works in PR and used to jetset around the world on about six holidays a year to indulge her love of travelling - but when the pandemic is over, she doesn't plan on going back to normal. "It needs to change. If it does negatively impact me I understand that and I'm willing to make changes in my life for the better," she said, adding she plans to rethink how many flights she takes and go on more UK-based holidays in the future.

Although some participants said it was too early to gauge the impact of the Climate Assembly report, many were pleased with how it had been received by the government and said they felt the recently announced 10-point green plan mirrored some of their suggestions.

But all agreed the climate knowledge they gained from the assembly has empowered them to make their own decisions, and stressed the need for better education across the population. "Everybody should receive something in the post from the government informing them of the changes they can make, because a lot of people don't realise the small things they do make a big difference," said Linda.

In its Sixth Carbon Budget, published earlier this month, the government's statutory advisers, the Climate Change Committee, said: "The experience of the UK climate assembly shows that if people understand what's needed and why, if they have options and can be involved in the decision-making process, they will support the transition to net zero."

This is most important for older generations, said Peachey, who would not have been taught about the climate crisis in school. For her, the experience has been more transformative than she ever anticipated.

"I'm 57, I probably thought this time last year my days of going to meetings and discussing and debating were over, and here we are a year later, I've done the climate assembly and I'm now on the parish council," she said. "Who knows what's next? But it's definitely awakened me."

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'It's awakened me': UK climate assembly participants hail a life-changing event

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t the start of 2020, Sue Peachey could never have predicted how her life would change over the next 12 months. She was one of 108 people to take part in the UK's first climate assembly earlier in the year, spending four weekends learning about a range of environmental issues before producing a final report of recommendations.

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It's the 5 year anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement, and we are still speeding towards climate disaster. Our weekend recommendation for you this week is this video of Greta Thunberg talking about how far we still have to go to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

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Greta Thunberg on Understanding the Climate Crisis Gravity | NowThis

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Changing your electricity supplier to Bulb is quick and easy, and the electricity is both cheaper and greener!

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Join Bulb - Making energy simpler, cheaper, greener

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Skip to content

A little more about us

We're Hayden and Amit, the founders of Bulb. We met five years ago when we were working in the old energy industry. We saw the same problems at all the big providers. Inefficiency. Poor service. Expensive tariffs. Dirty energy. It didn't have to be like this. The energy industry can change - and we set up Bulb to lead that change.

We want to make the whole industry better. And there are three ways we're trying to do that - we're making energy simpler, cheaper and greener.

Simpler, cheaper, greener

We've got three values that run through our company like the words in a stick of rock.

Simpler

We make energy simpler - so we make your life easier. You can switch to Bulb in 2 minutes. We've got one, simple tariff for all. And you can speak to a human when you have a question.

Cheaper

We make energy cheaper - so we help you save money. We invest in technology to reduce costs. And we pass savings on to our members.

Making energy better, together

At Bulb, we put members first. Which means empowering our customers. Listening to them. Inviting them to build our company with us. We're building an open energy company, with an engaged, supportive Community that takes centre stage.

We really care about our team too. We want them to enjoy their work and get real satisfaction from it. No small cogs in a giant machine. We're a team of 550 people, all working together from our office in East London.

Only 2 minutes to switch and we'll take care of the rest

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Bulb - Making energy simpler, cheaper, greener

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Skip to content We're Hayden and Amit, the founders of Bulb. We met five years ago when we were working in the old energy industry. We saw the same problems at all the big providers. Inefficiency. Poor service. Expensive tariffs. Dirty energy. It didn't have to be like this.

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Why some people are choosing not to have children in the face of climate change

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Why some people are choosing not to have children in the face of climate change

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People worried about the climate crisis are deciding not to have children because of fears that their offspring would have to struggle through a climate apocalypse, according to the first academic study of the issue.

The researchers surveyed 600 people aged 27 to 45 who were already factoring climate concerns into their reproductive choices and found 96% were very or extremely concerned about the wellbeing of their potential future children in a climate-changed world. One 27-year-old woman said: "I feel like I can't in good conscience bring a child into this world and force them to try and survive what may be apocalyptic conditions."

These views were based on very pessimistic assessments of the impact of global heating on the world, the researchers said. One respondent, for example, said it would "rival world war one in its sheer terror". The research also found that some people who were already parents expressed regret over having their children.

Having a child also potentially means that person going on to produce a lifetime of carbon emissions that contribute to the climate emergency, but only 60% of those surveyed were very concerned about this carbon footprint.

"The fears about the carbon footprint of having kids tended to be abstract and dry," said Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, of Yale-NUS College in Singapore, who led the study. "But the fears about the lives of existing or potential children were really deep and emotional. It was often heartbreaking to pore through the responses - a lot of people really poured their hearts out."

The number of people factoring climate change into their reproductive plans was likely to grow, Schneider-Mayerson said, as the impacts of global heating became more obvious. "To address this, we really need to act immediately to address the root cause, which is climate change itself," he said.

The study, published in the journal Climatic Change, found no statistically significant difference between the views of women and men, though women made up three-quarters of respondents. A 31-year-old woman said: "Climate change is the sole factor for me in deciding not to have biological children. I don't want to birth children into a dying world [though] I dearly want to be a mother."

The researchers found that 6% of parents confessed to feeling some remorse about having children. A 40-year-old mother said: "I regret having my kids because I am terrified that they will be facing the end of the world due to climate change."

Schneider-Mayerson said: "I was surprised - for parents, this is an extremely difficult statement to make."

The study is the first peer-reviewed academic study of the issue and analysed a large group of concerned people. The survey was done anonymously so people could express themselves freely.

"It is an unprecedented window into the way that [some people] are thinking and feeling about what many consider to be the most important decision in their lives," said Schneider-Mayerson.

Other findings were that younger people were more concerned about the climate impacts their children would experience than older respondents, and that adoption was seen as a potential alternative to having biological children.

The study indicated that climate-related fears for their children's lives were rooted in a deeply pessimistic view of the future. Of the 400 respondents who offered a vision of the future, 92.3% were negative, 5.6% were mixed or neutral, and just 0.6% were positive.

One 42-year-old father wrote that theworld in 2050 would be "a hot-house hell, with wars over limited resources, collapsing civilisation, failing agriculture, rising seas, melting glaciers, starvation, droughts, floods, mudslides and widespread devastation." Schneider-Mayerson said he thought the pessimistic views held were all within the range of possibilities, if not necessarily the most likely outcome.

However, he said further research was needed on a more diverse group of people and in other parts of the world. The self-selecting group in the study all lived in the US and were largely white, more highly educated and liberal.

Previously, opinion polls of the general public indicated people were connecting the climate crisis and reproduction, with one poll in 2020 finding that among 18- to 44-year-old US citizens without children, 14% cited climate change as a "major reason" for not having children. In 2019, scores of women in the UK said they were starting a "birth strike" until the climate crisis was resolved.

Seth Wynes, of Concordia University in Canada, whose 2017 study found having one less child was the greatest impact individuals can have in fighting climate change, said the researchers had properly stressed that the sample was not representative of all Americans. But he said the distress over the decision to have children made sense. "Climate change is already affecting our world in frightening ways and so it's certainly reasonable to account for the climate crisis when thinking about the future of one's family.

"As climate change continues to worsen, it is important to understand how perceptions of the future can change the way everyday people plan their lives," Wynes said. "This study is an initial step in growing that understanding."

There is also growing evidence of climate anxiety affecting mental health and earlier in 2020 more than 1,000 clinical psychologists signed an open letter warning of "acute trauma on a global scale". Last week, a survey revealed that more than half of child and adolescent psychiatrists in England were seeing patients distressed about the state of the environment.

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Climate 'apocalypse' fears stopping people having children - study

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People worried about the climate crisis are deciding not to have children because of fears that their offspring would have to struggle through a climate apocalypse, according to the first academic study of the issue.

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We highly recommend

Keep Scotland Beautiful

's Climate Emergency Training courses for anyone who is interested in expanding their knowledge on the climate crisis, and in gaining confidence when talking about it. KSB run several different courses which cater to different interests, needs and age groups, and several of our members have now taken part in their various courses.

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Why train with us?

We are the only Carbon Literate Training Organisation in Scotland and the only Scottish organisation to have attained Gold Carbon Literate Organisation status.

You might also be interested in:

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Climate emergency training | Keep Scotland Beautiful

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We are the only Carbon Literate Training Organisation in Scotland and the only Scottish organisation to have attained Gold Carbon Literate Organisation status. You might also be interested in:

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Climate change can be a tricky topic to talk about - it's such a complex issue and it affects us all in profound and different ways. This Radio 4 programme speaks to this, discussing what works when talking about climate change, and what can be counterproductive.

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From the greenhouse effect, through global warming to climate chaos, Michael Rosen talks to George Marshall about the best ways to communicate what's happening to the planet. Producer Sally Heaven.

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BBC Radio 4 - Word of Mouth, Communicating Climate Change

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From the greenhouse effect, through global warming to climate chaos, Michael Rosen talks to George Marshall about the best ways to communicate what's happening to the planet. Producer Sally Heaven.

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Check out this interactive map of all the renewable energy in Argyll - it's so encouraging to see how much we have here on our doorstep, and super interesting as well!

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We'd like to recommend Mary Robinson's book 'Climate Justice'! It's a really interesting read full of stories from people on the front lines of climate change. Mary Robinson is the former president of Ireland, and is now Chair of the Council of the Elders, an independent group of global leaders working together for peace and human rights. You can also check out her foundation's website, which is dedicated to fighting climate injustice.

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About this image

The Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice

A centre for thought leadership, education and advocacy on the struggle to secure global justice for those people vulnerable to the impacts of climate change who are usually forgotten - the poor, the disempowered and the marginalised across the world.

It is a platform for solidarity, partnership and shared engagement for all who care about global justice, whether as individuals and communities suffering injustice or as advocates for fairness in resource-rich societies.

The Foundation provides a space for facilitating action on climate justice to empower the poorest people and countries in their efforts to achieve sustainable and people-centred development.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. Accept

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Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice

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News Resources About Our Work The Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice A centre for thought leadership, education and advocacy on the struggle to secure global justice for those people vulnerable to the impacts of climate change who are usually ...

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Not only will Joe Biden bring the US back into the Paris Climate Agreement, his win signals a huge step forward for climate justice all over the world.

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The U.S. Presidential election has been settled, and the people have spoken. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the next President and Vice President of the United States. Candidly, I cannot think of an election outcome with so many immediate implications for the United States and global community on our climate crisis. Here is why Earth is also a winner in this election cycle.

Andy Katz/Getty Images

While everyone was monitoring or covering the election results, something else quietly happened on November 4th, 2020. The United States withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement. President Trump announced the intentions to do this in 2019, but it could no become official until November 4th in accordance with Article 28 of the Agreement. Is the action permanent? I answered this question in a 2019 Forbes article by noting, "A different administration could rejoin the agreement or the current administration could reverse course although there is no evidence that would happen." Joe Biden has already signaled that he plans to rejoin the Agreement, which seeks to reduce Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to cap warming beneath a 1.5 to 2.0 degree C threshold.

The Paris Agreement exists without the United States. However, it would be less effective at achieving its goals. This Agreement was better than previous actions because it included other big emitting countries like China and India. We have always known that climate action needed to be bigger than one country. However, the U.S. is the second leading emitter of GHGs in the world. The U.S. traditionally, until recent years, has also been viewed as a leader. Without our presence, other countries might be less inclined to meet targets, and climate policy engagement could be limited. Just this week, someone on social media tweeted the cliche "Don't you think the Agreement was unfair to the U.S.?." narrative. My response was that the Agreement was fair to the Earth. The last time I looked at a view of the planet from space there were no borders.

Emissios by country according to the EPA website
EPA

Beyond the Paris Agreement, the Earth won the election because I foresee an era of actual science-based discussions and policy proposals on climate, including the Green New Deal. The 2020 Presidential campaign and debate cycle foreshadowed my prediction. I was surprised (but in a good way) at the number of times climate change appeared in the discussions. It is also likely that U.S. agencies dealing with climate science or policy like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), EPA, and NASA will feel less constrained when participating in climate assessments, research, and other international activities. In recent weeks, potentially concerning information was revealed in Science magazine about personnel actions within NOAA's senior leadership. By the way, let's hope the Biden Administration will work diligently to have a permanent NOAA Administrator. The Trump administration had interim leadership in that position for the entire duration. NOAA is a critical player in the global challenge of climate change.

Finally, a U.S. administration that will actually "listen to the scientists" is good for everyone. Joseph Ortiz is a Professor of Geology at Kent State University. The expert in climate change and environmental remote sensing told me, "a Biden-Harris Administration will recognize many issues require sound science-based policy....They will bring science expertise back to the White House." Ortiz also expects to see economic development programs that will advance our energy infrastructure and improve sustainability. He closed by saying, "That will help Americans, provide future resilience and decrease the impending impact of climate change." Geographer and climate expert Jennifer Collins at the University of South Florida echoed Ortiz. She said, "Our planet wins as the White House will respect scientists and their expertise so policies will once again be informed."

We have some of the best scientists, engineers, and resources in the world. When that capacity is not hindered by political ideology and biases, it can be unleashed on grand challenges that we face like the climate crises and coronavirus. As I think more about the title of this article, it is really us that are the winners. The Earth will likely survive no matter how we harm it. We are the ones that will contend with the changes.

CHINO HILLS, CA - OCTOBER 27: Flames come close to houses during the Blue Ridge Fire on October 27, ... [+]
Getty Images

... Read More

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The Outcome Of The U.S. Presidential Election Is A Win For Earth Too

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The U.S. Presidential election has been settled, and the people have spoken. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the next President and Vice President of the United States. Candidly, I cannot think of an election outcome with so many immediate implications for the United States and global community on our climate crisis.

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These are a great introduction to what's involved in the Climate Assembly and why it is happening.

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Scotland's Climate Assembly brings together people from all walks of life, from across Scotland, to learn about and discuss the question, 'How should Scotland change to tackle the climate emergency in an effective and fair way?'

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We'd like to recommend the book 'All We Can Save', edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson. It's a collection of essays, prose and poetry by women from all backgrounds who are at the forefront of climate action.

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Welcome to the feminist climate renaissance. We're glad you're here.

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ACA is a volunteer-led group which aims to provoke action on climate change, educate people about ways to reduce their emissions, and make connections between different organisations so that knowledge can be shared. They run an online Climate Cafe every month, where they discuss different climate-related themes.

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Since the Industrial Revolution, the human race has been emitting carbon into our atmosphere. These emissions are mainly from the burning of oil, gas and coal to provide power and heat for factories, transport and homes. During the early years of industrialisation, the amount of carbon emitted was not significant. Over recent decades, however, many countries have super-charged their economies with terrible consequences for our climate. The more carbon is pumped into our atmosphere, the more it acts like a blanket, trapping excess heat and energy. This is global warming.

This trapped heat energy is responsible for the increase in extreme weather events all around the world, including here in Scotland. Hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, flooding and landslides are just some of the effects.

We all need to play our part in dealing with this crisis.

We must obviously start by eliminating our burning of fossils fuels. Along with other important changes, this will reduce emissions to so-called 'Net Zero'.

Secondly, we must prepare for millions of people to migrate away from areas that are becoming literally uninhabitable. They will seek refuge in temperate climates, such as here in the UK.

And thirdly we should be urging governments to develop policies and technologies to reduce the excess carbon that is already in our atmosphere.

Aberdeen Climate Action aims to promote Scotland's (and especially North-East Scotland's) transition to a sustainable and thriving Net Zero society. Join us and make a difference.

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Since the Industrial Revolution, the human race has been emitting carbon into our atmosphere. These emissions are mainly from the burning of oil, gas and coal to provide power and heat for factories, transport and homes. During the early years of industrialisation, the amount of carbon emitted was not significant.

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We wrote to our MP Brendan O'Hara about putting nature and the environment at the top of the agenda of the Agricultural Bill, which is being debated again in the House of Commons on November 4th.

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This post is by Tom Lancaster, head of land, seas and climate at the RSPB. A version of this post has also been published on Wildlife and Countryside Link's blog.

For the organisations involved in Greener UK and Wildlife and Countryside Link, the new Agriculture Bill, announced this week, is one of the most important pieces of legislation for years.

Agriculture is unique as both a driver of environmental degradation, and the primary solution to these very same problems. With 70 per cent of the land in England farmed, only farmers and land managers can lead the charge to net zero greenhouse gas emissions and drive forward the recovery of nature across our countryside.

When you add natural flood risk management, steps to improve water quality, provide public access and restore our soils, it becomes apparent that the policies that will flow from this bill are going to be vital to meet our climate change commitments and the targets to be set by the upcoming Environment Bill.

Support for 'public goods' is essential
In an era when the news about the environment seems relentlessly grim, it is heartening then that this bill is in good shape. We are pleased that the core principle of 'public money for public goods' which was proposed in the early version of the bill, has been retained: this is the idea that payments to farmers should move away from the area of land they own or rent, and toward the environmental and cultural benefits that the land can provide and society needs. Also intact is the 2021 start date for the seven year 'agricultural transition' toward this new system. Bringing in new policies as soon as possible will be vital given the urgent nature of the climate and environment emergencies we face.

In terms of what public goods the bill will seek to reward, the list remains largely the same, with the introduction of support for native breeds of livestock, the conservation of agricultural crops and their wild relatives and, most eye catchingly, steps to protect and improve the quality of soil. Leading much of the press coverage, the inclusion of soil quality was a political signal that soil - at the heart of the interaction between the environment and food production - is a priority for this government, and future policy. From stopping carbon emissions from Fenland peat soils, to building soil carbon and soil organic matter, there is much to do. Defra will have to be careful though to ensure that payments reward good practice, as opposed to simply paying the less responsible farmers out there not to pollute.

Future food production depends on environmental recovery
The government has also responded to concerns from farming organisations that the bill didn't say enough about food. We never agreed with this line. The bill was already about food since future food production depends upon better soil health, resilience to climate change and preventing the loss of beneficial insects.

However, Defra clearly felt the need to address these concerns, and it has introduced a duty to assess UK food security every five years, and a duty to "...have regard to the need to encourage the production of food by producers in England and its production by them in an environmentally sustainable way". As pragmatists, our initial feeling is that this strikes just about the right balance. But any further moves in this direction will risk the core premise of this reform; that it is about moving away from the Common Agricultural Policy, and toward a more sustainable system of farming and land management.

Two other changes are positive
These two broad areas - the new 'public goods' purposes, especially soils, and food production - are the big, headline grabbing changes to the bill. But other substantive changes and new additions also deserve some attention, many of which are positive. I will focus on two of them here.

First, Defra has introduced three new clauses relating to reporting on financial assistance. This may sound dull, but it is potentially important. With earlier iterations of the bill, there were few hooks to hold ministers to account for how money was spent, and how much money was available to any future schemes.

In combination with binding targets in the forthcoming Environment Bill, and a stronger commitment to retain funding at current levels until 2024 (around £3 billion a year across the UK), these new clauses could be important in providing MPs, civil society and farming organisations with the information they need to ensure funding for future schemes is sufficient and effective.

As the bill goes through parliament, we will seek to strengthen these provisions further, to ensure more binding commitments to meet demonstrable environmental needs with the necessary funds.

Second, the fair dealing clauses in the bill have been strengthened. Although not a traditional stomping ground for environmental organisations, we have always recognised that, with a reform of farm payments toward inherently 'non-marketable' public goods, farmers should be able to derive a better market return for the food they produce. With such asymmetry in the supply chain between tens of thousands of small farmers and a few big retailers and food processors, better regulation of this relationship is clearly justified.

The new bill expands the powers to better regulate this relationship to all businesses which purchase farm produce. This means that more of the supply chain will potentially be covered by statutory codes of conduct and the associated regulator.

Again, there is much work to do to make sure these powers are translated into robust policies, but the changes in the bill make this effort more likely to succeed, and have a positive impact on farmers' bottom line.

Gaps on trade and import standards are worrying
There are obviously gaps, and we will be working to fill them as the bill makes its way through parliament. The most concerning is a lack of assurance around trade policies and import standards. Farming and environment organisations speak with one voice when we say that it is crucial that imports of food under future trade policies are held to UK standards.

Another big gap is the lack of any powers to introduce and enforce a new regulatory framework for farming and land management practices, this will be crucial if high standards are to be built upon and properly enforced in future.

We will be pushing on these areas and urging the government to go further in its ambitions. With policy statements expected from Defra in the coming weeks, it is likely that things will start to move much faster than we've been accustomed to of late. So watch this space.

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What does the new Agriculture Bill mean for the environment?

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This post is by Tom Lancaster, head of land, seas and climate at the RSPB. A version of this post has also been published on Wildlife and Countryside Link's blog. For the organisations involved in Greener UK and Wildlife and Countryside Link, the new Agriculture Bill, announced this week, is one of the most important...

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The Scottish Communities Climate Action Network's purpose is "to inspire and promote, connect and support community-led action in Scotland to address the Climate Emergency". Some of our members recently attended one of their newcomers meetings and made some great connections with similar groups in other places.

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Scottish Communities CAN - Scottish Communities Climate Action Network

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To inspire and promote, connect and support community-led action in Scotland to address the Climate Emergency

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Climate change and political instability

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Climate change and political instability

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This article discusses how climate change contributes to the polarisation of politics that we saw in the run-up to the US presidential election.

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How Climate Change May Be Contributing to Our Political Instability

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Research has shown that warmer temperatures and more extreme weather like wildfires contribute to political instability

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Argyll, Lomond and the Islands Energy Agency are doing really great work in Argyll: helping people with fuel poverty and energy efficiency, encouraging community renewables, and reducing carbon emissions!

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ALIenergy Promoting sustainable energy use

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A great podcast hosted by Christiana Figueres, Paul Dickinson and Tom Rivett-Carnac which talks to experts from many different industries about what makes them outraged and optimistic about climate change.

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73. Prelude to TED Countdown with Chris Anderson and Lindsay Levin

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Listen to this episode from Outrage + Optimism on Spotify. On the eve of TED Countdown, Christiana and Tom sit down for an in-depth conversation with TED's Chris Anderson and Lindsay Levin, CEO of Leaders' Quest, detailing an exclusive sneak-preview of what we can look forward to during the epic virtual climate event scheduled for Saturday, 10.10.20 at 11 AM ET You can find all the details and livestream the event at Countdown.TED.com as well as on TED's YouTube Channel --- Our special musical guest this week is Cosmo Sheldrake!

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Women's Earth and Climate Action Network

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Women's Earth and Climate Action Network

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WECAN is an amazing collection of stories from female human rights and earth defenders from all over the world - super interesting to read through and a great insight into the world of climate justice.

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Women Human Rights And Earth Defenders - Women Speak

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The most pressing story that needs to be heard is that of women on the frontlines of climate change.

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FoES are part of a global movement dedicated to climate action and education, running campaigns at both local and national level as well as regular trainings and webinars on a wide variety of topics from recycling to anti-racism in the climate movement.

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Marie is an anti-racism activist and educator, taking an intersectional look at how racism underlies many social issues, including the climate crisis.  It's vital that we understand and acknowledge the ways that the climate crisis exacerbates existing inequalities, as well as the privileged, white roots of the environmental movement. We really recommend checking out her pages, especially on Instagram where most of her content is!

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Coverage of our meeting with Michael Russell MSP in the

Argyllshire Advertiser.

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Our politicians are unlikely to neglect issues of an environmental nature - as long as 'Time for Change Argyll and Bute' is there to offer the occasional prod, that is.

The group kept up momentum last month as members followed up a meeting with the region's MP with a similar virtual discussion involving Argyll and Bute MSP Michael Russell.

A report earlier this year to the UK government by independent Climate Change Committee urged Ministers to seize the opportunity to turn the COVID-19 crisis into a defining moment in the fight against climate change. The UK-wide Climate Coalition campaign group, however, wants to push that bit harder and urged supporters to lobby MPs as part of 'The Time is Now' campaign to put people, climate and nature at the heart of the UK's recovery from coronavirus.

In Argyll, the 'virtual' meeting with Brendan O'Hara MP in early July was followed by a similar discussion between Time for Change Argyll and Bute and Michael Russell MSP on August 19, with some 47 constituents joining in from places including Lochgilphead, Ardfern, Dunoon, Tighnabruaich, Iona, Tayvallich, Furnace and Oban.

One of the founders of Time for Change alongside her brother Rowan is 22-year-old Freya Aitchison from Tayvallich, who said: 'We were really pleased that Michael Russell seemed to be as concerned as we are about the climate crisis and the issues it brings, and we will be continuing the conversation with him into the future, as we have been doing with Brendan O'Hara.

'We started off by telling Mr Russell how worried we are about the big picture of the climate crisis, and set out our core demands as a group, which are:

Apply a "Net-Zero Test" to all decisions

Support the most vulnerable and bring about a just transition

Unleash "moonshot" scale investment with urgency and ambition to match

Recover and protect biodiversity

Seek and support participation and human-centred democracy

Our specific questions covered topics such as the short-term nature of politics; the Wellbeing Economy; how the [Scottish Government's] Just Transition Commission will lead to a final full stop on oil and gas extraction in Scotland; the importance of biodiversity in forestry and how we can protect our ancient woodlands while also planting new trees; the agri-environment scheme; and community renewable energy opportunities.'

Mr Russell said: 'I think the climate emergency is not only real but pressing and I want to see that attitude pervading politics and all of life, even if at the moment most attention is on COVID.

'The problems at the Rest are an indication of things to come and we must take significant, effective and prompt action on climate and on biodiversity. No-one is going to do it for us - all of us are going to have to take actions ourselves.

'I have provided the group with some information since the meeting and will be maintaining a dialogue with them.'

Freya continued: 'What we got out of it was that we should go to Mr Russell with specific questions that he can take action on and he will help us.

'Brendan O'Hara has recently signed in support of the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill, which we are very excited about. And we also plan to work more closely with the council as they reconvene their Climate Change Environmental Action Group.'

Time for Change Argyll and Bute certainly seems to be gaining popularity and plans to be in regular contact with our MP, MSPs and government at all levels.

Freya explained: 'Time for Change isn't really a campaign, it's just the things that we should all be thinking about if we want Argyll - and the world - to be a recognisable place for our children and grandchildren to live in.'

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Argyll group presses for political climate change - Argyllshire Advertiser

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At the start of the pandemic in March we took the decision to make online access to our news free of charge by taking down our paywall. At a time where accurate information about Covid-19 was vital to our community, this was the right decision - even though it meant a drop in our income.