Anjalisa — 1 Protest + 2 Proposal Against Climate Change
Topic(s): environment | Comments Off on Anjalisa — 1 Protest + 2 Proposal Against Climate Change1 Protest + 2 Proposal Against Climate Change
1. Protest in London
2. Drastic action on climate change is needed now –
and here’s the plan
3. Ten Years to Save the Planet
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1. Protest in London
Put a candle in your window as a sign of your protest….and distribute this
mail widely …xanj
BLACKOUT LONDON 4th November 2006
Starting at Sunset 4.30 pm to 7.30 pm
You are invited to take part in the largest demonstration of People Power
that London has ever seen on Saturday 4th November 2006, by turning off all
your lights, and switching off all your non-essential electrical equipment
at Sunset.
Climate Change is already compromising the water supply, crops, habitat and
livelihoods of millions of people worldwide, and threatens to undermine the
Global Economy within a few decades, as well as creating waves of Climate
Refugees, and driving countless animals and plants to extinction.
The principal cause of Global Warming is the rising Carbon Dioxide emissions
into the atmosphere from the burning of Fossil Fuels, for electricity
generation, transport, manufacturing, industry, space heating and air
conditioning.
REMEMBER, REMEMBER, THE FOURTH OF NOVEMBER !
For one day in November, we are asking everyone who receives this message to
think about what they can turn off, switch off and unplug, to show support.
We want the power demand in the United Kingdom to reduce so much that the
newspapers are obliged to report it.
We want the lights to go out in London, so that on the evening of 4th
November 2006, the dimming effect will be visible from space.
To protect us from the Enemy of Climate Change, we need a War on Energy
Abuse. Just like Britain during World War Two, we need to see a Blackout all
over London.
CELEBRATE THE NIGHT OF POWER : TURN OFF ! SWITCH OFF ! UNPLUG !
If you are a security guard for an office block in London, please ask your
employers when you should be turning the lights out. If you are a church
warden, please check with your church council to see if they agree to
switching off the floodlights. If you are working for your local Council,
ask if you can help them implement an energy reduction plan to turn off
lights, computers and fans at the weekend. If you are at home, switch off
your set-top boxes, pull all the chargers out of the wall sockets, turn off
lights in any room you are not using, switch off any machine with a digital
clock in it, unplug the hi-fi and the TV and the games console, de-frost
your freezer, switch off your fridge for a couple of hours. Turn the central
heating thermostat down to 16 degrees and put a woolly sweater/jumper on if
you’re cold.
POWER CUT
Blackout London is being called by the same group that organised the Power
Cut on 31st August 2006, and is being promoted by workface :-
http://www.workface-limited.co.uk/html/powercut.html
COME OFF IT !
Blackout London is being called in cooperation with Come Off It ! the
campaign from Dave Hampton, the Carbon Coach, as part of a series of regular
events to produce negawatts – negative power demand – from the People’s
Power Station :- http://www.carboncoach.com/comeoffit/index.html
STOP CLIMATE CHAOS
Over 2 million people in the United Kingdom are members of organisations
that have been invited by Stop Climate Chaos to take part in the I-Count
event in Trafalgar Square, London on Saturday 4th November 2006. I-Count is
a national campaign to invite people to pledge to reduce their personal
Carbon Dioxide emissions, and the I-Count Total Carbon Saved will be
celebrated on 4th November 2006 :- http://www.icount.org.uk
http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/66.asp
BIG ASK
Friends of the Earth are running the Big Ask campaign up until 11th October
2006, encouraging everyone to ask their UK Member of Parliament to support
the Climate Change Bill. Big Ask Members of Parliament will be speaking at
the Stop Climate Chaos rally in Trafalgar Square, London on Saturday 4th
November 2006 :-
http://www.foe.org.uk/campaigns/climate/press_for_change/big_month/index.htm
l http://www.foe.org.uk
CLIMATE MARCH
The Campaign against Climate Change is calling for people from all sectors
of society to join the Global March for Climate Justice on 4th November
2006. The Climate March will hear speeches at Grosvenor Square, London at 12
midday under the shadow of the United States Embassy before moving off to
join the I-Count rally in Trafalgar Square, London :-
http://www.campaigncc.org
http://www.globalclimatecampaign.org
http://portal.campaigncc.org
CARNIVAL OF CLIMATE CHAOS
People and Planet are holding a street carnival of Climate Chaos on 4th
November 2006 :- http://peopleandplanet.org/november4
GUY FAWKES
We need to return to the time of Guy Fawkes : light candles instead of
lightbulbs; burn wood instead of Natural Gas; travel by foot instead of by
car; power our labour with windmills and water mills instead of coal-fired
electricity generation.
To support Blackout London and the Climate Rally, instead of holding your
Bonfire Party on 4th November 2006, please hold it the Saturday afterwards,
or enjoy your bonfire and fireworks on 5th November 2006 itself.
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2. Drastic action on climate change is needed now – and here’s the plan
Suggestions from George Monbiot
Drastic action on climate change is needed now – and here’s the plan
The government must go further, and much faster, in its response to the
moral question of the 21st century
George Monbiot Tuesday October 31, 2006 The Guardian
It is a testament to the power of money that Nicholas Stern’s report should
have swung the argument for drastic action, even before anyone has finished
reading it. He appears to have demonstrated what many of us suspected: that
it would cost much less to prevent runaway climate change than to seek to
live with it. Useful as this finding is, I hope it doesn’t mean that the
debate will now concentrate on money. The principal costs of climate change
will be measured in lives, not pounds. As Stern reminded us yesterday, there
would be a moral imperative to seek to prevent mass death even if the
economic case did not stack up.
But at least almost everyone now agrees that we must act, if not at the
necessary speed. If we’re to have a high chance of preventing global
temperatures from rising by 2C (3.6F) above preindustrial levels, we need,
in the rich nations, a 90% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030.
The greater part of the cut has to be made at the beginning of this period.
To see why, picture two graphs with time on the horizontal axis and the rate
of emissions plotted vertically. On one graph the line falls like a ski
jump: a steep drop followed by a shallow tail. On the other it falls like
the trajectory of a bullet. The area under each line represents the total
volume of greenhouse gases produced in that period. They fall to the same
point by the same date, but far more gases have been produced in the second
case, making runaway climate change more likely.
So how do we do it without bringing civilisation crashing down? Here is a
plan for drastic but affordable action that the government could take. It
goes much further than the proposals discussed by Tony Blair and Gordon
Brown yesterday, for the reason that this is what the science demands.
1. Set a target for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions based on the latest
science. The government is using outdated figures, aiming for a 60%
reduction by 2050. Even the annual 3% cut proposed in the early day motion
calling for a new climate change bill does not go far enough. Timescale:
immediately.
2. Use that target to set an annual carbon cap, which falls on the ski-jump
trajectory. Then use the cap to set a personal carbon ration. Every citizen
is given a free annual quota of carbon dioxide. He or she spends it by
buying gas and electricity, petrol and train and plane tickets. If they run
out, they must buy the rest from someone who has used less than his or her
quota. This accounts for about 40% of the carbon dioxide we produce. The
remainder is auctioned off to companies. It’s a simpler and fairer approach
than either green taxation or the EU’s emissions trading scheme, and it also
provides people with a powerful incentive to demand low-carbon technologies.
Timescale: a full scheme in place by January 2009.
3. Introduce a new set of building regulations, with three objectives. A.
Imposing strict energy-efficiency requirements on all major refurbishments
(costing £3,000 or more). Timescale: in force by June 2007. B. Obliging
landlords to bring their houses up to high energy-efficiency standards
before they can rent them out. Timescale: to cover all new rentals from
January 2008. C. Ensuring that all new homes in the UK are built to the
German Passivhaus standard (which requires no heating system). Timescale: in
force by 2012.
4. Ban the sale of incandescent lightbulbs, patio heaters, garden
floodlights and other wasteful and unnecessary technologies. Introduce a
stiff “feebate” system for all electronic goods sold in the UK, with the
least efficient taxed heavily and the most efficient receiving taxdiscounts.
Every year the standards in each category rise. Timescale: fully implemented
by November 2007.
5. Redeploy money now earmarked for new nuclear missiles towards a massive
investment in energy generation and distribution. Two schemes in particular
require government support to make them commercially viable: very large wind
farms, many miles offshore, connected to the grid with high-voltage
direct-current cables; and a hydrogen pipeline network to take over from the
natural gas grid as the primary means of delivering fuel for home heating.
Timescale: both programmes commence at the end of 2007 and are completed by
2018.
6. Promote the development of a new national coach network. City-centre
coach stations are shut down and moved to motorway junctions. Urban public
transport networks are extended to meet them. The coaches travel on
dedicated lanes and never leave the motorways. Journeys by public transport
then become as fast as journeys by car, while saving 90% of emissions. It is
self-financing, through the sale of the land now used for coach stations.
Timescale: commences in 2008; completed by 2020.
7. Oblige all chains of filling stations to supply leasable electric car
batteries. This provides electric cars with unlimited mileage: as the
battery runs down, you pull into a forecourt; a crane lifts it out and drops
in a fresh one. The batteries are charged overnight with surplus electricity
from offshore wind farms. Timescale: fully operational by 2011.
8. Abandon the road-building and road-widening programme, and spend the
money on tackling climate change. The government has earmarked £11.4bn for
road expansion. It claims to be allocating just £545m a year to “spending
policies that tackle climate change”. Timescale: immediately.
9. Freeze and then reduce UK airport capacity. While capacity remains high
there will be constant upward pressure on any scheme the government
introduces to limit flights. We need a freeze on all new airport
construction and the introduction of a national quota for landing slots, to
be reduced by 90% by 2030. Timescale: immediately.
10. Legislate for the closure of all out-of-town superstores, and their
replacement with a warehouse and delivery system. Shops use a staggering
amount of energy (six times as much electricity per square metre as
factories, for example), and major reductions are hard to achieve: Tesco’s
“state of the art” energy-saving store at Diss in Norfolk has managed to cut
its energy use by only 20%. Warehouses containing the same quantity of goods
use roughly 5% of the energy. Out-of-town shops are also hardwired to the
car – delivery vehicles use 70% less fuel. Timescale: fully implemented by
2012.
These timescales might seem extraordinarily ambitious. They are, by contrast
to the current glacial pace of change. But when the US entered the second
world war it turned the economy around on a sixpence. Carmakers began
producing aircraft and missiles within a year, and amphibious vehicles in 90
days, from a standing start. And that was 65 years ago. If we want this to
happen, we can make it happen. It will require more economic intervention
than we are used to, and some pretty brutal emergency planning policies
(with little time or scope for objections). But if you believe that these
are worse than mass death then there is something wrong with your value
system.
Climate change is not just a moral question: it is the moral question of the
21st century. There is one position even more morally culpable than denial.
That is to accept that it’s happening and that its results will be
catastrophic, but to fail to take the measures needed to prevent it.
· George Monbiot’s latest book is Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning
www.monbiot.com
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3. Ten Years to Save the Planet
Ten years to save the planet from mankind
The Stern Report will tomorrow reveal that if governments do nothing, climate change will cost more than both world wars and render swathes of the planet uninhabitable. Can the world find the will to act? Gaby Hinsliff reports
Sunday October 29, 2006
The Observer
It is almost Halloween, and Rachel from San Francisco is worrying about pumpkins. She saved last year’s decorations to use again, and recycled rather than bought new cards to send: there will be no waste once the pumpkins are carved, with the family eating the seeds, flesh pureed for the cats and remains composted. Nonetheless, she feels guilty that the pumpkin purchase ‘might be contentious for some’ – and so, she records on her blog, she has carved them with green slogans to try to ‘mitigate the buying’.
In an age in which even Britons spend £130 million on ghoulish Halloween fripperies, Rachel may seem to be swimming against the tide. In fact, she is part of a new and growing movement.
She belongs to Compact, an American group dedicated to avoiding buying unnecessary products; shopping locally, rather than buying goods shipped thousands of miles; and combating the ‘negative global, environment and socio-economic impacts of US consumer culture’. It models itself on the Founding Fathers’ pledge of piety as they stepped ashore from the Mayflower, not the American Dream of shopping until you drop.
Similar beliefs are echoed in Britain by the ‘voluntary simplicity’ movement – a mix of greens, anti-corporate activists and downshifting professionals who either resist shopping or at least shop more thoughtfully. Their frugality might be familiar to pensioners raised during wartime but, for the new generation of thrifters, it is about principles, not economic necessity. They can afford the gas-guzzling luxuries of modern life: they just don’t want them, now that they recognise their environmental cost. The woman refusing yet another plastic supermarket carrier bag or the businessman taking the Eurostar rather than flying to Paris are, in a smaller way, adopting voluntary simplicity.
But after tomorrow, many may be asking: what is the point? The economist Sir Nicholas Stern’s report on climate change will paint an apocalyptic picture over 700 pages of where global warming could lead, arguing that, unless we act, it will cost more than two world wars and the Great Depression of the Thirties and render swaths of the planet uninhabitable. Even if the world stopped all pollution tomorrow, the slow-growing effects of carbon already pumped into the atmosphere would mean continued climate change for another 30 years – with sea levels rising for a century.
Nor, he will say, is unilateral action by one country enough: if Britain closed all its power stations tomorrow, within 13 months China would fill the gap left in global emissions. Given that the effects will be felt around the world – from the collapse of the Amazonian rainforest to the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet and changes in the Indian monsoon – the response must be global, too.
Amid such doomsday warnings, Britons could easily conclude that trading in the 4×4 or remembering to turn off the lights is merely whistling in the wind. Intriguingly, when the Chancellor’s right-hand man Ed Balls, Chief Economic Secretary at the Treasury, was asked at a recent public meeting what he personally did to combat global warming, he retorted that the problem was too big for individuals and international action was essential.
But given Stern’s verdict that preventing climate change will cost 1 per cent of global GDP – about £184 billion a year – and that it must be done in the next 10 to 15 years, the question is: where will the money come from? Green groups support people acting individually to do what they can. But the answers will not all come from everyone becoming an armchair environmentalist.
One of the costs is likely to be met by green taxes, an issue that will be a major part of the report. The Liberal Democrats have dumped their tax-the-rich strategy in favour of a raft of green taxes: Tory frontbenchers argue that green taxes should at least rise as a share of overall taxation. Now Labour is joining the argument.
Just as the Treasury commissioned a healthcare spending review, under Derek Wanless, to help soften the nation up for tax rises to fund the NHS, could Stern pave the way for a little fiscal punishment now to prevent a future recession? Brown has certainly told green NGOs that he regards their cause as the next Make Poverty History, to which he committed significant government spending.
Either way, the challenge for government is to convince individuals that the problem is urgent, but without making them feel it is so daunting that action is pointless.
‘This will be a useful reminder that we should do more at home, but actually the big battle on climate change is international,’ says a senior Whitehall source who has seen the report. ‘We’re not dismissing the need to do things, such as introduce a climate change bill, but it’s not the whole answer.’
So what are the answers, and how will our lives change as a result?
Gerry Acher has a passion for speed. The businessman, recently made chairman of the Royal Society for the Arts, lives a comfortable life in commuter-belt Surrey: his indulgence is cars, and he has been eagerly awaiting the sporty Mini Cooper S he recently ordered.
That was until he began spearheading Carbondaq, a project that aims to get the RSA’s 26,000 fellows to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide. After discovering that his own projected carbon emissions next year were 25 tonnes – nearly three times the national average – he cancelled the car for a slower model with lower emissions, and is now preparing to ration his foreign holidays. ‘I thought, if I commit myself to driving at the speed limit [which reduces emissions], why am I getting a Mini Cooper Sport?’ he says, wistfully.
Acher’s decisions matter because Carbondaq is essentially a dry run to see whether others could be persuaded into green altruism: it is designed to test whether so-called personal carbon allowances, advocated by the Environment Secretary, David Miliband, would work.
Under the scheme, all adults get a free annual ‘carbon ration’, stored on a swipecard: every time they consume something that contributes to global warming – buying petrol, or booking a flight – an equivalent amount of carbon is deducted. Once the credits are finished, people either pay for extra credits or forego a gas-guzzling activity.
‘In my own mind, there is no doubt that [personal carbon allowances] will come,’ says Acher. ‘This will help us understand people’s behaviour, what are going to be the difficult areas.’ One of the first to sign up was Miliband himself: if it works, personal carbon allocation could transform the way we shop and – above all – travel.
Cheap short-haul flights are at the top of the green target list. Leo Murray of Plane Stupid, a direct action group, says aviation emissions are the obvious target because they doubled between 1990 and 2000, while emissions from other sectors such as industry fell. He dismisses carbon offsetting – paying penance for flights by contributing towards eco-friendly projects such as tree-planting. Plane Stupid just wants travellers to take the train to Paris or Newcastle.
But Murray admits that, for as long as a peak rail ticket in Britain costs five times as much as a cheap domestic flight, most consumers will fly, meaning that relying on individual altruism will fail.
‘The government is peddling a line about how we are supposed to make individual choices, but the choices don’t make sense,’ he says. ‘It’s often quicker and cheaper to fly to Edinburgh than get the train, but the reason that’s true is because the government continues to subsidise the airline industry.’ With no tax on aviation fuel and no VAT on plane tickets – both of which would have to be agreed across the EU – the aviation industry benefits from an uneven playing field, he argues. As Stern argues, individuals will get only so far without government action.
The Tory front bench is making similar arguments. Shadow ministers are seriously discussing opposing the expansion of Stansted, because it is the hub for the no-frills airlines whose expansion, they argue, should not be encouraged. Conveniently, a number of marginal seats that the Tories need to win lie under the projected new flightpath.
But the political case for restricting car use is trickier. Ministers have fought shy of pricing motorists off the road ever since the fuel protests, but local government is bolder: last week, Richmond council announced that parking permits for gas-guzzling cars would rise to a punitive £300: the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has floated plans to raise the congestion charge for driving into central London from £8 to £25 for 4x4s. Whitehall is watching closely.
Faced with such costs, it is perhaps unsurprising that up to 11,000 Britons have now abandoned car ownership in favour of car clubs. Owners pay a set amount to have access when needed to a pool car parked near their homes, for which they pay an hourly charge, like a hire car.
Philip Igoe, co-founder of the charity CarPlus, which helps set up car clubs, says they work because they let drivers save money: ‘I would love to say that [car clubbers] are environmentally motivated, but the reality is that people will be green only when it eases the pressure on their pocket. People will reduce the mileage because the costs become transparent. If you just want a newspaper, [car owners] will jump in the car: if that’s going to cost you each trip, you are going to walk or go on the bike.’
In other words, car owners remember how much driving costs them only once a year, when they pay their car tax or insurance: car clubbers, shelling out each time they drive, typically reduce their mileage by up to 80 per cent.
The Department for Transport is now considering a bid from CarPlus for £12 million to expand car clubs nationwide – less than a tenth of the money being spent on widening the M1 – for which Carplus estimates that, by 2015 it could have enrolled 5 per cent of the population.
Nonetheless Igoe admits that most motorists will always want their own wheels; and, while cleaner electric-petrol hybrid cars are increasingly popular, one seminar organised by Stern anxiously debated the ‘Jeremy Clarkson factor’ – would Top Gear viewers ever choose a green car over a faster one?
Put simply, there is only so far Britons will go. While a recent Department for Transport survey found that 70 per cent of adults think air travel harms the environment, that did not stop 49 per cent flying at least once in the past year. We know now what our lifestyles do to the planet, but will we change them?
Recent research from retail analysts Mintel suggests that, at least when it comes to shopping, we have already changed: Britons will spend more than £2 billion on ethical foods such as fairtrade coffee or organic vegetables this year, up nearly two thirds since 2002.
Critics, however, argue that green consumerism is essentially for the middle classes – who can afford a £200 jacket from Edun, the ethical clothing line run by Bono’s wife, Ali Hewson – not the masses. Yet, as Stern will explain, the biggest victims of climate change will be the world’s poorest.
Africa will suffer temperature increases double the global average, according to British forecasters the Hadley Centre. The countries already suffering frequent extremes of temperature are often the most poorly defended against them.
In an analysis for the Tories’ policy commission on green issues, environmental scientist Professor Mike Hulme shows how the floods that ravaged central Europe in 2002 caused more than 15 billion euros of damage, but killed fewer than 100 people. Similar flooding in Mozambique in 2002 did far less financial damage – with less valuable property to wreck – but killed more than 700.
And it is not only freak weather. A temperature rise of two degrees would drastically shrink the land available in Uganda for growing coffee, and cut farmers’ incomes in India by 9 per cent, as crops failed.
And even the West might struggle financially. Hurricane Katrina – which led to the flooding of New Orleans – is likely to be the single most expensive insured event in history, costing up to £25 billion, according to evidence from insurers AXA submitted to Stern.
There are other costs, too. Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, warned last week that competition for water supplies and fertile land could lead to war as people are forced into mass migrations: Oxfam’s submission to Stern includes a detailed study of the Turkana tribe of northwestern Kenya. Their traditional nomadic life has been threatened by extended droughts, while raids on their herds by drought-stricken neighbours have heightened tribal tensions just as wars in Sudan and Uganda have flooded the region with guns, making the clashes more violent and likely to escalate.
Food shortages in rural areas can also drive women into the cities, where they fall into prostitution, helping to spread HIV; Christian Aid estimates that, by the end of the next century, a staggering 182 million Africans will have died from the effects of climate change.
Yet the West, according to the New Economics Foundation, spends nearly twice as much subsidising fossil fuel industries as it does helping Africa adapt to climate change, for instance by growing drought-resistant crops.
But the major dilemmas are posed not by the poorest countries, but by emerging powerhouses such as China and India, struggling to balance their need for rapid economic growth with the devastating effects of climate change on traditional farming.
The Indian state of Orissa, fast emerging as a centre for new power stations, will alone shortly produce 3 per cent of the world’s emissions, say local environmentalists, but when the steel plants pay labourers ten times what they earned farming, is it ethical to stop them?
Similarly car ownership in China, once almost unheard of, has risen by a third in the past two years and the tendency to buy cheap, badly maintained second-hand cars may mean they pump out more fumes than Western ones.
When even the non-shopping movement in Britain and America has become an industry itself, it seems unrealistic to expect emerging societies to abstain.
Instead, Tony Blair is pinning his faith on showing that Britain has reduced greenhouse gas emissions while still enjoying economic growth, implying that China and India do not have to choose between raising living standards and saving the planet. But that relies on the West continuing to pull off this tricky balancing act, while finding the billions that Stern says are needed. And, meanwhile, individuals will do what they can, turning off the TV and taking the train.
The climate crisis:
· The US, Europe, Japan, India, and China together claim 75 per cent of the earth’s ‘biocapacity,’ effectively leaving 25 per cent for the rest of the world, according to the Worldwatch Institute.
· In 2005, China alone used 26 per cent of the world’s steel, 32 per cent of the rice, and 47 per cent of the cement.
Total carbon emissions (million metric tonnes of CO2)
US
1984: 4,597.85
2004: 5,912.21
UK
1984: 566.88
2004: 579.68
India
1984: 400.55
2004: 1,112.84
Japan
1984: 895.64
2004: 1,262.10
China
1984: 1,707.91
2004: 4,707.28
Top World Oil Consumers, 2005 (million barrels per day)
1) United States: 20.7
2) China:6.9
3) Japan:5.4
4) Russia: 2.8
5) Germany: 2.6
6) India: 2.6
7) Canada: 2.3
8) Brazil: 2.2
9) Korea, South: 2.2
10) Mexico: 2.1
11) France: 2.0
12) Saudi Arabia: 2.0
Source: US government