[Dissent-bristol-info] climate change flyer

[anarchist606 at hushmail.com]

Here is the text done so far on climate change.  It's been passed 
to me to pass to whoever wants to finish the climate change flyer 
with the instructions 'edit/alter as you wish!' so who wants to do 
climate change?  (text so far is below...)

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Climate change is perhaps the issue that has received least 
attention from grassroots activists compared to the scale of 
destruction that life on earth is facing. Yet hardly a day goes by 
without another scientific report being issued warning of the 
massive scale of the problem, supported by almost every independent 
climatologist in the world.
Over 2,000 scientists are directly working on the United Nations to 
study climate change and its impacts. This is one of the largest 
mobilisations of scientific research ever undertaken. All the 
scientists agree that we have a huge problem, suspected ever since 
19th century researchers identified the ability of Carbon Dioxide 
to store large amounts of heat. In 1997 3,000 scientists signed a 
Statement on Climatic Disruption. That year 1,500 scientists 
including 110 Nobel Prize winners signed a letter to US President 
Clinton calling for immediate action. In 1999 the 35,000 scientists 
in the US Geophysical Union adopted a position calling for action. 
In May 2001, the national scientific academies of 17 nations 
including the UK Royal Society signed a statement calling for 
action.
Ex-transport minister Stephen Byers recently called it an 
ecological time bomb, with the world less than ten years from 
runaway global warming and rising sea levels. In 2004, the UK 
Government’s chief scientific advisor Sir David King said climate 
change is the most serious problem facing the world, more serious 
than international terrorism. Yet we go to war on the basis of 
being 45 minutes from non-existent weapons of mass destruction, in 
order to continue satisfying our fossil fuel addicted lurch towards 
slow extinction.
As yet mass grassroots action on this issue has not materialised – 
and there’s not going to be much point campaigning after the waves 
start washing over our shores and the oil’s too expensive to drill.

While environmentalists see climate change as a threat to our 
weather, the US government sees it as a threat to American 
freedoms, and while Blair has been delighting NGOs with promises of 
a low-carbon economy, he has been busy pleasuring Bush by lobbying 
to remove stringent emissions targets from Europe’s climate policy. 
Houston, we have a problem. Perhaps the greatest triumph of the G8 
governments (with the exception of the US) has been to shift the 
focus onto the Kyoto agreement, which requires puny cuts of 5% in 
emissions (excluding aircraft emissions) – somewhat at odds with 
the immediate 60-80% cut in CO2 output scientists are demanding to 
avert disaster.

Yet big business, far from worrying about the collapse of 
capitalism are increasingly realising that it offers major 
potential for increasing profits. While buzzwords like ‘low carbon 
economy’ enter the greenwashed corporate environmental statements, 
carbon trading is embraced as a new and profitable branch of the 
futures and commodities markets. ‘Smokestack’ corporations can 
simply relocate to countries like Vietnam or South Africa, soaking 
up those free carbon credits while exporting their pollution to the 
world’s poor. The nuclear industry has also received an unexpected 
breath of life from its deathbed, arguing that the only way to cut 
emissions while continuing with business as usual is for a massive 
expansion of nuclear energy. Note the assumption there.

So what can be done at the grassroots? We have to be honest about 
the mess we are in regarding climate campaigning. The green 
movement has comprehensively failed to drive this as an issue. By 
focusing on energy alternatives, such as carpeting the country with 
windmills, it has provided the nuclear industry with the agenda it 
needs to cast itself as the great white hope (try asking pro-
nuclear campaigners how much fossil fuel the nuclear industry 
consumes annually). Yes, wind and solar are going to be important 
for a low-energy future, but the agenda of massive overconsumption 
of energy, despoiling of the seas, forests and air, inequality and 
military-industrial oppression of much of humanity needs to be 
confronted.

So it’s a desperate situation – almost as if a magic bullet were 
required to penetrate our state of denial. We cannot leave it just 
to the scientists to dismantle the carbon machine – but fortunately 
the ideas are already being translated into action. Rising Tide, an 
international network of direct activists are active in relation to 
the G8 summit and held a tour of the UK in 2001, resulting in many 
innovative ideas. Perhaps by identifying the most oppressive and 
unwelcome forms of overconsumption in your own neighbourhood – be 
it the SUVs driving past your house or the floodlit billboard round 
the corner – an effective target can be found for that magic 
bullet.

Resources
g8climateaction at lists.riseup.net
Dissent! organising list for action related to the G8 and climate 
change

www.risingtide.org.uk
UK grassroots network of direct action climate change campaigners. 
Website contains briefings on climate change, tips for giving 
talks, countering pseudo-scientific ‘global warming myths’, etc.

www.campaigncc.org/
Campaign Against Climate Change – arranges weekly vigil at the US 
embassy and other protests; gives talks on climate change

High Tide: News from a Warming World
Tales from a global journey on the chilling and far-reaching 
devastation already being wrought by climate change by a former 
member of Corporate Watch UK. See www.marklynas.org

www.carbonweb.org
Platform – understanding the ‘psychology’ of oil corporations and 
how they operate




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