[Dissent-bristol-info] Fwd: Climate change briefing - proofed

[anarchist606 at hushmail.com]

Here is the final version of sustainable development:


Bristol Dissent Group - Climate Change Briefing

While it seems to be in the news a lot, Climate change
is perhaps the issue that has received least attention
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. 

Ticking time-bomb
Over 2,000 scientists are directly working for 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. 

Destructive addictions
All this while the government goes 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 serious 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.
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.

State of denial
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 over-consumption 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 over-consumption 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.

www.NoNewOil.org
An online 34 Page booklet on the oil industry, oil and
climate change and ideas for actions that can be taken
to change things! 

(907 words)

Suggested Images for climate change:
US army vehicle & burning oil well
http://www.usarc.army.mil/99thrsc/Patacity%20MP%20Checkpoint%20with%

20Burning%20Oilwell.JPG

Oil platform Burning
http://web.umr.edu/~rogersda/military_service/burning%20oil%20platfo

rms.jpg

Oil Spill in Nigeria
http://www.waado.org/images/ElumeRiverFire/ElumeRiverFire.jpg



	
	
		
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