Filed under: Environment | Tags: blog, introduction to climate change, welcome
Hello and welcome to those of you (if I’m lucky!) are visiting my blog because you have become concerned about climate change and might want to do something about it…..
My intention is to try and explain some of the biggest and most recent debates going on in the environmental movement for you in a simple but comprehensive way so that you can have a sufficient base of knowledge to form your own opinions and educate others-your friends, family, neighbours or the local tramp-anyone and everyone! I also post up links, videos and pictures and suggestions of nifty ideas that might interest you.
Any particular requests drop me a comment and I’ll see what I can do, otherwise stick with me, I’ll try and post things up as often as possible.
make every day count : D
Isabel
P.S I have been writing this blog for a little while now so there are quite a few articles. They are all here, but the beginning is not on this page, it all starts on the last page….so make like Winnie the Pooh and begin at the beginning, and end at the end.
Filed under: Environment, Politics, UN Climate Change Negotiations | Tags: Climate Change, COP15, Copenhagen, Environment, under represented delegations, UNFCCC
I’m sitting in my little room in halls, in Bristol, trying to prepare for the showdown that will be Copenhagen.
I’ve got my team, I’ve got my accreditation, I’ve got my accomodation, and I’ve got a country for us to support (in fact more like 8 and the emails just keep coming in) and now all there is left to do is work my butt for my last week of term-accounting for my missing the real last week of term!
I truly don’t know what it’s going to be like this time.
I can picture all the negative aspects of what it’ll be like-that’s easy-that’s all anyone ever talks about, and I know I’m really looking forward to catching up with, and meeting more, amazing youth from all over the world. But truly, what’ll life be like the day Copenhagen ends?
Weird question, and no I’m not some sad-ass who’s pinned all her hopes on these 2 weeks; definitely not, but I am the kind of sad-ass who wants to work as hard as possible to know that I could not have done anything more in my power to effect these negotiations more positively. I reckon, if I set myself that kind of personal target, the impersonality and coldness that you encounter at the heart of the UN process will not seem quite so dehumanising.
So what am I doing?
well, myself along with 7 other fabulous young friends will be inside the negotiations assissting under represented official delegations in any way we can. We wanted to be useful, so we are doing our best to contribute to levelling the playing field between those delegations who go there with armies of environmental and business lawyers and negotiators, and those Governments who can’t afford to send even 1 delegate. We have had replies from our offer of support (by way of taking notes in meetings they cant get to, English, policy, getting them lunch etc.) from all over; including countries such as Honduras, Zimbabwe, El Salvador, Burundi, and others that we can’t make out because they’re all in French!
anyway, the 8 of us will be blogging on a seperate blog, otherwise we might just subsume this one!
The address is yet to be decided, we thought not many would appreciate the name theG8! Get it? (there are 8 of us) so keep you’re eyes peeled and I’ll announce it here soon.
I’ve also got together some money from my old secondary school and a student society which means that we are covering the costs of a young Mongolian delegate, who would otherwise not have been able to come, which is wicked. I’m really excited about meeting her, and I’ll put up a photo of us when I do!
I jsut briefly wanted to mention the new targets coming out of the US and China at the moment. Now I don’t know much about US politics or targets (mainly cos there have never been any for me to think about!) but I do know that these long-hailed targets flowing freely from the US, are not as they seem.
As they are using the baseline of 2005 (itself a high carbon year), to calculate their 2020 targets of 17% reductions, it actually only amounts to 4% reductions!
4% is nothing; it’s no wonder Obama got that through Congress, we have to aim higher.
The good news however is that now that China and the US have actually announced targets, the EU has to upgrade its 2020 targets to the higher level of 32%. This is a very positive step to have to take before Copenhagen has happened, although it should still be remembered that 40% by 2020 is the bare minimum we expect. Let’s hope we can have Pete Betts eating his words when he laughed at Anna in Bonn for suggesting 40% was what we needed for survival.
Filed under: Environment, Politics, UN Climate Change Negotiations | Tags: Bristol, BUST, COP15, Copenhagen, Ed Miliband, Environment, EU, fresher, Gordon Brown, law, political agreement, political manouvering, Politics, treaty, Un Climate Negotiations, UNFCCC, university
Dear all, I briefly want to apologise for the lack of reading material over the last few weeks, and explain why this happens to frame what this post is all about.
So about 5 weeks ago I started studying Law at Bristol University for the first time. Oh.my.god. Yes, it’s much more difficult and time consuming than I had thought, or even planned! Bang goes most of my time basically, hence my lack of time to write. You’ll be glad to hear however that the last month hasn’t been totally steeped in legal jargon and visits to the library. There is an amazing group/society called the Bristol University Sustainability Team (BUST) who are doing some really exciting things. I’ve got stuck into projects such as getting allotments for all of the 10 halls of residence, fruit trees planted around campus to provide free and seasonal food for students to pick, the 350 day of action (see photos below), and an amazing project called Foodworks which is where a team of us go out skipping during the week, collecting chucked out and unwanted (but still perfectly good) food from supermarkets and other retailers, then we get together and cook it all up once a week, and distribute it amongst the homeless in Bristol. Check out their site to get involved.
Anyway, in my legal studies I have actually come across some knowledge that will definitely benefit any campaigning I do in the future-all related to the power struggle between the “independant” courts system (judiciary), Parliament (legislature) and the Government (the executive). Bear with me on this one it’ll all make sense…..
Broadly speaking there are 2 ways of seeking redress from the wrongful actions of a Government:
1) political
2) legal
The 1st is in some cases far more powerful than the 2nd. For example, the MP’s expenses scandal-was every MP in the frame taken to court? Not atall. The pressure of the media coverage and the rebuke of their party leader was enough to send them crawling back to parliament, cheque book in hand to repay all their superfluous claims.
However, there are cases when the best course of action is legal. And that’s because you are maybe seeking damages for an event that happened specifically to you at the hands of the council or a public official (e.g policeman) because the political redress of media coverage and an official apology would a) not be enough and b) might not, by itself, be enough to change the situation for future incidents. (In courts the doctrine of president is a powerful one-basically if you receive a landmark verdict in your case, it will go on to be an authority used in any subsequent cases in courts lower down and it’ll be used as guidance and possibly a marker of where to aim for because the facts are the same.)
However, politics also relies a lot on things called ‘conventions’. These are rules developed through time that create expectations on how members of Parliament and Government should behave for fear of the political fallout and head shaking that would go on in their circles, as a result of bypassing one. These are not laws, they’re not enforceable in the courts, they’re simply an unwritten code of conduct. An unwritten code of conduct that is not legally binding or recognised in court, is one that can slowly change over time to move with the times; I’m also sure that it’s something that can be interpreted differently by different people, so that most people’s interests, unless the complete opposite of the convention, can be accomodated in some way.
It’s here I introduce why this is an interesting thought to bear in mind.
This last week, after the 5 days of UN climate change negotiations in Barcelona, newspapers all over have latched on to a number of important and influential people who’ve all been spouting some very dangerous bullshit. Excuse my french.
And that is that Copenhagen, as it’s likely to fail anyway, needs to look to agree a politically binding treaty rather than a legally binding treaty. With a lack of time and a real need to get something out of the much-hailed Copenhagen talks in December, the hope and desire to succeed of the last month or two, has been surplanted by a very clever get out clause.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen and US chief climate negotiator Todd Stern were the first to say that only a “politically binding” agreement can now be achieved.
The UK have just jumped on the bandwagon too-with Ed Miliband coming out publicly saying that he thinks only a political deal can be done in Copenhagen-even though he has been optimistic up until now the way he sees it the treaty will need to be ”a meaningful political track with strong numbers committed by all countries”, but it won’t be legally binding. At the same time the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (the panel that advises the UN negotiations on the scientific side of things), Pachuari, has said: ”They’ll have to be binding, and there will have to be some provisions for penalties for those who don’t comply with the targets, because we’ve seen that with the Kyoto Protocol [of 1997]. A lot of parties are way behind even the commitments that they accepted [as part of the Kyoto Protocol]. So we really can’t allow that to continue in the future, and this agreement will have to be binding in every sense of the term.”
So do you see the problem?
An agreement that is only politically binding will never actually be binding; in the years of negotiations, the reason why 14 years on we only have a framework for international action is because the process relies too heavily on a political process to resolves a scientific situation-yes all the science and solutions may require very politically thorny and important issues, such as donations of money from one country to another to help them adapt- but the point is that the negative side of politics is the ONLY reason why we are in the situation we are in now, who’s to say that will ever stop if we don’t put our foot down now?
To illustrate my point, there was massive contention recently within the European Union because Gordon Brown said the EU should donate the 50 billion Euros they finally agreed on, as soon as possible, whereas other heads of state in the EU argued against this because they felt too exposed by outing all their cards on the table at once. Brown, to his credit argued it would increase the likelihood of a big donation from countries like the US and Australia if they felt they weren’t the only ones who might give. As you can imagine, if everyone plays their cards close to their chest and refuses to disclose their figures for the fund, it’s all about who’ll jump first? And will everyone else follow? Unfortunately political manoeuvring dictates the progress of these talks.
Apparantly a senior government source said: “The key question has always been: will you or won’t you get numbers? Just because you’re not getting the legal bit doesn’t mean you won’t get numbers. And we are hopeful of getting meaningful numbers.” BUT, even if you have numbers and responsibilities down on paper, as has been shown by the failure of the Kyoto protocol to enlist any real action on targets for emission reductions, it just won’t happen.
Why? Because not only are there no legal ramifications for not doing what they’ve said they will; there are no political ones either. The general public and the media are barely interested in the fact that the UK will not meet it’s LEGALLY BINDING European Union renewable energy targets for 2020! How can it be ‘politically binding’ when there is no public outcry or inbuilt ‘convention’ which would mean the embarrassment would be enough for them to act?
Politically binding is mere greenwash. The problem is such that there are NO conventions in place to cause an outcry in political circles, and public concensus on this issue is so non-existent as to prove no risk at all so it’s a mere blip on their reputation-radar.
So what can you do?
Write to Ed Miliband, write to your local MP, write to your MEP, and insist they call for Ed Miliband and the Dutch Government who will lead the talks in Copenhagen to demand more from the countries involved, and to expose the true meaning of a politically binding deal-don’t let them off the hook. (You could even call them up!)
Filed under: Actions, Environment, UN Climate Change Negotiations, Videos | Tags: 350, 350 video, global movement, International day of action
Filed under: Actions, Environment, Politics, UN Climate Change Negotiations | Tags: 350ppm, 350 day of action, Bristol University, BUST, Students Union, photos
Filed under: Actions, Environment, Politics | Tags: 10:10, 38 degrees, Environment, motion, MP's, Politics, Simon Hughes, vote in parliament, write to your MP
So, you’ve all heard of 10:10 by now I’m sure (if not scroll down to an earlier post on it), I won’t go into it. BUT I do have exciting news! Simon Hughes, the Energy and Climate Change Spokesperson for the Lib Dems has tabled a motion in Parliament so that MPs have to vote on whether or not the House of Commons and the whole of government should join the 10:10 campaign. This would commit the government to cutting their own emissions by 10% next year. This is huge.
Last week I went to a talk by Zac Goldsmith, the young Tory MP for Kew and editor of the Ecologist magazine for 10 years; at the end I asked him if he thought that a Tory Government in May would commit the UK to a target of 10% by 2010? He pretty much said no, which is a shame, but honestly I think he was just trying to be realistic. Can you imagine how we would go from a constant increase in emissions in the UK, to not only plateuing steadily, but then turning the tragectory round so that we cut our CO2 output by 10% in a year?! I really really want to see us do it, so, everyone can and should email, or even better hand write a letter to their MP asking them to vote in favour of the motion next wednesday. Especially if your MP is not Lib Dem.
Use this link and it’s done in 2 minutes-although I would advise personalising their letter template, it’s quite bolshy!
Filed under: Actions, Environment, Politics | Tags: Gordon Brown, island, Maldives, scuba diving, sea level rise, underwater meeting
The amazing President of the Maldives has now not only committed his sinking country of the Maldives to going zero carbon by 2050, but has announced his cabinet will be meeting underwater!
They say: “It is to send a message to the world. The intention is to draw the attention of the world leaders to the issue of global warming and highlight how serious are the threats faced by Maldives as a result. If we can stop climate change, the lowest-lying nation on earth will be saved.”
I think they’ve managed it.
apparently, the photo above is of them doing a test dive, but their scuba instructor pronounced the Education Minister “unfit to take the dive”. oh dear.
This is only a one off, for the meeting the documents will be sheathed in water-proof plates pinned to the table, but as the lowest-lying country in the world, the Maldives has the most to lose-fastest. Apparently some “officials”-god knows who they may be-have said this’ll be a one off, because not only is it impractical, but they fear it would dilute democracy, they may have a point, but I think the Presidents one is bigger.
Do you think Brown might like the idea? I think he’d be pronounced ‘unfit to dive’, but it would certainly make for an interesting letter to the PM……
Filed under: Actions, Environment, Politics, UN Climate Change Negotiations | Tags: COP14, COP15, Copenhagen, Environment, fundraising, Global South, international youth, International Youth Delegation, Politics, Poznan, think global act local, Un Climate Negotiations, UNFCCC, youth
Sorry for the cheesy line but it’s true! What I’m about to propose really needs you to be in this frame of mind….so
As you probably already know I’ve been involved in the amazing clan of international youth that make their way from all corners of the world to be at the UN Climate negotiations, wherever they may be. And since last December when we attended COP14 in Poznan (see lots of earlier posts), lots of young people, especially some amazing girls from India and the US, have been working hard to get youth from the Global South to these UN meetings, because not only is there a lack of them, there’s practically none! And that is by no means representative of our population on earth. So far, the main project has been to get youth delegates from all the countries (or as many as possible) in the southern hemisphere who are normally underrepresented in the negotiations-both the official ‘grown up’ delegates and the young ‘uns. Not only that, they are often already affected by climate change.
To be able to provide support in the way of accommodation (getting scarcer but not impossible), accreditation to get them inside, VISA applications, flights or sustainable travel wherever possible, emotional and organisational support from other young people who have been there and done that, we need money, and we need it NOW! Time is very much of the essence, with only 2 months to go, and a lot of youth to organise we really need help fund raising. Because what we forget here is that we can pretty much go out and down our street and raise money for a good cause; but where these youth will be coming from is likely to be poverty stricken which severely restricts their chances of going anywhere.
So, even if you can’t make it to Copenhagen, please help get someone else there, someone with a story which will hopefully move the delegates to act as they should, they are the people its hitting first and hardest, we’ve got it cushty here so lets start doing something with it and put your money where your mouth is!
If you manage to fundraise anything, please email me on wizzabel@hotmail.com so that we can channel it in the right direction ASAP.
Think Global Act Local ; )
Filed under: Actions, Environment, Lifestyle, Politics | Tags: 24th of october, 350.org, 350ppm, action, Environment, global day of action, graffiti, october, Politics, Powershift, youth
Apologies for the lack of reading matter, I’m coming to the end of my first (there are 2 weeks of it here!) Freshers week in Bristol Uni.
So, what does your October hold in store for you?
Do you think you’re ready to take some action?
This coming weekend, from the 9th to the 12th of October, will be the biggest environmental youth summit the UK has EVER seen! The UK Youth Climate Coalition (UKYCC) have bust a gut to bring you the biggest, most inspiring and best speakers from across the UK. Here they will educate you about the problem, empower you to want to get involved and take action (in whatever form suits you best) and you will meet and greet so many people you’ll have a ready formed network of people to go campaigning with! And once they’ve got you all riled up, dance group ‘Stomp’ (who are amazing) will be helping create a march type action with you all, to go round the streets London, it’s going to be amazing I wish I could be there! On the friday and saturday I’m going to be speaking about my involvement in campaigns over the last year, and also, how I am already affected by climate change in the UK. Have a look at the impressive programme here.
The National Express are offering anyone travelling to Powershift with them, a massive 50% off and a discount card for the rest of the year, don’t book until after you’ve got your PSH ticket cos then they’ll give you a discount code.
So, even if you live far away you can get there cheaply AND there’s a large space near to the conference centre you can sleep in, they’re calling it a crashpad (!) which you can sleep in for 3 nights for only £10 (in the middle of London). Tickets for Powershift cost £30, unless you come from one of their hotspots, in which case you get it half price. Have a look at their website to buy tickets and find out more details. Be there!
Powershift USA
And our Powershift!
THEN, as if that wasnt enough for the lowly month of October, 350.org are organising a global day of action. On the 24th over 1000 actions ALL over the world, including in Greenland, will take place to mark the significance of the number 350 in the upcoming UN Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen. We really need that number to be the one that all the countries in the world commit too, to be able to ensure the survival of all countries and all peoples. No doubt there’s already an action planned near you that you could join, check out this map to have a look; or, you could organise your own! This is where you can get inspiration and help with it, and then you register your action here. Simple as that. And if you do, you know you’ll have helped the world just a little bit, in only a few hours of your day. Personally Im going to be joining in with graffitying the number 350 round Bristol….
Filed under: Environment | Tags: blog action day, Climate Change, Environment
