Hundreds of protesters joined Extinction Rebellion marches in cities across the UK to demand the government takes action on climate change. Five people were arrested in Bristol after protesters sprayed graffiti on the offices of the Environmental Agency in Bristol as around 250 demonstrators marched on the city council. They also planted a tree on the lawn outside the Mayor’s Office. In Cambridge, more than 100 members of the group staged a “die in” in the city’s Grafton Centre and the Grand Arcade.
Independent 16th Dec 2018 read more »
The world is failing to take the necssary action over climate change at what is perhaps the most important crossroads in the history of humanity, writes Mary Church. Katowice might go down in history as the longest UN climate talks ever, opening a day early and finishing a whole day late, but it will also surely be remembered – if there is anyone left alive to read the history books – as the conference that failed, despite the extra time, to act on the basis of science and respond appropriately. Because, an appropriate response to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s terrifying warning of only two months ago that we have merely a decade to avoid truly catastrophic warming would be to require an absolutely massive increase in efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Such an effort would look like a minimum average reduction of 12 per cent a year across the EU, and comparable cuts in developed countries around the world – along with the provision of hundreds of billions in climate finance to the global south. To put this in context – Scotland is amongst a handful of countries with the strongest climate change targets in the industrialised world, and yet our legislation requires only three per cent a year; something we have struggled to achieve more than once. Meanwhile our well-intentioned Climate Justice Fund amounts to barely a drop in the ocean of the finance needed.
Scotsman 18th Dec 2018 read more »