Climate change

A few pages into David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth, I realised with a shock that for many years I’d engaged in a soft form of climate change denial. Not the full throttle petrodollar-backed conspiracy theory-type denial but just simply not paying much attention. I have been involved in the environmental movement for most of my adult life. But I regarded climate change as some unthinkable, apocalyptic event in the future that we would hopefully avoid, rather than a process already underway and accelerating. Wallace-Wells calls climate change a “‘hyperobject’-a conceptual fact so...

Audio and video introduction, plus an article/transcript, from a meeting of the same name. Dr Camila Bassi delivered this talk at the AWL online meeting on 30 August 2020. The outbreak of SARS Coronovirus 2 or COVID-19 proceeds an escalation of recent epidemics and proto-pandemics: notably, H5N1 or Avian influenza, SARS, MERS, Swine flu, Ebola, and Zika. Camila tells the story of HIV/AIDS and SARS to explore the nexus between capitalist political economy, nature, and emergent infectious diseases; concluding that, without radical change to how we organise and run our world, our future will be locked into this deadly trajectory. For a transcript of the talk and the full set of references, see Camila's blog.

Comrade Andy Newman, Like you, I have many criticism’s of Extinction Rebellion’s Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill (see here). But in your LabourList polemic against the Bill, writing as technical director of the “Gas Users Organisation” (GUO) and as a GMB and Labour Party activist, you come down squarely on the wrong side of the crucial issues. You warn of “another culture war divide” over the twin needs of tackling climate change and “protecting well-paid, skilled jobs, and protecting the interests of families and households”. Your answer? Not radical socialist environmentalist policies...

As I write on 7 September, Extinction Rebellion (XR) UK’s latest rebellion has just finished its first week, with a few days still to come. Every day, in many locations across the country, hundreds of protesters have turned out for often bold actions to urge action on the climate crises. XR has rightly denounced serious and increasing police repression. Hundreds have been arrested, including mass arrests following kettling. Protestors have been taking Covid-safety seriously, yet the police have threatened them, including those wearing face-masks, with fines using Coronavirus police powers...

Extinction Rebellion (XR) Bristol held protests and blockades from 29-31 August, and XR nationally begun a fortnight of disruption from 1 September in London, Cardiff and Manchester. They aim to get the “Climate and Ecological Emergency” (CEE) bill adopted as a “private members’ bill” and then passed as Parliament returns from 1 September. In Bristol, a protest at the airport reportedly saw almost 400 people, multiple bridges were blockaded, and XR organised many other actions, talks, and educational activities. Organisers have been taking Covid-safety seriously, while working hard to...

The Greenland ice sheet had an average net loss of over one million tons of ice each minute in 2019, so research published on 20 August showed. One million tons is one cubic kilometre of water; across the year a record loss of over 500 billion tons. That loss from 2019 could contribute well over 1mm of sea level rise globally, as well as diluting the Gulf Stream with fresh water. Antarctic ice loss is also progressing at an alarming rate. The cumulative impact is compounded by thermal expansion of the ocean’s water as the planet heats, and potentially accelerated by positive feedback...

After developing a cough, my housemate self-isolated, and tried to get tested. When self-referring in Bristol you are offered an on-the day test only if you say you have a car or van to travel in. The testing centre is ten miles from the city centre. My housemate made up a car registration plate number, booked a test, drew the number on cardboard in marker pen, and cycled there. He was refused as not “in” his vehicle, so had to ask for the slower, less reliable, postal home-testing kit. The official reason for refusing is to reduce levels of infection to staff, but the policy makes people take...

A study led by Oxford University academics and published on 15 May has highlighted the successive gaps between most people’s diets and national or WHO [World Health Organisation] dietary guidelines; and between these guidelines and multiple international targets which governments have signed up to. Across the 85 countries considered, with national guidelines, if those guides or WHO ones were followed, then (the study reckons) “premature mortality” would fall by almost one sixth and food-related greenhouse gas emissions by almost a seventh. More ambitious “EAT-Lancet recommendations” would give...

New research has narrowed the predicted likely range of global warming for a given increase of CO2. Previously, a doubling of CO2 above pre-industrial levels would have been predicted to increase global surface temperatures by 1.5‐4.5°C, a measure of “climate sensitivity”. The new research, assessing available evidence, places climatic sensitivity within the middle or upper part of this range: 2.6‐4.1°C. With lower climate sensitivity increasingly unlikely, attempts to build hopes upon it are even more untenable. The need to radically reduce net carbon emissions, as well as to mitigate the...