A short post this time, but Derby Climate Coalition recently took part in a demonstration against INEOS in Chesterfield, showing opposition to fracking by the company.
At a meeting, INEOS are reported to have said that they “will choose and pay for the company who will monitor them”. The audience is reported to have been very skeptical about this.
On Saturday the 7th of May, protesters met on Beeston High Street just outside Nottingham. There was a lively protest attracting much public attention about how the Conservatives have undone actions to limit climate change since they were elected a year ago.
In 2008, the Climate Change Act committed the UK to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. Recognising the crisis faced and the need for urgent action, all major parties supported it. But since the current government took office on 8 May 2015, there have been a series of major policy reversals taking us backwards on climate action.
It was saddening to see the closure of Derby City Council’s Climate Change Unit on the first of April.
In 2006 the Derby Campaign against Climate Change raised climate change with Derby City Council, which prompted the then leader, Chris Williamson, to lead the development of a cross-party climate change strategy. This resulted in the adoption of the agreement to cut the Council’s own greenhouse gas emissions by 25% over five years and to address the issue across our city. All this was backed up by the setting up of the Council’s Climate Change and Energy Management Unit (CCEMU).
Continue reading Closure of Council’s Climate Change and Energy Management Unit
February 2016 global surface temperature anomalies. Photograph: NASA GISS
This week saw a lot of bad news.
One headline read “Current record-shattering temperatures are shocking even to climate scientists”. February 2016 was likely the hottest month in thousands (yes thousands) of years, as we approach the 2°C danger limit. “Stunning,” “wow,” “shocker,” “bombshell,” “astronomical,” “insane,”“unprecedented”– these are some of the words climate scientists have used to describe the record-shattering global surface temperatures in February 2016. For more on this read the Guardian report and the Observer had this follow-up item: February was the warmest month in recorded history, climate experts say
Or for a change, lets look at the reports on February’s record heat in the Daily Mail
The Chancellor said he would “put the next generation first” in Budget 2016, yet failed to mention climate change or the Paris Agreement to tackle global warming. In effect it was a Climate-wrecking’ Budget after £1bn tax breaks for oil and gas industry. Continue reading Osborne delivers climate-wrecking budget
How can climate change affect the Earth?
Last Saturday I heard Bill Mcguire, Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London, talk about how a changing climate can trigger earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes. Ironically he was speaking at Cromford Mill in Derbyshire, which contributed, as much as anywhere else, to the start of the Industrial Revolution . It was here that Richard Arkwright proudly opened the world’s first factory nearly 250 years ago. Continue reading Waking the giant!
Over the next six years train operating companies are embarking upon a new programme of cost-cutting (refer to the McNulty report http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/12658.aspx) that could see:
Train companies are driving through the cuts in an attempt to find £3.5bn in efficiency savings by 2019, as requested by the government.
If the cuts go ahead one in ten staff currently working on the railways – including train guards, maintenance workers, and ticket office staff – could lose their jobs and around three-quarters of all the UK’s railway stations could become unstaffed.
This is not a case of creating a million climate jobs but of saving 20,000 Climate Jobs. The better and more attractive the railway service, the easier it will be to get people off the roads and to stop catching planes to places within the UK like Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Therefore Derby climate Coalition supports the TUC led Action for Rail campaign.
