Direct Action

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: RSS

55-minute special featuring the voices of Climate Camp activists. Arthur of the London Camp for Climate Action media team is live in the studio discussing

• the rapid take-up of the Climate Camp model around the world – there are over a dozen Camps around the globe this year
• policing and legal aspects and
• the justification for direct action in the face of inaction to prevent devastating climate change

• what’s planned for this year’s camp
• legal and policing aspects
• the direct action training that’s on offer and
• the mass action that’s planned for later in the year

We also have four short statements from the Camps in Australia, New Zealand, US and Finland; and a range of voices taken from a recent Climate Camp promotional video.

A political reality may be emerging here that civil action could well force the government to act. This might even be one of those rare ocassions where everyday but resolute citizens have a lasting impact on the great issue of our time. – Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies, University of Bradford

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: RSS

We get a majority world perspective on the climate emergency from Goldman Prize winner Ricardo Navarro. Navarro won the Goldman prize for sustainable development back in 1995 for his work as founder and director of the El Salvador Centre for Appropriate Technology and he is a former director of Friends of the Earth International.

Here he talks about how a new regional Movement of Climate Change Affected Peoples is responding to the pressures of climate change with awareness raising, permaculture techniques and low-level technologies as well as putting up resistance to inappropriate development. He also gives us his wider perspective on the United Nations climate talks which he has been attending since 1992.

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: RSS

Featuring:

• George Monbiot (The Guardian)
• Caroline Lucas MEP (Green Party)
• Jeremy Leggett (Solar Century)
• Leila Deen (activist)

The new series of “The 300-350 Show” kicks of with a recording of the presentations given at the launch of the “Climate Safety” report last Autumn. The Public Interest Centre’s “Climate Safety” report gives a clear and simple summary of the latest science, and shows how our current handling of the problem has exposed us to serious and growing risks. With Arctic sea ice melting away faster than anyone had predicted, the climate seems more sensitive than almost anyone thought, placing us in the middle of a climate emergency that cannot be ignored or brushed aside.

The report delivers a clear message that to have any chance of maintaining a safe climate, we must rapidly decarbonise our society, preserve global sinks, and address the problem with an unprecedented degree of seriousness. Even with a commitment to 80% carbon cuts by 2050, “Climate Safety” warns that our current policy response does not match up to the scale of the challenge.

At this launch event, recorded last Autumn, the panelists discuss how we can get beyond “politics-as-usual” and achieve a full, emergency response.

Many thanks to film-maker Beth Stratford for the use of her sound recordings.

www.climatesafety.org
www.pirc.info/content/view/60/54/

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: RSS

A moratorium on coal-fired power plants without carbon capture and storage … should be the rallying issue for young people. It seems to me that [they] should be doing whatever is necessary to block construction of dirty coal-fired power plants. – Professor James Hansen, 8 July 2007

A report on this year’s Camp for Climate Action at Kingsnorth coal-fired power station in Kent including interviews with some of those involved in some of the associated direct actions.

• Camp for Climate Action
• Indymedia full coverage
• 228 MPs ask for a public inquiry into Kingsnorth
• Environment Audit Committee – report on Carbon Capture & Storage
• The Poyry Report – the UK does not need new coal or nuclear if we meet our renewable energy targets
• Cashing In On Coal – RBS, UK Banks and the Global Coal Industry
• Letters to Cargill from communities in Brazil, Paraguay and Papua New Guinea

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: RSS

Biofuels have been condemned as a “crime against humanity” by the outgoing UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Zeigler. We speak to Deepak Rughani of Biofuelwatch and find out:

• Why agrofuels have been responsible for food riots, land grabs and increasing hunger around the globe
• Why the Gallagher report and others underestimate the impact of biofuels on climate change
• Why the Gallagher report is not independent
• Why we need to listen to the global calls for a moratorium on biofuels rather than industry and government’s suggestion of a slow down

Ahead of this year’s Camp for Climate Action we speak to Connor O’Brien about the movement’s plans for sustainable living, education, and shutting down the coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent. And we end the programme with a rough mix of “Soul Not Coal” a song written for the Camp by The Carbon Town Cryer.

• Camp for Climate Action
• Climate Camp Video
• Biofuelwatch
• Leaked World Bank report on biofuels link to food price rises

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: RSS

James Hansen offered Gordon Brown an historic one-time-only leadership opportunity on climate change – will he take it?

Leading US climate scientist and director of NASA, Dr James Hansen, has made it clear that “preservation of climate requires that most remaining fossil fuel carbon is never emitted to the atmosphere” and that “the only realistic way to sharply curtail CO2 emissions is to phase out coal use except where CO2 is captured and sequestered.”

Over the last six months Hansen has taken the unusual step of writing in a personal capacity to various heads of states asking them to bring in a moratorium on new coal. The first letter he wrote was to Prime Minister Gordon Brown last December. He wrote:

“Your leadership is needed on a matter … with ramifications for life on our planet, including all species … [A] decision to phase out coal use unless the CO2 is captured is a global imperative, if we are to preserve the wonders of nature, our coastlines, and our social and economic well-being … If Britain and Germany halted construction of coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester the CO2 it could be a tipping point for the world.”

Our first guest is Leila Deen from the World Development Movement about the campaign against Gordon Brown’s plans to build seven new coal-fired power stations without requiring them to have Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology.

Our second is Georgina Woods who speaks to us by ‘phone from Australia on the final day of the country’s first Camp for Climate Action – a week long event which culminated in the country’s biggest ever direct action against the country’s coal exporting industry.

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: RSS

A 60-minute edit of the historic panel discussion held at the 2007 Camp for Climate Action featuring:

• George Monbiot – Guardian columnist and author of “Heat: How to stop the planet Burning” (Penguin)
• Richard Hawkins – co-author of “Zero Carbon Britain” (Centre for Alternative Technology) and
• Sophie and Olly from the Climate Camp

Both George Monbiot and the Centre for Alternative Technology have worked out what the UK needs to do in order to play its part in the global challenge of avoiding dangerous climate change. New scientific findings are telling us we need to act faster than we previously thought and move rapidly to a world without fossil fuels by reducing our energy usage and powering our remaining energy use from renewable sources.

– How can we galvanise the political will to make it happen?
– How will these changes affect the way we live?
– Can we, in fact, live better with less?

Recording by Indymedia.
Programme produced by Phil England.

http://www.zerocarbonbritain.com/
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378866.html