The Guardian
‘I would go to prison’: the ordinary people getting arrested for Extinction Rebellion
More than 1,000 demonstrators have been arrested in London in the past nine days. Here, nine of the climate change protesters explain the extraordinary ends they will go to for the Earth
I have never been a campaigner or activist before, but I have been worrying about the environment for decades. For 20 years I have written letters, signed petitions, ridden a bike – I have done everything that is “polite” – but the situation has, if anything, gone backwards.
Continue reading...How have you been affected by the climate movement?
From Extinction Rebellion to Greta Thunberg, the message about climate change is louder than ever before. Tell us how you feel about the movement
As the last Extinction Rebellion protesters were cleared from Waterloo Bridge on Sunday night, many moved on to sites at Marble Arch and Parliament Square, marking a week-long occupation in London mirrored in 33 other countries.
The protests have been met with both resounding support and disapproval. Still, millions of people have now heard their call for transformative and urgent change to avoid climate catastrophe.
Continue reading...'You did not act in time': Greta Thunberg's full speech to MPs
Read the full text of the speech Greta Thunberg gave to MPs at the Houses of Parliament
My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 16 years old. I come from Sweden. And I speak on behalf of future generations.
I know many of you don’t want to listen to us – you say we are just children. But we’re only repeating the message of the united climate science.
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg condemns UK's climate stance in speech to MPs
Teenager who sparked global youth movement hits out at airport expansion and support for fossil fuels
‘You did not act in time’ – Thunberg’s full speech
The UK government’s active support for fossil fuels and airport expansion is “beyond absurd”, Greta Thunberg has told MPs.
The 16-year-old Swedish student, who sparked a global youth-based movement when she began a “climate strike” outside Sweden’s parliament last year, gave a typically blunt speech. She told MPs: “This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.”
Continue reading...Extinction Rebellion: police warn of Parliament Square arrests
Order targeting the protest is first to explicitly mention organisers could be detained
Police have warned Extinction Rebellion organisers that they face arrest if they incite protesters to block roads around Parliament Square.
The Metropolitan police said it was imposing pre-emptive conditions restricting any demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday to the lawn in the centre of the square, after hearing that activists with the group planned to gather there.
Continue reading...Melting permafrost in Arctic will have $70tn climate impact – study
Study shows how destabilised natural systems will worsen man-made problem
The release of methane and carbon dioxide from thawing permafrost will accelerate global warming and add up to $70tn (£54tn) to the world’s climate bill, according to the most advanced study yet of the economic consequences of a melting Arctic.
If countries fail to improve on their Paris agreement commitments, this feedback mechanism, combined with a loss of heat-deflecting white ice, will cause a near 5% amplification of global warming and its associated costs, says the paper, which was published on Tuesday in Nature Communications.
Continue reading...Fire poppies: rare golden flowers rise from the ashes in California
As the state is swept by a super bloom, these flowers are popping up – a silver lining for areas hit hard by intense fires
When wildfires swept through southern California last year they left a trail of destruction: leveling houses, historic Hollywood sets and sites of biodiversity. Now a rare flower is proving that great destruction can give rise to something spectacular.
Park ranger Ana Beatriz Cholo has been on a mission to find fire poppies – a rare and elusive species that only grows on the heels of major fires – in the Santa Monica Mountains, which were especially hard hit. She knew they were unusual, and that the 2018 Woolsey fire, which scorched more than 96,000 acres, made this a good year to hunt.
Continue reading...How the Green New Deal was hatched in a London bar – podcast
In 2007, over a friendly drink, the Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott, came up with a radical plan to address the effects of the financial crisis and climate change. He called it the Green New Deal. Plus: the Guardian’s education correspondent on why schools are going to test four-year-olds
In 2007, Larry Elliott met a friend to discuss the financial crisis. Over the course of the evening, and several drinks, they cooked up the Green New Deal – a plan to deal with the effects of the economic crisis and the threat of climate change. They formed the Green New Deal Group and, though Gordon Brown and Barack Obama briefly flirted with the idea, it did not progress much further.
But in 2018, the youngest US congresswoman in history, the Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, picked it up and the idea has been gaining traction ever since. Ocasio-Cortez’s plan mixes old and new. She wants a living-wage job for anyone who wants one; universal healthcare; and basic income programmes as part of a “detailed national, industrial, economic mobilisation plan” that would ensure the US is powered by 100% renewable electricity, and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing, agriculture and other industries.
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg backs climate general strike to force leaders to act
Swedish activist says world faces ‘existential crisis’ and must achieve goals of Paris deal
Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist, has given her support for a general strike for the climate, saying the student movement she inspired needs more support from older generations to ensure politicians keep their promises under the Paris agreement.
Speaking at a public event in London as Extinction Rebellion protests continued in the capital, the initiator of the school strike for climate movement was typically frank about the scale of the problem the world faces and the impact her campaign has made. “People are slowly becoming more aware, but emissions continue to rise. We can’t focus on small things. Basically, nothing has changed,” she said.
Continue reading...Why is the US news media so bad at covering climate change?
The US news media devotes startlingly little time to climate change – how can newsrooms cover it in ways that will finally resonate with their audiences?
This article is excerpted from an piece published by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation. The Guardian is partnering with CJR and The Nation on a 30 April conference aimed at reframing the way journalists cover climate change. More information about the conference, including a link to RSVP, is here.
Last summer, during the deadliest wildfire season in California’s history, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes got into a revealing Twitter discussion about why US television doesn’t much cover climate change. Elon Green, an editor at Longform, had tweeted, “Sure would be nice if our news networks – the only outlets that can force change in this country – would cover it with commensurate urgency.” Hayes (who is an editor at large for The Nation) replied that his program had tried. Which was true: in 2016, All In With Chris Hayes spent an entire week highlighting the impact of climate change in the US as part of a look at the issues that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were ignoring. The problem, Hayes tweeted, was that “every single time we’ve covered [climate change] it’s been a palpable ratings killer. So the incentives are not great”.
Continue reading...Climate activists stage 'die-in' at Natural History Museum
Police say than 1,000 arrests made in eight days of Extinction Rebellion protests
Scores of environmental activists lay on the floor at the Natural History Museum in London as part of the eighth day of protests by Extinction Rebellion, which have brought chaos to the capital.
As many as 100 of the group’s protesters participated in the “die-in” on Monday afternoon to raise awareness of the mass extinction of species.
Continue reading...Polly Higgins, lawyer who fought for recognition of 'ecocide', dies aged 50
Campaigner and barrister attempted to create a law to criminalise ecological damage
Polly Higgins, one of the most inspiring figures in the green movement, has died aged 50.
Higgins, a British barrister, led a decade-long campaign for “ecocide” to be recognised as a crime against humanity. She sold her house and gave up a high-paying job so she could dedicate herself to attempting to create a law that would make corporate executives and government ministers criminally liable for the damage they do to ecosystems.
Continue reading...Police clear Extinction Rebellion protesters from Waterloo Bridge
Arrests made after police urge activists to move to Marble Arch, where Greta Thunberg spoke to protesters on Sunday
Police have cleared the remaining Extinction Rebellion activists from Waterloo Bridge in London, despite earlier calls on social media for people that were willing to be arrested to “go there and save it”.
The roads around Parliament Square were cleared of protesters earlier on Sunday, with the northbound carriageway of Waterloo Bridge reopened to traffic by the evening. On Sunday night, police continued their operations, moving to remove the last activists, who had glued themselves to the bridge and to each other.
Continue reading...The zero-waste revolution: how a new wave of shops could end excess packaging
Shops that minimise the environmental impact of our consumer habits are springing up across Britain. Could they help us avert catastrophe?
The smell in Natural Weigh, a zero-waste shop that opened a year ago in Crickhowell in mid-Wales, is lovely. The shop – filled with pasta, grains, seeds and dried fruit served from hoppers to avoid plastic packaging; washing-up liquid and laundry products that customers pump into their battered old squeezy bottles; fair-trade coffee and chocolate, plus an array of environmentally friendly products, such as bamboo toothbrush holders, plastic-free dental floss and vegan leather snack pouches – looks lovely. The little town itself, which prides itself on having the best high street in Britain, is lovely, too. I am captivated.
Natural Weigh is part of a quiet revolution. Over the past two years, well over 100 of these stores have sprung up across the UK. Precise numbers are hard to come by, but some in the business say there are almost 200, many in environmental hotspots such as Brighton, Bath, Bristol and north-east London, but also in plenty of other less obviously fertile areas. Zero-wasters are in touch with each other on Facebook, and have their own bible in Bea Johnson’s book Zero Waste Home.
Continue reading...Extinction Rebellion: protesters to offer to 'pause' climate action
London demonstrators will offer to vacate most sites if mayor meets some demands
Climate change protesters who have stopped traffic in a series of peaceful demonstrations across London will offer to vacate some sites in exchange for the mayor, Sadiq Khan, acting on some of their demands.
Extinction Rebellion (XR) said it would “pause” its demonstrations in an attempt to achieve its political aims as it enters the second week of its campaign to have the government declare a climate emergency, reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025 and establish a citizens’ assembly to devise an emergency plan of action.
Continue reading...Slow burn? The long road to a zero-emissions UK
It is the near future. You wake in a house warmed by a heat pump that extracts energy from deep below the ground and delivers it to your home. (Your gas boiler was outlawed years ago.) You rise and make yourself a cup of tea – from water boiled on a hydrogen-burning kitchen stove. Then you head to work – in a robot-driven electric car directed by central control network to avoid traffic jams.
At midday, you pause for lunch: a sandwich made of meat grown in a laboratory. At the end of the day, you are taken home by a robot car – through countryside festooned with solar panels and turbines.
Continue reading...A zero-emissions UK is a huge task. But the benefits will also be huge
Major action is needed to achieve zero net emissions by 2050. But it will make Britain’s economy cleaner, smarter and more efficient. We must not delay
Britain needs to reach, by no later than 2050, net zero emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. This means any greenhouse gases we release must be balanced by the removal of an equivalent amount from the atmosphere.
The 2050 deadline represents our fair share of international responsibility for implementing the Paris agreement on climate change and meeting its goal of holding the rise in average global temperature to well below 2C – and pursuing best efforts to limit warming to no more than 1.5C.
Continue reading...Stroud, the gentle Cotswold town that spawned a radical protest
It is a quiet Good Friday on Stroud’s steep, sun-dappled high street. There are none of the usual stalls spilling out of the centuries-old Shambles indoor market, and the schools are closed for the Easter holidays.
But the Cotswold town’s independent cafes are bustling with tanned and exhausted Extinction Rebellion Stroudies, who have spent the week bringing parts of London to a standstill and focusing minds on the threats posed by climate breakdown.
Continue reading...Battle to save frogs from global killer disease
Frogs, salamanders, and toads across the world are now under attack from a widening range of interacting pathogens that threaten to devastate global amphibian populations.
That is the stark warning of leading zoological experts who will gather this week in London in a bid to establish an emergency plan to save these endangered creatures. “The world’s amphibians are facing a new crisis, one that is caused by attacks by multiple pathogens,” said Professor Trent Garner of the Zoological Society of London, which is hosting the conference. “We desperately need to devise strategies that can protect them.”
Continue reading...Extinction Rebellion protests: police start to clear Oxford Circus
Met police draft in 200 extra officers to deal with Extinction Rebellion campaign in London
Officers have begun to clear protesters from Oxford Circus as the Metropolitan police try to restore normality to parts of London where Extinction Rebellion members have been campaigning against climate change.
Crowds clapped and cheered as activists who were chained to the road at Oxford Circus were lifted into police vans.
Continue reading...