By Matthew Hynds
During the latest debate between the Republican presidential hopefuls, which took place in Miami last Thursday, the subject of climate change made an oh-so-brief appearance.
By Andrew Durling
I don’t usually bump into reindeer herders. I don’t expect to. But I did bump into them last weekend just before the Climate March in London on Sunday 29th November, which about 70,000 people joined. You couldn’t miss them. There they were, representatives of the Sami people, gloriously resplendent in their traditional folk dress. They were young, the two women looked radiantly beautiful, and the two men stunningly handsome, making it hard to believe they came from such a remote and physically demanding corner of the world as the wilderness that is the Scandinavian Arctic.
By Ian Elgie
Last Saturday the Eastbourne United Nations Association hosted their Climate Change Conference in anticipation of the forthcoming United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris. Since the formation of the United Nations 70 years ago, environmental factors are the only parameter that has not been improved upon and has in fact deteriorated. The significance of climate change is enormous, and this conference hoped to raise awareness and understanding amongst the people of Eastbourne
Image by Takver (view license details)
Our Changing Climate – Your Changing Future conference attracted some 110 delegates from the South East to a full day’s exposure of what we may expect in the coming decades with rising CO2 levels. The presentations ranged from sea-level rises and the increasing rate at which they are rising to local sea defences and how policy needs to focus on working with nature rather than fighting it. There was also a presentation that focused on how we must be aware of our vulnerability and the reality of a changing world, perhaps beyond our perception, but the real world nevertheless (recall Plato’s Allegory of the Cave!).
The day concluded with a panel discussion giving the stage to colleagues from Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace along with representatives from local Eastbourne pressure groups.
The feedback from the conference was very positive. However, the inevitable disappointment was the fact that really only a very small percentage of the local population were present. The reality is that too few people are interested in becoming better informed.
The Conference Chairman, Ian Elgie, who presented on Vulnerability and Risk Management, made it clear one of the most difficult tasks is to convince the still ignorant, or deluded who believe that the climate change debate is a fabricated conspiracy.
One apparently educated delegate (was he the only climate change denier at the conference?) stated emphatically that 97% of climate scientists did not believe in global warming – and would not accept that it was the other way round – stating that whatever arguments were put to him he would never change his mind.
Can such bigotry be eliminated by greater appeal to rationality or is it inevitable that such people will only change their minds when their homes are flooded, roofs are blown away, their water is rationed, their food prices have shot up and environmental refugees give rise to increased global insecurity?
The conference gave one clear message – each of us must take responsibility for what we are doing to contribute to the problem of global warming – act now and act together – as the costs of inaction will only increase.
By Eddie Saint-Jean
Is your house powered by solar energy? Mine neither. The reluctance to do what is clearly right can’t always be down to awareness, education or even the security of traditional practices but often pure economics. Inexcusable though it is some people simply cannot afford this without government assistance or some wider organisational drive with financial support at the heart of it. Continue reading “Solar power and green energy threatened by subsidy cuts in the UK”
By Eddie Saint-Jean
How much do you know about the meaning of terms such as carbon footprint, biofuels, divestment and renewable energy? The campaign for effective action on climate change needs these terms to be as commonly understood as terms such as Android smartphone and selfie stick are. If a person needs to resort to an online dictionary to understand a term in that moment of afterthought there is an opportunity to ignore. A clear, sustained and powerful campaign needs to combine education with explanation as opposed to solely number crunching. Continue reading “Are scientific terms shrouding the climate change message from the public?”
By Lucette Davies
Air pollution caused the premature deaths of 7m people worldwide in 2012 (World Health Organisation estimate).
In the UK it is estimated that air pollution costs our economy £16bn / year, more than the £13.7bn / year that we spend because of smoking.
But where does air pollution come from and why is it such a dangerous and expensive aspect of our environment?
Continue reading “Poor air quality damages our health and our economy”
Lucette Davies - journalist 