Category: Climate crisis

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You and I can’t save the world, and the myth that we can is a dangerous distraction from what urgently needs to be done and by whom, argues 16 year-old Izzy Barrett

Izzy Barrett

Use paper straws! Turn out your lights! Don’t run the tap while brushing your teeth! So I have such an impact on the environment? If I died tomorrow I wouldn’t even save the equivalent CO2 emissions across my lifetime that the private jets flown into the latest COP conference produced – but god forbid I […]

Another black day for the planet?

Plastic Free Axminster -

We’re all familiar with the concept by now: a day of frenzied shopping, with the odd fist fight thrown in! Around the early two-thousands, the last Friday in November became the season’s busiest shopping day, taking over from the Saturday before Christmas. This import from the US is now firmly fixed in our calendar, along […]

UPDATE: Local groups unite against proposed waste incinerator in Canford, Bournemouth

Greg Lambe

Discussions about building a proposed waste incinerator in Canford were deferred by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole’s (BCP) planning committee in September 2024. There is no confirmation, yet, about when it may be discussed, but the committee was due to meet on November 7, 2024. On that day, concerned residents, environmental groups, and local organisations came […]

Local Extinction Rebellion activists join ‘insure our survival’ week of action with Bournemouth demonstration

Extinction Rebellion BCP

Highlighting a week of protests and actions in London and across the UK focused on the “Achilles heel” of the fossil fuel industry setting our planet on fire: their insurers. Extinction Rebellion’s (XR) major national campaign, demanding that the insurance industry stops insuring the climate criminals setting the world on fire, hit the streets of […]

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS): a briefing for MPs and their constituents

Editor-in-chief

Anyone who has read Rory Stewart’s book, Politics on the Edge, will have learned the uncomfortable, shocking truth that MPs frequently go through the division lobbies with little or no knowledge of the content, purpose or justification for the proposed legislation on which they are voting. Unless they have a particular personal interest or are […]

The Climate and Nature Bill needs your help. Write to your MP!

Anthea Simmons

Roz Savage MP has selected the CAN Bill in the Private Members’ Bill Ballot, and now has the chance to progress all the way. This is a golden opportunity to pass a Climate and Nature Act—but it’s critical that there are as many supporting MPs as possible to help it succeed. It’s especially important to […]

The Climate and Nature Bill: it’s an urgently-needed gamechanger

Liz Moore

The Climate and Nature bill currently has the backing of 175 MPs, 231 scientists and 731 nature organisations in the UK. Zero Hour, the campaign that is pushing for the bill to be enshrined in law, says that the bill guarantees a “comprehensive and joined-up approach” to tackling the climate crisis, but what does the […]

Challenging JP Morgan’s greenwash campaign

Extinction Rebellion BCP

Extinction Rebellion (XR) used shocking photos to puncture the pretensions of climate crisis funders JP Morgan’s Greenwash campaign. On September 10, 2024, XR arranged a hard-hitting visit to the Sustainability Department of one of the biggest funders of climate breakdown, which they called the ‘most staggeringly pointless and hypocritical place in the UK’. Global investment […]

Power, land and pie

Mike Hannis

Britain woke up on July 5 to find that fourteen years of Tory government was over. Sunak was gone, and his predecessor, whose 49-day tenure was even more disastrous than predicted, had capped her sparkling career by struggling to find her way offstage after unexpectedly losing her very safe seat. Older readers may remember watching […]

Are we feeding climate change?

Plastic Free Axminster -

In the UK it is estimated that 140 meals per person (70kg) are wasted each year and that 70 per cent of wasted food comes from the home, mainly from fresh fruit and vegetables. Additionally, those statistics do not take into account the inordinate waste created by enveloping fruit and vegetables in single-use plastic.  WRAP […]

Challenging Perenco on EU Day for the Victims of the Global Climate Crisis

Daniel Glennon

On 15 July 2024, Extinction Rebellion groups from Bournemouth, Christchurch, Poole (XR BCP), Wimborne and Purbeck, took their continuing campaign against Poole Harbour oil company, Perenco, to their offices and facility in Furzebrook. The campaign was sparked by Perenco’s spill of 200 barrels (approximately 31,600 litres) of reservoir fluid, consisting of 15 per cent crude […]

Have you been conditioned…

Plastic Free Axminster -

… into thinking that fabric softeners, conditioners and dryer sheets are absolutely essential to good housekeeping? From all the adverts to which we are subjected, we could be forgiven for thinking so! Perhaps we need to take a closer look. First there are all the millions of plastic bottles which get discarded every year in […]

“In case of medical climate emergency break glass”

Annie Mitchell

As a psychologist, I know only too well the varied ways that we humans are distracted from painful knowledge that conflicts with our wishes, or our prevailing world view, or with wider political ideologies. And along with others, I see how citizens in the UK and beyond are increasingly confronted with the painful consequences of […]

Let’s get filming – let’s change the world

Phil Shepherd

YouTube footage from the climate change conference COP 26 in Glasgow in 2021  reveals scores of delegates chanting “Another world is possible”. It reflected their disillusionment at the compromised conference process and at the lack of governments’ commitment to meaningful action in the face of the escalating climate crisis. While, unsurprisingly, the footage was not […]

Calling for 20mph in BCP! LOVE 20

Adam Osman

We delivered our 20 hearts to Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council (BCP) on April 14 2024, to call for an all-at-once rollout of a 20mph speed limit. BCP council is proposing some limited extensions to 20mph areas, like the one currently out for consultation in the Boscombe area. We’re in an environmental emergency and a […]

Poole Harbour oil spill, one year on

Greg Lambe

The BBC have reported that ‘Perenco UK pledges no repeat’ of the oil spillage in Poole Harbour. In reply, local activists from Extinction Rebellion say the only way for Perenco to honour this pledge is to stop oil extraction in Poole Harbour now. Extinction Rebellion (XR) groups from Bournemouth-Christchurch-Poole (BCP), Wimborne, Purbeck, East Dorset Friends […]

Are we awash with misleading claims?

Plastic Free Axminster -

Greenwashing is claiming something is eco-friendly, green or sustainable when this is not the case and is not linked to any clear evidence. It makes consumers think they are helping the planet by choosing those particular items. Ingredients in a product being described as “natural”, “organic” or “eco-friendly” or “green” leave us assuming that the […]

Climate and nature café to open in Wimborne

Editor-in-chief

A new climate and nature café is to be launched by Extinction Rebellion (XR) Wimborne for people suffering from eco-anxiety over the climate and nature crises. The pop-up café is at the Cafe @ The Allendale in Wimborne on Thursday 15 February from 4pm to 6pm. XR Wimborne say it is an opportunity for people […]

Anthony Mangnall MP’s cynical silence on climate change

Simon Oldridge

Global average temperatures in 2023 exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, conditions never before experienced by human civilisation.  Though crossing this iconic milestone for one year doesn’t mean that average warming has yet reached that point, it was only in 2018 that UN climate experts, the IPCC, predicted that we wouldn’t reach 1.5°C until around 2040. […]

Hopes and fears for 2024

Sarah Cowley

Each new year brings hopes and fears – hope for good changes, fear that bad ones might arise. Mostly, we hope things will improve for family and friends who are struggling but worry about how events outside their control will prevent progress. All our personal futures are bound up with the wider world, so here […]

Let’s get informed about community energy!

Editor-in-chief

In the run-up to COP28, where governments will discuss urgent measures to mitigate the worst effects of climate breakdown, a new online poll has revealed that British adults have, in Bristol Energy Cooperative’s opinion, shockingly low awareness of a climate solution that’s potentially right on their doorstep: community energy.   The new Ipsos poll commissioned by Bristol Energy Cooperative (BEC), a community-owned energy coop, shows, when […]