My Next Few Days

It's going to be a busy week for me.

- Tonight, we're having a social, to mark St Patrick's Day, at the Town Wall Tavern, 730pm onwards. Come say hi!

- Tomorrow is an evening meeting in Birmingham to continue West Midlands work on the European elections (at the FoE warehouse in Digbeth).

- Thursday is the Climate Change demonstration here in Coventry (organised by Cafod, WDM and Christian Aid), with a service at the Cathedral (12pm), then a march through town (130pm), then a trip out to the headquarters of E.ON at Westwood Business Park (3pm).

- Then, Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon is the Green Party spring conference in Blackpool! I've never been to Blackpool. All I know about it is this:

Ed Miliband At "Age Of Stupid" Premiere

Ed Miliband is challenged by "Age of Stupid" director Franny Armstrong; the movie's star, Pete Postlethwaite, also pledges his support to the "Not Stupid" campaign by vowing to return his OBE if the UK government fails to secure urgent and drastic global decarbonisation at Copenhagen:

Public Sector Should Lead On Climate Change

The chair of the Environment Agency has used a speech to call for far more public sector leadership on climate change:

- every public building in the country to be fitted with solar panels
- new public buildings to have ground source heat pumps
- public land used, where possible, for wind turbines
- children taught about climate change alongside literacy and numeracy
- one stop shops run by local authorities to help households fit renewables
- interest free loans to pay for micro-generators like wind turbines
- transport in local government by hybrid or electric cars, or video conferencing where possible

I think all of that would be a good start.

We're Living In A Bathtub

Andrew Revkin at the New York Times has written an accessible (well, as accessible as it gets) article on why we live in a bathtub.

We're running water (carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases) into the bathtub, and, currently, we have a number of "sinks" that can absorb carbon, the drain from the bathtub. We're adding more carbon than is being removed, so the "water in the bathtub" is rising. As well, the "sinks" are starting to reach their limit in absorbing carbon (the drain is getting plugged).

If we get to a situation where global water in = global water out, we'll still have a bathtub with a lot of water in it. As Christian at Greenpeace puts it: "Turning the taps off doesn't solve the entire problem - because it's actually the amount of water in the bath which warms the planet, not how much the taps are on."

We have to stop running too much water into the bathtub.

China And US To Partner On Climate Change?

This sounds rather encouraging. China and the US might team up to fight climate change. Hillary Clinton has announced her first overseas trip (Japan, South Korea, China, Indonesia): "She will raise the prospect of a 'strong, constructive partnership' to combat climate change on a visit to Beijing next week, and the President is seriously considering a proposal from many of his most senior advisers to hold a summit with the Chinese leadership to launch the plan."

Power Shift - Youth Conference on Climate Crisis

You can find more information at: http://powershift09.wordpress.com/

If you would like to apply for any roles (descriptions on website), send an email (max 500 words) and your CV to: kate@ukycc.org by 5pm on FRIDAY 13th February (spooky!).

Please mark the position you wish to apply for and don’t forget your name, email and phone number. Explain why you would like the role and why you would suit the position using examples from your past experience.

UK Youth Delegation In Poznan

You can follow a group blog of the UK Youth Delegation to the Poznan conference here.

One of the delegates, Casper ter Kuile, who is a student at the University of Warwick, gets interviewed here:



You can also see other videos from youth participants:

- Dian, from China
- Josh, from Canada
- Line, from Denmark

"Poznan Needs To Head Off The Collision"

Kevin Watkins, senior research fellow at Oxford University's global economic governance programme:

"Put starkly, Poznan must head off a collision between the energy systems that drive our economies, and the Earth's biosphere. Ambitious targets must be at the heart of any agreement. But we also need a new institutional architecture for cooperation between rich and poor countries ... Over the past few months, rich governments have moved financial mountains to protect the integrity of their banking systems. What price the ecological integrity of our planet, the wellbeing of future generations, and our commitments to the world's poor?"

Copenhagen - UN Climate Head At Poznan

A climate change conference is underway in Poznan to begin a year-long process for an agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. 10,700 delegates – from 187 nations – are gathering in Poznan. Kyoto only lasts until 2012, and the hope is that an agreement will be reached at a 2nd conference, in December 2009, in Copenhagen. Within the EU, Poland (93% of its electricity comes from coal) and Italy are opposing an agreement with tough new emissions standards.

Yvo de Boer, the UN's top climate official wants the right path to be taken for the next 15 years:

"What concerns me most is that the financial crisis will lead to a second set of bad investment decisions ... I hope that the second financial crisis is not going to have its origins in bad energy loans. We must now focus on the opportunities for green growth that can put the global economy onto a stable and sustainable path."

Copenhagen - EU Emissions Permits

This was the same process that preceded Kyoto ... water down and water down the agreement, and then still claim for the subsequent decade that Kyoto was too stringent and harmful:

Oxfam says that in tomorrow’s [5th December] Environment Council meeting in Brussels, European decision-makers must resist industry scaremongering if the EU is to lead the way at global talks. If the EU buckles, it will fail to deliver on its own objectives of avoiding global warming above 2°C and send the wrong signals to the UN Climate Conference now underway in Poznan.

In general, business groups are strongly opposed to the auctioning of emissions permits, saying they should continue to get them for free. They argue that paying for carbon permits will lead to higher costs, a loss of competitiveness and ‘carbon leakage’ as firms facing global competition will shift their operations to other countries which will not face a carbon price. In particular, the iron and steel, cement, oil refining and chemical manufacturing sectors have been lobbying intensely for continued free allocation – and they seem increasingly confident of winning concessions.

Elise Ford, head of Oxfam’s Brussels office: “Poor countries need at least $50 billion a year to adapt to the negative impacts of climate change and much of it could be raised by earmarking the revenues of auctioning carbon permits. This would be one of the most decisive contributions that rich countries could make to engender good-will and progress at the Poznan talks."

Copenhagen - Coal And Poland

In advance of the climate change conference in Poznan, Greenpeace protesters clashed with Polish miners on Monday. According to the World Coal Institute, Poland (apart from South Africa) is the most coal-dependent country in the world, producing 94 percent of its electricity from coal:

"The Jozwin mine lies near Goplo lake, listed on the EU's Nature 2000 programme aiming to safeguard threatened species in the bloc ... Konin, the firm that operates Jozwin, also plans to open a second opencast mine in nearby Tomislawice but environmentalists say this could destroy Goplo, home to rare wildlife."

"Some Poles share Greenpeace's concerns but others say wealthier western EU states had built up strong infrastructure before embracing the environmental cause. Poland has begun to receive large-scale EU funds to modernise its dilapidated infrastructure, including roads."

Copenhagen - Obama And Poznan Conference

In our year-long series of posts leading up to the Copenhagen climate change summit (end of Nov/start of Dec 2009), Barack Obama (below) sends a video message to a global warming summit in California. He is clear about his government establishing "strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them by an additional 80 percent by 2050."

Copenhagen - Christian Aid's Countdown

This is the first in a year-long series of posts on the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen -- 30th November to 11th December, 2009.

The conference will negotiate, and agree, a successor treaty to Kyoto.

Here is a video from Christian Aid, laying out the issues at stake for the conference: