Category Archives: Ecological Breakdown and Response

Ecological Breakdown and Response School Strike for Climate

XR and School Strike for Climate

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By Henry Greenwood

My first wake up moment to the reality of climate change came in 2007 when watching Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. I don’t remember being particularly aware of the issue before, but after watching it I realised that I wanted to do something to play a part in tackling this massive issue facing us. Al Gore talked about it as a crisis then, but not many people were treating it like one.

Since then I always thought of climate change as something that could be prevented if we all worked hard enough to persuade people to change their behaviour and governments to change their policies. The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, while being a long time coming seemed to be a big step forward to creating the consensus required for action. Three years after that, however, and with nowhere near enough having changed,2018 was the year that I accepted that climate change cannot be prevented. It’s too late for that. The climate has already changed, and the still increasing amounts of greenhouse gases that we are emitting make further climate breakdown inevitable with increasingly devastating consequences.

It feels staggering that it took until 2018 for climate change to become a mainstream concern, but at least it is now happening. It seemed to me as though it was the first year in the UK that people saw and felt it so clearly that it became impossible for anyone, other than hardened deniers, to attribute the extreme weather to repeated freak occurrences rather than a long term trend caused by us.

There was the Beast From the East in March, followed a month later by record high temperatures in April, and then the prolonged hot and dry summer which led to even the Sun declaring climate change to be the cause of the heatwave.

Then in October, the IPCC report came out stating in clear terms that we were way off track to avoid catastrophe, and that we have 12 years to drastically change the way we live. Not long after, WWF produced a heart breaking report stating that 60% of wildlife had been wiped out by human activity since 1970. To put all this into a UK political context, however, around the same time, Philip Hammond delivered the 2018 budget without a single mention of climate change.

Two stories also emerged towards the end of 2018, though, that genuinely have the potential to change the course that we are on.

In November, I was recommended by a colleague and friend to read Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaptation report. Later that week, I went to an event organised by the Climate Action Society at UCL at which leading academics spoke about the reality of climate change. This was my second wake up moment, and it was an even harder realisation than the first. This time, it was the realisation that things probably aren’t going to be OK, and we are facing something truly terrifying that may already be beyond our control. So the following day I decided to join Extinction Rebellion and go and sit on Waterloo Bridge and shut it down to traffic, alongside around 6,000 others across five bridges.

I was initially put off by the name ‘Extinction Rebellion’. Extinction is not a nice thought to contemplate, it makes me deeply sad to think of the animal species that have gone and are facing extinction, but in this context it makes us confront the possible extinction of humanity if we continue on our current path. I’ve never particularly been the rebellious type either, and to me the word conjures up images of violence and bloodshed. But this is a different kind of rebellion, and those harsh words are offset by the movement’s simple demands and a powerfully compelling and compassionate method, delivered by ordinary people who care about our living planet and our collective future.

Their demands are that the government tells the truth about climate change and acts as though it is the truth, that the UK reduces carbon emissions to net zero by 2025, and that we set up a citizens’ assembly to determine the policies needed and oversee the changes. These may sound radical, but on reflection, they are merely a sensible and rational response to the existential crisis that we face.

The method to achieve these aims is non-violent direct action. Inspiration is drawn from the civil rights movement, and the realisation that everything up to this point has failed to change our suicidal trajectory.

The other story that has the potential to inspire action is that of young people rising to the challenge to which adults have failed. Greta Thunberg started striking from school and sitting outside the Swedish Parliament in September and has been doing it every Friday since then. What started as a one person protest has now led to tens of thousands of students in Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and other countries to follow her lead, making the point that their futures are being compromised by the lack of action from older generations on climate change.

I went along to the first UK youth school climate strike in London in December which was arranged in a few days and attracted around 12 school students. Since then young people have been organising, inspired by Greta’s message and there will be strikes in cities and towns across the country on Friday February 15th.

Where does Green Schools Project fit into all this? I left my job as Head of Maths at a Hackney Secondary School in 2015 to start the organisation as my way of contributing to tackling climate change. In assemblies we tell students about the reality that they are facing and how they can play a part in addressing the greatest challenge we face. I’m not planning to encourage students in the schools that we are working with to go on strike, that’s entirely for them to decide, but we stand squarely in solidarity with the young people choosing to take this action and support their call for a planet that is still habitable by the time that they are adults.

One of our goals as an organisation this year is to amplify the voices of young people calling for change to a system that is causing the mass extinction of species and will lead to the end of our current way of life. I hope with all my heart that the young people that I see in schools will have the opportunities and freedoms to live and work, travel, and enjoy the natural world as much as I have, but I fear that this will not be the case. Maybe young people like Greta will be the ones that finally provide the wake up call that is needed to treat this crisis as the crisis it really is, and decisively change the course of events.

Citizens' Assemblies Ecological Breakdown and Response News XR Glasgow

XR Glasgow Report

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By Ian Paterson

Extinction Rebellion Glasgow formed in November 2018, and took our first actions the following month, including disrupting Christmas shopping by swarming in Style Mile shopfronts, and forcing BBC Scotland to close their front doors due to our Reclaim the BBC demonstration.

 XR Glasgow aren’t where we want to be yet, but things are starting to come together and we are on track to deliver a strong contribution during the International Rebellion of 15th–19th April 2019. Affinity groups are forming, with XR Glasgow students organising a Youth Strike on Feb 15th, and XR Glasgow is staging a mass action on March 2nd. So far in 2019, a wide variety of activities have already taken place…

Ae Fond Rebellion.

You may have seen XR Scotland’s Rabbie Burns inspired action, in the news recently too, as XR members occupied the Scottish Parliament and conducted the UK’s first ever Citizens Assembly on Burns Day, the 25th of January, with crucial contributions from XR Glasgow members.

I don’t actually know any Burns poems to quote to you and find the language archaic but I’m quite a fan of social commentator and poet, Gil Scott-Heron. He famously said “the revolution will not be televised” but I’m beginning to wonder if he was right about that, as News outlets seemed quite keen to broadcast our recent action at the Scottish Parliament.

Fun Fact: Gil Scott-Heron’s dad played football for Celtic FC in Scotland and was the first person of colour to do so.

You may take our lives, but you’ll never take our treedom!

When faced with the destruction of trees and natural habitat, to make way for building developments on Otago Lane close to her home, XR Glasgow member Cheyenne was quick to react and form alliances with a local ‘Save Our Lane’ group.

“The main criticism involves the destruction of a vital green area that is home to native wildlife such as otters, kingfishers and bats. The area is part of Glasgow’s Green Corridor and hence should be considered a protected nature conservation area. The initial application stated that trees of a certain maturity and height will not be cut down. However, this was not adhered to”, Cheyenne told me.

Glasgow is known affectionately as ‘Dear Green Place’ and wider Scotland fondly referred to as ‘Caledonia’ – the name given to this area by the Romans, due to the vast expanse of woodlands in our region. Sadly we’ve seen our forestry systematically destroyed to a tiny fraction of the size it once was.

As the old song by Dougie MacLean goes: ‘Caledonia, you’re everything I’ve ever had’, yet still we destroy her namesake. Come to think of it, ‘Dear Concrete Jungle’ doesn’t have much of a ring to it either.

Rebel & Rejuvenate.

Of course, a hard day of action requires time to reflect and rejuvenate and with XR Glasgow’s new ‘Book/Craft’ gatherings, people are able to come together, talk, listen and conduct vitally important talking and making therapy with one another.

“We need to form bonds and care for each other as well as planning actions and creating resources”, group creator, Anna, reflects. “It might also be a focus for people who don’t feel any of the Working Groups are calling to them just now, or are trying to work out how they want to get involved”, she goes on to say, so this event provides a welcoming and inclusive outlet for further discussion.

Youth Strike 4 Climate.

It’s true also, that some of the younger members, along with their families, have found our way of working hard to fit in with the demands of daily life. XR Member Sapna has developed an inspiring initiative to combat this however, with ‘Wee Rebellion’, an event attended by 250 parents and young people.

“It’s really difficult for parents, teenagers and children to get to meetings in the evenings but because of the way most people’s work schedules function, it’s the obvious time to have meetings to talk about issues and plan actions. Wee Rebellion will attempt to be a space for parents, children and young people to talk to each other about how they can engage with XR and to generally raise awareness about climate change with the hope of finding shared vision for change. At our first event, among other activities, there will be a discussion space for adults asking what are the barriers to participation for caregivers and what strategies can we collectively come up with to overcome them”, Sapna tells me.

Less nuisance, more news sense.

Although there are challenges to overcome, fortunately it’s now fairly easy for me to keep abreast of environment news, thanks to the new ‘Glasgow St’ online briefing paper. The brainchild of XR member Thomas, ‘Glasgow St’ has clear principles, which set it apart.

Being over-reliant on traditional media for your climate news may not be the wisest decision. With climate lobbyists and business interests attempting to influence the agenda, we must analyse and scrutinise it ourselves. G-Street’s wiki approach allows for a collective learning experience, which I’m sure will prove valuable to the whole XR movement. Users of Medium – take a look and contribute.

To keep in touch with XR Glasgow, like us on Facebook, follow @ScotlandXr on Twitter, and @xrscotland on Instagram. Sign up for our mailing list by emailing xrglasgow@gmail.com. From February we will meet weekly on Tuesdays at 7pm at the Kinning Park Complex.

 

 

 

Diaries Ecological Breakdown and Response

Why I sleep on a hard floor

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By Matthew T-hanu

I can’t sleep, so I got up to write this. The possibilities of XR are on my mind. What will Brexit, or an absence of Brexit, throw up? Will the UK government be weakened to the point of collapse? Will an emergency general election be called, and if so, will that be the moment for XR to ramp up the civil disobedience to achieve the aim of a Citizen’s Assembly for the UK, decided by sortition?

Personally I am inspired by the historical example in this country of the monarchy gradually losing power as Parliament gained power, (aided by the beheading of a king, but we don’t need to go that far. Have mercy on Theresa May, please. It can’t be easy for her). Could the same happen again, with Parliament fading to play a role similar to that which the queen plays now? Could a Citizen’s Assembly usurp the majority of the current Parliament’s executive roles, and could the unfolding ecological catastrophe make that process swift -could it happen in 5-10 years?

I am inspired by the possibility of a fairly rapid, peaceful revolution. It may be unlikely. About as unlikely as someone like Trump becoming the president of America.

***

Whatever lies ahead, we can sure there will be some hardship to endure in this country in the coming decades. With increasingly erratic weather and potentially even temperature rises enough to stop wheat germination, food shortages are not unlikely to occur.

It’s time we toughened up, physically and mentally. We can do this by conditioning ourselves gradually, in a regenerative way. It is possible to be kind to ones-self whilst also experimenting with self-imposed hardship, or on a spiritual level it could be called renunciation. This is partly why I make a regular habit of fasting. It’s also why I sleep on a hard floor, with just one layer of duvet between me and the carpet. It has got to the point where the hard ground feels like a comfort, an anchor against the potentially overwhelming light-headed fear of an impending Dark Age. Sleeping on the floor also helps assuage my Global Northerner’s guilt and helps remind me of the enslaved people’s and species on which my privileged life depends.

More than anything it is a practice which helps me feel strong for whatever is coming. After a while it doesn’t feel hard at all. I hope you will try this out for one night -to make friends with what is most solid and real. In any case, where was your mattress made, and by whom? What materials went into it? How much of the Earth’s resources would we save if we all discarded the need to sleep on a mattress?

 

Articles Diaries Ecological Breakdown and Response Regenerative Culture

Extinction Rebellion isn’t about the Climate

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Originally posted by Stuart Basden on Stu’s Blog

 

Yes, yes, I know. The climate is breaking down. It’s urgent. An emergency. We’ve only got a few years left to ‘fix’ it.

Indeed, we won’t fix it. Weather patterns will become increasingly unstable and unpredictable, and the effects it will soon have on how humans around the world grow food will be devastating, likely causing harvests to fail across entire continents and food prices to sky-rocket. Millions have already suffered due to the amplified instability. We’re facing imminent societal collapse (whatever that means), both around the world and in the UK. All of our lives are soon going to radically change.

None of this is particularly controversial. When a bus is driving with a certain momentum towards a person, it gets clearer and clearer that it will hit the person. After a certain point, it’s inevitable. And that’s where we stand now, with regards to the momentum of climatic change. The bus is about to hit us. Our lives are about to change. It’s not clear whether or not we’ll survive (as a species). Many species have already been run over. Two hundred species each and every day go extinct.

I’ve been with Extinction Rebellion (XR) from the start. I was one of the 15 people in April 2018 who came together and made the collective decision to try to create the conditions that would initiate a rebellion. I was a coordinator of one of the original five working groups, and I’ve been organising with XR day-and-night since then (frugally living off my savings so I don’t have to work, having quit an industry that paid me £1000/week). And I’ve been in RisingUp (the organisation from which XR has emerged) since the first RisingUp action in November 2016. I’m a RisingUp Holding Group member, and a member of the XR Guardianship Team.

And for the sake of transparency: that previous paragraph is all about me ‘pulling rank’ — I’m trying to convince you to listen to what I have to say…

And I’m here to say that XR isn’t about the climate. You see, the climate’s breakdown is a symptom of a toxic system of that has infected the ways we relate to each other as humans and to all life. This was exacerbated when European ‘civilisation’ was spread around the globe through cruelty and violence (especially) over the last 600 years of colonialism, although the roots of the infections go much further back.

As Europeans spread their toxicity around the world, they brought torture, genocide, carnage and suffering to the ends of the earth. Their cultural myths justified the horrors, such as the idea that indigenous people were animals (not humans), and therefore God had given us dominion over them. This was used to justify a multi-continent-wide genocide of tens of millions of people. The coming of the scientific era saw this intensify, as the world around us was increasingly seen as ‘dead’ matter — just sitting there waiting for us to exploit it and use it up. We’re now using it up faster than ever.

Euro-Americans violently imposed and taught dangerous delusions that they used to justify the exploitation and reinforced our dominance, while silencing worldviews that differed or challenged them. The UK’s hand in this was enormous, as can be seen by the size of the former British empire, and the dominance of the English language around the world. There is stark evidence that everyday racial bias continues in Britain, now, today. It’s worth naming some of these constructed delusions that have been coded into societies and institutions around the world:

  • The delusion of white-supremacy centres whiteness and the experience of white people, constructing and perpetuating the myth that white people and their lives are somehow inherently better and more valuable than people of colour.
  • The delusion of patriarchy centres the male experience, and excludes/hinders female assigned people from public life (reducing them to a possession or object for ownership or consumption). Patriarchy teaches dominating and competitive behaviours, and emphasises the idea that the world is a place of scarcity, separation and powerlessness.
  • The delusions of Eurocentrism include the notion that Europeans know what is best for the world.
  • The delusions of hetero-sexism/heteronormativity propagate the idea that heterosexuality is ‘normal’ and that other expressions of sexuality are deviant.
  • The delusions of class hierarchy uphold the theory that the rich elite are better/smarter/nobler than the rest of us, and make therefore better decisions.

There are other delusions. These delusions have become ingrained in all of us, taught to us from a very young age.

None of these delusions have ended, although some of the arguments that supported them (e.g. phrenology) have been dispelled. They continue to play out through each of us, in our ways of relating, regardless of our identity. The current pride in the history of the British empire, or the idea that the USA is on the side of ‘good’, continues to enable neo-colonialism in 2019, taking the form of palm-oil plantations, resources wars, and the parasitical financial sector, to name but a few. The task of Extinction Rebellion is to dispel these delusions. We need to cure the causes of the infection, not just alleviate the symptoms. To focus on the climate’s breakdown (the symptom) without focusing attention on these toxic delusions (the causes) is a form a denialism. Worse, it’s a racist and sexist form of denialism, that takes away from the necessary focus of the need for all of us to de-colonise our selves.

My ancestors are European, some of whom claimed to ‘own’ people as slaves. There are black people with the name Basden in the Americas, and I have begun to mobilise my (white) family to make contact in order to seek to pay reparations.

However, my own accountability cannot be fully paid through this. The insanity* of the mind of the coloniser continues today. It continues in the extraction of fossil fuels, minerals and water from the earth. It continues in deforestation and industrial agriculture. It continues in a callous culture of consumption, which intensifies each Christmas. It continues in evictions and deportations. It continues in the ways of relating to those around us that perpetuate separation and division.

The result is isolation, pain and suffering. The result can be felt at the individual level — in the endemic levels of loneliness and mental-health illness. It can be felt at the community level — in the theft of land for plunder and profit by largely-European-and-US-based banks and corporations. And it can be felt at the global level — in the polluting of our air and oceans.

So Extinction Rebellion isn’t about the climate. It’s not even about ‘climate justice’**, although that is also important. If we only talk about the climate, we’re missing the deeper problems plaguing our culture. And if we don’t excise the cause of the infection, we can never hope to heal from it.

This article is calling to all of those who are involved in XR who sometimes slip into saying it’s a climate movement. It’s a call to the American rebels who made a banner saying “CLIMATE extinction rebellion”. It’s a call to the XR Media & Messaging teams to never get sloppy with the messaging and ‘reduce’ it to climate issues. It’s a call to the XR community to never say we’re a climate movement. Because we’re not. We’re a Rebellion. And we’re rebelling to highlight and heal from the insanity that is leading to our extinction. Now tell the truth and act like it.

* I use the term ‘insanity’ carefully, with the intention of highlighting the need for healing. Indigenous First Nation people helpfully taught me to see the mindset of the coloniser as a sickness. In no way do I intend to marginalise or discredit the experience of people who have been labelled ‘insane’ by a normative system, nor who identify as being ‘insane’.
** Climate Justice refers to the injustice that those who are affected first and worst by extreme weather events (the people in the poorer countries, the majority of whom live in the Global South) are not likely to be the ones who caused the climate emissions (the people who consume the most, including the pathologically wasteful cultures of Europe and Turtle Island (aka North America), and the rich who live/travel around the world).
Articles Ecological Breakdown and Response

Focus SIDS – Island nations threatened by climate breakdown

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Farewell post from Kate Goldstone -thanks for all your help, Kate!

Sources:

You think you’ve got it bad living on the mainland, or inland, or in a country within a continent. But plenty of small island nations, known as SIDS or Small Island Developing States, are a whole lot more vulnerable to our fast-warming climate than most.

There are several reasons for this unusual level of vulnerability. According to Wikipedia (1), SIDS ‘tend to share similar sustainable development challenges, including small but growing populations, limited resources, remoteness, susceptibility to natural disasters, vulnerability to external shocks, excessive dependence on international trade, and fragile environments.’ And all that means a growing number of them are set to disappear completely as sea levels inexorably rise.

How would you feel if your homeland was about to disappear?

Imagine you’ve been born and bred in a small island state, nurtured by it all your life. Because you know the place so intimately it is deeply familiar. Because you eat local foods and drink local water the land is quite literally in your bones, in your teeth, and you feel a soul-deep love for your homeland. But your island is sinking beneath the waves, you’re powerless to change the inevitable, and you and your family are in a state of horrified, shocked mourning. There goes your culture, your history, your ancestors, everything familiar.

Can you imagine how dreadful that feels? Can you picture how frustrating it must be when nobody can really help? There’s nothing that any of you, the residents of your magical archipelago, can do to stop the waters rising. Would you blame the wealthy, greedy people, the people far away who warmed the earth in the first place? Probably.

Global warming and rising sea levels are threatening many SIDS, by their very nature first in the firing line, barely above sea level with little or no high ground. Most have fragile economies sustained by tourism and international trade. Many have under-developed infrastructures. And the people quite literally have nowhere else to go as the waters flow steadily higher. Here are just a few of the world’s many SIDS that are currently at risk of vanishing for good. (2)

The Republic of Maldives – Due to disappear under the waves

The Republic of Maldives covers an area of just under 300 square kilometres and lies to the south of India. Once colonised by the Portuguese, Dutch and British, now it’s an independent republic. Sea level rises are placing the nation, its people and economy at terrible risk, the islands being some of the lowest-lying on earth. At a maximum height above sea level of 2.3 metres, many of the 1200 tiny islands and atolls that make up this magical place are already going under.

The Solomon Islands – Under serous threat from the seas

Independent from Britain since 1978, the people of the Solomon Islands, in the Indian Ocean, have been warning us for several years that sea level rises will destroy their world, but the world hasn’t listened. Climate change is set to destroy this tiny yet precious place over the next couple of decades, sinking a total of just under 1000 islands across two unique archipelagos.

The Republic of Kiribati – First to see the sunrise… but not for much longer

The remote Republic of Kiribati covers an epic three million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean to the north east of Australia, the place where the New Year is celebrated first of all, before it reaches the rest of the world. Independent from Britain since 1979 it’s at special risk of sea level rise, being just 3m above sea level. The waters are currently rising by more than a centimetre a year, not a lot by some standards but four times faster than the global average. This means lovely Kiribati will probably completely disappear before too long, losing 33 precious coral atolls and one island forever.

Vanuatu and Tuvalu

The UN pinpoints the Republic of Vanuatu as the world’s most vulnerable island nation to every type of natural disaster. The nation covers just over 12,000 square kilometres and has been a new, independent state since 1980, now completely separate from Britain and France. Sea level rise here is already a problem, but the place is also especially vulnerable to increasing numbers of cyclones of increasing strengths. Take cyclone Pam, which trashed all but 10% of the buildings in the capital. 83 stunning volcanic islands make up the nation, and they are all at risk from sea level rise.

Tuvalu is another island nation already suffering more than average from the ravages of global warming. Tuvalu is the world’s least polluting country, but at the same time has an incredibly low average height above sea level. Independent from Britain since 1978 and close to Vanuatu, it was also severely damaged by cyclone Pam and is set to disappear thanks to global warming. That means four Pacific coral reefs, five atolls and three islands are set to vanish from the face of the Earth before long.

Is there any good news for SIDS?

We’re at crisis point, and no wonder so many SIDS are so keen to move towards low-carbon, climate resilient economies, as set out in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) implementation plan for climate change-resilient development.

On the other hand unless the rest of the world dramatically and quickly reduces its reliance on fossil fuels and slows climate change island nations, no matter how renewable their energy, will remain powerless to prevent the waves rising. In the same way that no man – or woman – is an island, island nations depend on the rest of the world for their survival and we can’t separate our fates.

While places like the Caribbean can go ahead and create renewable energy until they’re blue in the face, because the rest of the world is fiddling while Rome burns, they’re stuffed. And that’s everyone’s responsibility.

As always, the solution rides on the political will of the leaders of wealthier, more influential, larger countries and the larger economic groups they fall into, ‘organisations’ like Europe and OPEC.

Join the rebellion!

Join Extinction Rebellion! Using non-violent direct action and mass civil disobedience, we are pressuring governments to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025. Will you join us, in love and peace, to save the human race, give our children a future, and protect our fellow creatures?

Kate Goldstone BA Hons
Freelance Copywriter

www.helpinthecity.com
katien@helpinthecity.com
07976 737243
Twitter: @KatieGoldstone1

Bill McGuire's Climate Bombshells BLOG REGULARS Nature Observances

Going Under

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By Bill McGuire

If your children or grand children live within sight of the sea, then be afraid. Very afraid. Sea-level rise is set to be one of the most devastating and disruptive consequences of climate breakdown and the prospect of the oceans drowning coastal communities by the end of the century is growing by the day. The prevailing view sees perhaps a metre or so of sea-level rise by the century’s end – enough in its own right to doom low-lying islands and coastlines – but the true picture may be far worse. A number of studies suggest that sea levels by 2100 could be two or three metres up on today; perhaps as much as five metres. A truly terrifying scenario.

How the UK would look on an ice-free Earth

Global sea levels rose by around 20cm during the 20th century and are climbing now at close to half a centimetre a year. Much of this is due to the expansion of the oceans as they warm, but melting ice is playing an ever more important role in hiking the rate of the rise. The problem is that the Earth is not heating up uniformly, and the bad news for us is that temperatures across the polar regions are climbing far more rapidly than anywhere else. Of course, this is where the vast majority of our world’s ice resides; in total, a staggering 24 billion cubic kilometres of it – close to seventy per cent of all the fresh water on Earth. The great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have been bastions of stability since the end of the last Ice Age around 10,000 years ago. During the second half of the 20th century, however, and especially in the last few decades, they have started to crumble, shedding vast quantities of freshwater into the oceans.

Until recently, attention has been focused on accelerating melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, which are the most sensitive to rising temperatures. The last 20 years or so has seen a huge increase in the melting rate of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which is now shedding close to 400 billion tonnes of ice every year. Even more worryingly, the melting rate is increasing exponentially, which means it will continue to accelerate rapidly.

The news from West Antarctica is not good either. In the five years from 2012 to 2017, ice loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet shot up threefold, from 76 billion tonnes annually, to a colossal 219 billion tonnes. In total, more than 2.7 trillion tonnes of Antarctic ice has melted in the last quarter century, adding three-quarters of a centimetre to global sea level. At the new rate, the contribution over the next 25 years would be 1.5cm. Not really too much to worry about. If, however, the rate of increase is maintained over this period, then the annual rise by the mid-2040s – barely more than 20 years away – would be close toa catastrophic five centimetres a year. And this is without the growing contribution from Greenland and from the increasing expansion of sea water as the oceans continue to warm. It is not known how the melt rate will change in coming decades, but it is a sobering thought that even if the rate of increase stays as it is, low-lying lands and all coastal population centres would be threatened with permanent inundation by the century’s end.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, new research from East Antarctica paints an even more disturbing picture. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet dwarfs those of both Greenland and West Antarctica. Complete melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet would raise global sea levels by around seven metres, while melting of all the ice in West Antarctica would add another five or so. If East Antarctica lost its ice, however, it would push up sea levels by a staggering fifty metres or more. Until recently, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet was regarded as largely stable, and some studies even suggested that it might have been growing. The new study (1) reveals, however, that this is now changing, and changing with a vengeance. What was a sleeping giant is now beginning to wake up.

Satellite data reveals that a cluster of colossal glaciers, which together make up about an eighth of the coastline of East Antarctica, are starting to melt as the surrounding ocean gets progressively warmer. The loss of the giant (It’s about the size of Spain!) Totten Glacier – just one of the cluster – would, on its own, raise global sea levels by more than three metres. The new data show that it and its companions are now moving increasingly rapidly seawards and thinning as they do so, meaning that even the worst predictions for rising sea levels may be optimistic. As with the many other indicators that flag the remorseless breakdown of the stable climate that fostered the growth of our civilisation, the collapse of the polar ice sheets sends us the message that time has run out. Prevarication is no longer an option. Only serious and determined action now will give us any chance of avoiding a climate calamity that will swamp the world’s coastlines and displace hundreds of millions – if not billions – of people.

(1)

 

Bill   McGuire   is  Professor   Emeritus   of  Geophysical   &   Climate Hazards   at  UCL   and   author  of   Waking   the  Giant:   How   a  Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanic Eruptions. He was   a   contributor  to   the   IPCC  2012   report   on  Climate   Change   &Extreme Events and Disasters.

 

Climate Journalism Ecological Breakdown and Response Regenerative Culture Toxic Media Climate

Painted As The Activist Elite (by Ian Paterson, Extinction Rebellion Glasgow)

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Bio: Ian Paterson is a Medical Repatriation worker from Glasgow, who enjoys eco travel blogging, being working-class, avoiding capitalism and saving the planet.

The sneering comes in the undertones of commentators, whilst offering their dissection of our movement. We are an ‘activist elite’, they intimate – a posturing group without diversity.

‘Climate Change is Firing Up Middle Class Activism’, screams the headline in the FT (Dec 9th) in Pilita Clark’s sweeping analysis. Although it’s warming to read that she knows personally of two separate individuals with no history of activism, who are now “part of a burst of middle-class climate activism that has few precedents and no famous leaders”, it is a mixed message that contains a subtle sour aftertaste.

Meanwhile in Glasgow: I’m sat in my second Extinction Rebellion meeting, held within one of the great Glasgow University’s lecture rooms. Whilst sat in the 24th best university in the UK – an establishment I could only have wished to attend – I look around me. It is not class that unites us, of that I am certain.

I was brought up by a single mother on benefits and was unfortunately expelled from school at age 14, for truancy. I found it hard to focus on educational matters during teenage development but it always seemed oxymoronic to remove me for not attending. And so began an unqualified working-class life of dead-end jobs; retail, offices, targets and sales.

Around six months ago and after a two decade long battle with enforced capitalist employment, I finally found myself settling into a job role which focused on my passions and helping people, as a Medical Repatriation Consultant. I immediately saw a change in my behaviour. I started to donate blood, began to help migrants, joined leftist people-power campaign group Momentum, and I joined Extinction Rebellion.

As I glance back around at my colleagues in our Glasgow University meeting room, I see doctors, nurses, students, Green Party, SNP and Labour employees, recycling industry workers and the unemployed. What unites us is not class but a detachment from Capitalism.

Doesn’t the economic system, which dominates our industry, promote selfish, irresponsible, instant gratification? Doesn’t removing yourself from that system help people return to their natural state of cooperation, altruism and empathy?

Back in the media: “What relationships do you have with front-line communities in the global south, indigenous communities and how are you acting in solidarity with them?” Dalia Gebrial (Oxford Uni, LSE) poses in an interview with Novara Media (Nov 26th). It strikes me as unusual that editors working for Novara, are channelling questions through the host, when a multitude of questions from the general public await and go unrepresented throughout the interview. Echoes of Alex Salmond’s staff, influencing debate on his TV show, spring to mind.

“Do you not think it’s precisely the problem, saying that we need the global south to join us, rather than them leading the movement” Clare Hymer (Novara, Momentum, Warwick Uni) goes on to add in the same interview, suggesting a colonial superiority forms part of the tone of Extinction Rebellion.

The interview culminates in the host, Michael Walker attempting to salvage balance, in saying “it’s all very well pointing out the limitations of a movement, but what’s the value of critiquing the movement… do you think there’s actively something bad going on with Extinction Rebellion?”. No charges are filed.

How exactly Hymer and Gebrial expect the global south to lead on this matter is not offered during this interview – only critiqued. If you look at global south nations’ emissions, they are often dozens of times less polluting than Western countries’ are, and the global south generally has far less opportunity, infrastructure and empowerment to tackle climate issues.

All we can do is offer Novara the benefit of the doubt; that these academically wealthy, New Media journalists are attempting to provide a voice to the voiceless. And indeed if that is the case, then I’d welcome them to share this article, as it was written by a working-class nobody, from a city with the lowest life-expectancy in Europe, devoid of educational opportunity and without voice in the media.

In the face of critical comments, I see Extinction Rebellion colleagues listen intently, in an effort to use all this information as constructively as possible and my hope is rekindled.

As Gillet Jaunes have just won their minimum wage increase and workers’ rights, our attention should turn to winning an even greater prize in planetary survival, through the immeasurably more ethical means of non-violent direct action.