Monthly Archives: February 2024

Greenpeace activists scale Unilever HQ in plastic pollution protest

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/greenpeace-activists-scale-unilever-hq-plastic-pollution-protest

Greenpeace UK scale the company’s HQ by Blackfriars Bridge in London and unveil a huge banner reading PROFIT WARNING – Plastic Polluted Money Photo: © Kristian Buus / Greenpeace

GREENPEACE activists scaled Unilever’s London headquarters on the eve of its profit announcement today.

The activists unfurled a banner reading “Profit Warning — Plastic Polluted Money” in protest against the company’s destructive use of environmentally harmful packaging.

The protesters then set up a pollution warning zone around the entrance to the headquarters, warning passers-by about the company’s overwhelming plastic pollution problem.

A previous Greenpeace investigation revealed the consumer goods giant as the biggest seller of some of the worst polluting packaging, multilayered plastic sachets. According to the report, Unilever sells 1,700 sachets every second.

The sachets are typically used to package products such as soap, shampoo and laundry detergent, and are virtually impossible to recycle.

Greenpeace say they exacerbate devastating floods when they enter the environment as they jam local waste systems and waterways.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/greenpeace-activists-scale-unilever-hq-plastic-pollution-protest

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World ‘not prepared’ for climate disasters after warmest ever January

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Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/06/world-not-prepared-for-climate-disasters-after-warmest-ever-january Jonathan Watts

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“Fuelled by extreme weather and climate extremes, the frequency of climate-related disasters has dramatically risen in recent years,” said Raul Cordero, a climate professor at the University of Groningen and the University of Santiago. “In some regions of the world, we are facing climate-fuelled disasters for which we are not prepared, and it is unlikely that we will be able to fully adapt to them.”

Richard Betts, of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre in the UK, said many extremes, including longer heatwaves, heavier rainfall, increased drought and more fire weather, were becoming more severe due to human-caused climate change.

“We can still limit the extent to which extremes get worse if we urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero – but with global emissions still rising, it’s hard not to be increasingly concerned about how we will deal with what’s coming,” Betts said. “We already need to adapt to the changes that we’ve already caused, and adaptation will become increasingly difficult the longer we leave it to reduce emissions.”

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Francesca Guglielmo, a senior scientist at the EU’s Copernicus satellite monitoring service, said 2024 had started as 2023 ended, with “exceptional temperatures and many extreme events”.

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Guglielmo said scientists were now considering risks that had been unthinkable until recently. “2023 has broken so many records that a number of new hypotheses, including the dawn of a new phase in the global warming rate, have been floated. These hypotheses were not nearly as prevalent a year ago.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/06/world-not-prepared-for-climate-disasters-after-warmest-ever-january Jonathan Watts

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South Africa to file legal action with ICJ against UK, US, for war crime complicity

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Article republished from the Skwawkbox

South Africa’s legal team at the ICJ last month

Nation whose case put Israel formally on trial for genocide joins Nicaragua in turning its sights on accomplices in genocide

A team of almost fifty South African lawyers is preparing a legal case to bring to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ top court, against the US and UK, for their complicity in Israel’s array of war crimes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

South Africa’s successful ICJ case against Israel last month led to Israel being put formally on trial for genocide and resulted in a string of binding orders on Israel to stop its slaughter of Gazans and even to protect Palestinians from harm, as well as to ensure adequate aid reaches the strip’s 2.5 million people, many of whom are now starving and homeless.

Israel has flouted the rulings, continuing and even intensifying the mass murder and blockade, and is being supported in its flagrant disregard for international law by the UK and US, who are providing both material and financial aid, and giving political cover by refusing to condemn Israel’s actions or to call its crimes what they are, instead casting doubt on the mass deaths and brutality and denigrating the Court’s ruling.

South Africa joins Nicaragua in taking action against the UK and US. The Central American nation has also filed a case against Germany, Canada and the Netherlands.

The team of lawyers, which already numbers around fifty, is likely to grow further as more lawyers are set to join from other nations. Wikus van Rensburg, who is leading the action, said that it was time for the US and other complicit nations to “be held responsible for [their] crimes”.

Article republished from the Skwawkbox

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Labour abandons £28 billion green investment plan – Greens call it a massive backward step for climate and economy

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Image of the Green Party's Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.

Responding to news that Labour is abandoning its policy of spending £28bn a year on its green investment plan, Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Green Party, said:

“This is a massive backward step – for the climate, for the economy and for good quality jobs. Both the security of our planet for future generations and the UK’s future prosperity is dependent on greening our economy and that requires large scale investment.  

“Labour have chosen to wear their fiscal rules as a millstone around their neck. A different approach through tax reforms, in particular by introducing a wealth tax on the super-rich, could help pay for the green transition. There is more than enough money in the economy to pay for this. Indeed, the Green Party would go further and faster, investing at least double what Labour originally pledged, so we can turbo charge the transition to a green economy.  

“Greens recognise that investing in a green future will provide people with economic, social and environmental security. By decarbonising industry, insulating buildings, and ramping up renewable energy infrastructure, the UK can drastically reduce emissions, cut household bills and create new, good quality, well-paid and secure jobs in every corner of the country.   

“Investing in this secure future is a political choice. By ditching its green investment plan, and making a series of other U-turns, Labour has clearly signalled that it is turning its back on a fairer, greener future.

The Labour party is expected to make a further announcement today.

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Green peer Bennett tables ‘fatal motion’ vs govt plan for ‘physicians’ with no medical training

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https://skwawkbox.org/2024/02/07/green-peer-bennett-tables-fatal-motion-vs-govt-plan-for-physicians-with-no-medical-training/#comments

Former Green Party leader says Labour’s support is needed for chance of defeating DHSC move to push ‘associate’ roles that look like doctors but don’t have medical training

Green peer and former Green Party leader Natalie Bennett has heeded the calls of doctors – and independent MP Claudia Webbe, the only MP to speak against the government’s backdoor legislation when it was pushed through – to stop the government’s dangerous new move to have ‘physician associates’ (PAs) and ‘anaesthetist associates’ (AAs) regulated by the General Medical Council (GMC), despite them not having medical training.

90% of doctors believe this move puts patients at risk and at least two patients have died after PAs, who the patients thought were doctors, dismissed serious medical conditions as a muscle strain and a panic attack respectively.

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https://skwawkbox.org/2024/02/07/green-peer-bennett-tables-fatal-motion-vs-govt-plan-for-physicians-with-no-medical-training/#comments

Continue ReadingGreen peer Bennett tables ‘fatal motion’ vs govt plan for ‘physicians’ with no medical training