… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: Climate Crisis

  • How to effectively stop traffic

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    The trick about effectively stopping traffic is to use traffic to stop traffic and then you can go off and stop traffic elsewhere. This also prevents motorists assaulting protestors stopping traffic, sometimes using their vehicles.

    These are only suggestions: you are responsible for your actions and relative safety. The actions suggested here are very probably illegal.

    These suggestions are to ensure that there is no more business as usual while governments fail to properly address the climate crisis.

    Traffic lights: Traffic lights can be used to stop traffic. The Great Train robbers used a battery to light the red train traffic light so that the train stopped. No need to do that – just smash them.

    A good lump hammer and a length of metal rod will do it. Make sure that you wear eye protection from smashing glass – or at least turn your head away – and thick gloves to protect from electric shock. Make sure that you can reach the lights – maybe take some small steps. It’s best that you have accomplices to prevent you from being attacked by motorists as you smash the lights.

    Buses: Buses are great because they’re pretty big vehicles and they have an off switch on the outside. Turn the off switch as the bus is waiting in traffic. Be nice to the driver, he’s only doing his job and you are obstructing him. Explain why you are immobilising his bus, offer him a flapjack and suggest that he get on his radio to tell control that he is stopped. Tell him that if he goes to turn the outside switch to run again, you’ll just switch it off again. If he tries switching the outside switch to run, switch it off and open the bonnet at the back and disconnect the ignition leads. It will be hot in there so wear thick gloves.

    Explain to the passengers why you have commandered their bus – a good opportunity to discuss the climate crisis.

    When the next bus arrives it will need to pass the immobilised bus. There’s an off switch on the outside…

    Cars: The best way to immobilise cars is to take the keys. If someone is trying to run you over, take the keys and throw them far away or down a drain.

    More damaging ways – which I suggest that you avoid. Pliers or water pump pliers will rip tyre valves out. Get a good grip and pull hard. Tyre valves can be cut with a Stanley knife but you probably shouldn’t have a knife like that in public. Motorists will often drive with deflated tyres ruining their tyres. Cars can be turned on their sides or roof (immobilise by taking the keys and consider letting the occupants out first). Sharps can be used to destroy car tyres.

    If you’re going to stop cars with your bodies try to get bicycles between you and the cars. Motorists are far more willing to drive into people than bicycles because bicycles might damage their cars.

    30/10/21 23.45 Apologies that I assumed that the bus driver was a man. I very rarely catch buses since I am usually cycling.

  • INSULATE BRITAIN Be Impossible, Demand the Realistic

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    Well done Insulate Britain. I have been considering organising an action locally in solidarity, risking imprisonment as you do. I think that I would do some simple criminal damage to increase my effectiveness rather than sit about waiting to be arrested – it’s surprising what you can achieve with some simple hand tools.

    People are going to be increasingly willing to take action and risk imprisonment as the climate crisis is not properly addressed. It takes very few to insist and achieve no more business as usual.

    XXX

    dizzy deep

    INSULATE BRITAIN Be Impossible, Demand the Realistic Charlie Waterhouse

    …

    Stopping traffic is nothing. Roadworks stop traffic every day, as do accidents. Floods are now stopping traffic regularly. The response from the Government and right-wing media shows us that we are doing the right thing. Prince Charles’ intervention, saying that he understands people’s frustrations as well as the problems tells us we are doing the right thing. 

    And now is the time to do the right thing; to get off the fence; to really face up to what is happening. 

    The Government has a choice: it can actually do something about the crises we face or it can stick its head in the sand, criminalising those who are clamouring for change along the way.

    And you have a choice too: keep your fingers tightly crossed, say your prayers, and hope against hope that someone else will come and save you. Or you can do your bit and be the ancestor your future family desperately needs. 

    “The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary,” observes the author Ursula K Le Guin.

    It will take fewer of us than we think to turn ‘annoying’ into ‘revolutionary’; imagination into paradigm shift. But tomorrow is too late. Be Impossible, Demand the Realistic.

  • Climate change: UN emissions gap report a ‘thundering wake-up call’

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    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59049770

    National plans to cut carbon fall far short of what’s needed to avert dangerous climate change, according to the UN Environment Programme.

    Their Emissions Gap report says country pledges will fail to keep the global temperature under 1.5C this century.

    The Unep analysis suggests the world is on course to warm around 2.7C with hugely destructive impacts.

    ...

    Just a few days before COP26 opens in Glasgow and another scientific report on climate change is “another thundering wake-up call”, according to the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.

    …

  • Global climate strike: thousands join coordinated action across world

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    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/24/people-in-99-countries-take-part-in-global-climate-strike

    Hundreds of thousands of people in 99 countries have taken part in a coordinated global climate strike demanding urgent action to tackle the ecological crisis.

    The strike on Friday, the first worldwide climate action since the coronavirus pandemic hit, is taking place weeks before the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK.

    In Germany, two days before the country’s general election, Greta Thunberg told a crowd of more than 100,000 people that “no political party” was doing enough.

    The Swedish activist, whose solo strike in 2018 inspired the global Fridays for Future movement, told cheering supporters they needed to keep up the pressure on Germany’s political leaders past election day.

    “Yes, we must vote, you must vote, but remember that voting only will not be enough. We must keep going into the streets,” she said.

    Organisers of the global event said there were protests in more than 1,800 towns and cities around the world with large events in Europe, Africa and North and South America.

    …

  • ‘What Betrayal Looks Like’: UN Report Says World on Track for 2.7°C of Warming by 2100

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    Dixie Fire in California

    A home burns as flames from the Dixie Fire tear through the Indian Falls neighborhood of unincorporated Plumas County, California on July 24, 2021. (Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)

    https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/09/17/what-betrayal-looks-un-report-says-world-track-27degc-warming-2100

    “Whatever our so-called ‘leaders’ are doing,” said Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, “they are doing it wrong.”

    JAKE JOHNSONSeptember 17, 2021

    The United Nations warned Friday that the planet is barreling toward 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century, a nightmare scenario that can be averted only if policymakers take immediate and sweeping action to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

    Even if the 191 parties to the Paris climate accord meet their current commitments, global greenhouse gas emissions will still rise 16% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels, according to a new report published by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

    “Failure to meet this goal will be measured in the massive loss of lives and livelihoods.”

    The goal of the 2015 Paris agreement is to limit global warming to below 2°C—and preferably to 1.5°C—above pre-industrial levels. An analysis released earlier this week found that the climate targets and actions of just one country—The Gambia—are in line with the critical 1.5° goal.

    “This is what betrayal looks like,” Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted in response to the latest U.N. findings. “Whatever our so-called ‘leaders’ are doing, they are doing it wrong.”

    Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of U.N. Climate Change,

    said in a statement that the international community must “peak emissions as soon as possible before 2030 and support developing countries in building up climate resilience.”

    “The 16% increase is a huge cause of concern,” said Espinosa. “It is in sharp contrast with the calls by science for rapid, sustained, and large-scale emission reductions to prevent the most severe climate consequences and suffering, especially of the most vulnerable, throughout the world.”

    The U.N. analysis came as U.S. President Joe Biden met with world leaders and announced that the United States is partnering with the European Union in an effort to cut methane emissions—a powerful driver of global warming—by nearly 30% by the end of the decade.

    In its landmark report last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasized that a “strong, rapid, and sustained” reduction in methane emissions is necessary to prevent the worst of the planetary crisis.

    The IPCC also estimated that keeping global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels would require a 45% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030—a mark that the international community is currently on track to miss badly, according to the new U.N. report.

    António Guterres, the secretary-general of the U.N., said in a statement Friday that 2.7°C of planetary heating would be “catastrophic” and that world leaders are “rapidly running out of time” to act.

    “This is breaking the promise made six years ago to pursue the 1.5°C goal of the Paris agreement,” said Guterres. “Failure to meet this goal will be measured in the massive loss of lives and livelihoods.”

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