the filthy rich

IPCC report calls for urgent action on climate

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In summer, some polar bears do not make the transition from their winter residence on the Svalbard islands to the dense drift ice and pack ice of the high arctic where they would find a plethora of prey. This is due to global climate change which causes the ice around the islands to melt much earlier than previously. The bears need to adapt from their proper food to a diet of detritus, small animals, bird eggs and carcasses of marine animals. Very often they suffer starvation and are doomed to die. The number of these starving animals is sadly increasing.AWeith This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Endangered_arctic_-_starving_polar_bear.jpg

The most recent IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN body) report published today tells us that some impacts of climate change are now irreversible.

[A] liveable future remains within grasp – just. But the window of opportunity for action is “brief and rapidly closing”. The response from UN secretary-general António Guterres was stark: “Delay is death.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/28/what-at-stake-climate-crisis-report-everything

The IPCC report says that we must act now while world governments continue to pursue climate destroying policies. The point is this: We tolerate and suffer these governments and their super-rich masters that they pander to but we don’t have to. We can instead obstruct business as usual, refuse to tolerate and suffer these climate-destroying bastards. We need to act in unity putting away any other differences we might have. Our planet is getting killed, we must act for the sake of our children, young people and future generations. Delay is death.

Instead of responsible government Boris Johnson’s UK government is pursuing climate-harming policies and has stuffed his cabinet with climate-denying ministers. UK Tory MPs are campaigning against climate policies through the Net Zero Scrutiny Group. Legitimate government should be concerned with protecting it’s citizens while Boris Johnson’s UK government is doing the opposite.

https://www.onaquietday.org/new-years-message-we-need-to-stop-the-destroyers-of-our-planet/

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Continue ReadingIPCC report calls for urgent action on climate

COP26 New summary day 3

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I’m reaching a few conclusions about COP26. It isn’t serious about addressing climate change because governments are sucking up to the filthy rich and powerful. That’s what refusing to address aviation is about, all the private jets and Bezos and actors appearing. Aviation appears to be a good target for climate activism, it’s hugely damaging and far more likely to get public support. I’ll be going to my local airport on Saturday.

In UK and worldwide we need to elect some Greens or e.g. nationalist parties, with strong green policies. It’s happening anyway, Bristol is likely to elect some Green MPs at the next election. The Greens are taking votes from Labour and hopefully people will realise that the current Labour party is undeclared Tory and anti-democratic in party actions, Stalinist really. [ed: Stalinist as an insult: authoritarian dictatorship with a total disregard of others’ perpectives, crushing and destroying people.] It’s a shame that the elections are so far away in 2024.

The Brexit dark money lobby has a new target – climate change action

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Officially the UK government has committed to Net Zero by 2050, but behind the scenes an organised, well-funded opposition to climate change action is growing on the Conservative Right. And many of those at the vanguard – and their tactics – come straight from the veterans of Brexit.

A classic example of this appeared in The Telegraph this week: the day before the Budget, it reported a YouGov survey that found a majority of the British public “want a referendum on Boris Johnson’s net zero plans” by the next general election – a majority of those who expressed a preference, that is.

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Perhaps it’s because I spent so long looking at the dark money behind Brexit, but the first thing I thought while reading The Telegraph’s story was: “Who has paid a professional pollster to carry out a survey on a question nobody is asking?”

The answer is something called Car26.org. This, The Telegraph informed its readers, is a “new campaign group calling for a referendum on net zero proposals and a pause in eco regulations until such a ballot is held”.

Yep, you read that right. No climate change mitigation policies until a referendum on Net Zero. Sound familiar?

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The taxpayer-funded European Research Group of Conservative MPs – which played a starring role in the UK’s exit from the EU – has largely morphed into the Net Zero Scrutiny Group. The Global Warming Policy Foundation — which long promoted climate change denialism — has been relaunched as Net Zero Watch. Wycombe MP Steve Baker, the “Brexit hardman”, is a leading light in both.

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Boris Johnson races back from COP 26 on private jet to meet climate change sceptic pal

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Hours after telling world leaders in Glasgow to stop “quilting the earth in an invisible and suffocating blanket of CO2”, Mr Johnson controversially hopped on board a chartered private plane.

His spokesman defended the decision saying: “It is important that the prime minister is able to move around the country and we have obviously faced significant time restraints.”

A No 10 spokesperson said: “All travel decisions are made with consideration for security and time restraints.

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Boris Johnson’s luxury private plane habit laid bare as he spends £216k on flights

‘I was jailed for protesting against climate change but Johnson refuses responsibility’

As world leaders come together this week at COP26, I write this from a cell in Wandsworth Prison where I am serving a 12-month sentence for a peaceful climate protest, after climbing on an aeroplane during Extinction Rebellion’s October Rebellion in 2019.

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‘Reality check’: Global CO2 emissions shooting back to record levels

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The world’s “carbon budget” is the total emissions allowed to retain a 50% chance of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5C, but analysis shows this will be blown in 11 years if the current rate of emissions continues.

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COP26 protests in Glasgow see five people arrested by police

Police have made five arrests as hundreds of climate activists marched through Glasgow as part of demonstrations around the Cop26 summit.

The protest was one of several in Glasgow on Wednesday, as the Cop26 summit discussed the financial system.

Police Scotland said on Wednesday evening that five arrests had been made.

Two of the arrests took place after a number of officers were sprayed with paint. Cans of spray paint were also seized.

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COP26 Glasgow: Greta Thunberg and 58,000 activists expected

More than 58,000 activists including Greta Thunberg are set to protest in two COP26 rallies in Glasgow this weekend. 

It wasn’t just fancy world leaders and smug glossy fossil fuel parasites attending Cop26

First Dog on the Moon

Continue ReadingCOP26 New summary day 3

Boris “Buller, Buller, Buller” Johnson

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Boris Johnson claimed today that the naughtiest thing he’s ever done is ride a bicycle on the pavement. In early September however, he alluded to his time at university by advising primary school children not to get drunk.

While at Oxford University Boris was a member of the elite Bullingdon Club that engaged in high jinks such as drunkenly destroying pubs and restaurants followed by humiliating the owners by paying for the extensive damage in cash.

Boris Johnson and David Cameron appear in Bullingdon Club photo.

Sexism, vandalism and bullying: inside the Boris Johnson-era Bullingdon Club

The woman who was the club recruiter said: “Boris was one of the big beasts of the club. He was up for anything. They treated certain types of people with absolute disdain, and referred to them as ‘plebs’ or ‘grockles’, and the police were always called ‘plod’. Their attitude was that women were there for their entertainment.”

She said there was a “culture of excess” in the 1980s in which the activities of the Bullingdon Club felt “normalised”. “They had an air of entitlement and superiority.”

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Boris “Buller, Buller, Buller” Johnson

In 2013, Johnson – who reputedly still greets former members with a cry of “Buller, Buller, Buller” – described it as “a truly shameful vignette of almost superhuman undergraduate arrogance, toffishness and twittishness”. He added: “But at the time you felt it was wonderful to be going round swanking it up.”

Continue ReadingBoris “Buller, Buller, Buller” Johnson

UK wealth inequality

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How billionaires extract wealth rather than create it

M/Y Topaz is a 147m motor yacht making it the fourth-largest Superyacht in the world. It was custom built in 2012 by Lurssen Yachts in Bremen, Germany and registered in the Cayman Islands. Pic by Yoshi Anahory This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

It is difficult to comprehend the sheer scale of UK wealth inequality, which is twice as high as income inequality. New research published today by the Equality Trust has shown that the five richest families in the UK control as much wealth as the poorest 13 million people and that the number of billionaires has almost doubled over the last decade. The top 1 per cent of the population now owns the same wealth as the bottom 80 per cent of the population.

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The other side of the wealth of the property tycoon is the poverty of the family being shunted between different forms of temporary accommodation because they cannot afford to keep a roof over their heads. The other side of the wealth of the private equity manager is the poverty of the worker he laid off to “turn around” his latest investment.

The other side of the wealth of the few is the poverty of the many. Fourteen million people in the UK are living in poverty — 4.6 million of whom are children. Children are going to school “unwashed” and “hungry” — nine out of ten schools in the UK are being forced to distribute clothes to students. 135,000 children will be homeless this Christmas, in a society with hundreds of people so rich that they couldn’t even count their wealth.

These patterns are replicated at the level of the international economy. Globally, the 26 wealthiest billionaires own as much wealth as the bottom 50 per cent of the population. And their wealth is not “earned” either. According to Oxfam, one-third of global billionaire wealth comes from an inheritance while another third comes from “crony connections to government and monopoly”. Much of the rest originates from land, oil or finance.

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Continue ReadingUK wealth inequality

Jeremy Corbyn to announce Labour manifesto

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UK’s Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn is announcing the Labour manifesto today.

While I am not and have never been a Labour member, I strongly support the current Labour party and their policies. Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party are presenting a real alternative. Instead of sucking up to the rich and powerful they are going to represent ordinary people.

How on earth is democracy so perverted that the rich increase their obscene wealth while we have so many people freezing to death homeless on the streets and so many of the working poor relying on food banks? (The Tories’ Universal Credit has no doubt hugely contributed to that actually.)

I am concerned with delay in addressing the climate crisis. Knowledgeable scientist are virtually unanimously agreed that action needs to be taken immediately.

World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency

Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and to “tell it like it is.” On the basis of this obligation and the graphical indicators presented below, we declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.

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Mitigating and adapting to climate change while honoring the diversity of humans entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems. We are encouraged by a recent surge of concern. Governmental bodies are making climate emergency declarations. Schoolchildren are striking. Ecocide lawsuits are proceeding in the courts. Grassroots citizen movements are demanding change, and many countries, states and provinces, cities, and businesses are responding.

As the Alliance of World Scientists, we stand ready to assist decision-makers in a just transition to a sustainable and equitable future. We urge widespread use of vital signs, which will better allow policymakers, the private sector, and the public to understand the magnitude of this crisis, track progress, and realign priorities for alleviating climate change. The good news is that such transformative change, with social and economic justice for all, promises far greater human well-being than does business as usual. We believe that the prospects will be greatest if decision-makers and all of humanity promptly respond to this warning and declaration of a climate emergency and act to sustain life on planet Earth, our only home.]

Continue ReadingJeremy Corbyn to announce Labour manifesto