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BBC Blocks Evan Davis from Hosting Clean Heating Podcast

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Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog

BBC presenter Evan Davis on the Happy Heat Pump podcast. Credit: Happy Heat Pump podcast / YouTube

The broadcaster has asked one of its leading current affairs hosts to stop presenting a show about heat pumps.

Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog

The BBC has stopped Evan Davis, one of its senior presenters, from hosting a personal podcast informing the public about heat pumps, a flagship clean heating solution.

Speaking on the final episode of the show, launched in January, Davis said that the BBC had become “concerned” that the podcast was “somehow treading on areas of public controversy”.

He added: “I take their shilling; they dictate the rules. They know they have to try and keep their presenters out of areas of public controversy and they have decided heat pumps can be controversial so they’ve asked me not to be involved.”

Heat pumps, powered by electricity, are currently set to play a key role in decarbonising heating and replacing gas boilers, which heat around 85 percent of Britain’s homes and account for 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions nationwide. The government has set a target of 600,000 heat pump installations every year by 2028, up from just 55,000 in 2022.

The Happy Heat Pump podcast co-hosted by Davis attempted to educate listeners about how to use a heat pump, how much they cost, and which properties are best suited to a heat pump.

Heat pumps can be more expensive to install than alternatives, though experts have blamed the government for not matching the incentives offered by its European counterparts. Heat pump uptake in the UK is among the lowest in Europe, with more than 500,000 heat pumps sold in France last year, and more than 400,000 in both Italy and Germany.

However, gas industry lobbyists and sections of the right-wing media have attempted to stoke a “culture war” around the uptake of heat pumps in the UK. DeSmog revealed in July 2023 that a barrage of negative press about heat pumps had been funded by a gas lobby group.

Davis’s podcast co-host, Bean Beanland, criticised the BBC’s decision. Beanland, the director for growth and external affairs for the Heat Pump Federation, said the corporation’s judgement was “extraordinary”.

“It does seem to me that somehow the technologies we espouse have fallen victim to some sort of culture war,” he added.

Davis said that he believes the BBC’s decision was “more about net zero than this particular form of heating”. The legally-binding target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 has also been weaponised by campaigners and conservative media outlets, despite a broad public consensus for reducing emissions and building new green infrastructure.

“Cars are controversial, they kill and maim thousands every year, but that hasn’t stopped the BBC glamorising car use in its decades broadcasting hundreds of episodes of Top Gear,” said Andrew Simms, co-director of the New Weather Institute.

“Heat pumps, on the other hand, don’t kill or maim, they just cheaply and safely warm homes. It’s been estimated that swapping all 23 million gas boilers in the UK to heat pumps could save roughly £11 billion in wholesale gas costs. 

“The technology is already hugely successful in some of the coldest countries in Europe. In those with the longest, harshest winters like Norway, Finland and Sweden, heat pumps dominate. Already by 2022 around 41 percent of Finnish households had a heat pump installed, with two-thirds in Norway and nearly half in Sweden. Try telling them that their heating systems are controversial.” 

A number of commentators have expressed their dismay on social media at the BBC’s decision. Financial Times associate editor Stephen Bush accused the BBC of “muzzling one of its best presenters from making an excellent, wholly factual programme”. Bush added that the broadcaster was an “organisation badly in need of new leadership.”

A BBC spokesperson told DeSmog: “The BBC editorial guidelines are clear that anyone working for the BBC who does an external public speaking or writing engagement should not compromise the impartiality or integrity of the BBC or its content, or suggest that any part of the BBC endorses a third-party organisation, product, service or campaign.”

As previously revealed by DeSmog, the BBC’s commercial content arm, BBC StoryWorks, has been paid to promote oil and gas companies, agricultural giants, fossil fuel states, and high-emission transport firms.

Experts have also highlighted that Davis’s podcast was simply reflecting basic facts about heat pumps. 

Energy policy expert Jan Rosenow said: “Heat pumps are a mature technology that has been around for more than 100 years. All authoritative analyses indicate that we need to deploy millions of them to reach net zero. Public controversy stems from poor reporting – Evan tried to change that.”

These sentiments were reflected by fellow climate expert Andrew Sissons, who said: “I’ve said this before but… heat pumps are really quite boring, and it says quite a lot about the state of debate in Britain that we’ve managed to make them controversial. Credit to Evan for trying to make them not controversial.”

Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog

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1984: how the miners saved Christmas from Thatcher

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/1984-how-miners-saved-christmas-thatcher

Picketers decorate a Christmas tree outside Rossington Colliery, while police transit vans line the roadway, December 11, 1984

CHRISTMAS 1984 was potentially a desperate time for the families of miners who had been on strike against pit closures for nine months. It turned out to be the opposite for many striking mining communities.

France’s communist-led union group CGT sent a convoy of 30 lorries, driven by volunteers and packed with food and toys, across the Channel. The union had mounted a “toy drive” among its members, and thousands had flooded in.

The convoy arrived at Dover, and the lorries journeyed to struggling mining communities in Wales and northern England.

Hundreds of miners’ support groups across the country redoubled their solidarity efforts — and the public responded generously.

The result for many striking miners and their families was the best Christmas they had ever had. And the solidarity is remembered today across the former coalfields.

In the north-east, Ian Lavery, now Labour MP for Blyth and Ashington, was a 20-year-old miner at Ellington Colliery in Northumberland. He lived with his parents and siblings. His father was a striking miner, as were two of his three brothers.

He told the Morning Star: “It was one of the best times of my life.

“At Christmas time 1984, none of us had a ha’penny — no money at all. But one thing about miners and working-class people is that they will do anything to make sure the kids have a good Christmas. Whatever the situation — on strike for seven or eight months — we would not let the kids down.

“It was fabulous to see the juggernauts arriving from France. They provided every striking miner’s kid with a toy at Christmas. Honestly, there was juggernaut after juggernaut come all the way from France. Absolutely amazing. Then there were the chickens and the turkeys. They were on the Christmas table of every striking miner. It was just fabulous.

“There were Christmas parties in every village and community.

…

Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/1984-how-miners-saved-christmas-thatcher

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Thousands Feared Dead in Impoverished French Territory of Mayotte After Cyclone Chido

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Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A photo taken on December 15, 2024 shows residents sitting among piles of debris of metal sheets and wood after homes were destroyed by the cyclone Chido that hit France’s Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte. (Photo: Kwezi/AFP via Getty Images)

“You feel like you are in the aftermath of a nuclear war,” said one resident. “I saw an entire neighborhood disappear.”

Undocumented migrants living in informal settlements in the French territory of Mayotte were among those whose lives and livelihoods were most devastated by Cyclone Chido, a tropical cyclone that slammed into the impoverished group of islands in the Indian Ocean over the weekend.

Authorities reported a death toll of at least 20 on Monday, but the territory’s prefect, François-Xavier Bieuville, told a local news station that the widespread devastation indicated there were likely “some several hundred dead.”

“Maybe we’ll get close to a thousand,” said Bieuville. “Even thousands… given the violence of this event.”

Mayotte, which includes two densely populated main islands, Grande-Terre and Petite-Terre, as well as smaller islands with few residents, is home to about 300,000 people.

The territory is one of the European Union’s poorest, with three-quarters of residents living below the poverty line, but roughly 100,000 people have come to Mayotte from the nearby African island nations of Madagascar and Comoros in recent decades, seeking better economic conditions.

Many of those people live in informal neighborhoods and shacks across the islands that were hardest hit by Chido, with aerial footage showing collections of houses “reduced to rubble,” according toCNN.

“What we are experiencing is a tragedy, you feel like you are in the aftermath of a nuclear war,” Mohamed Ishmael, a resident of the capital city, Mamoudzou, told Reuters. “I saw an entire neighborhood disappear.”

Bruno Garcia, owner of a hotel in Mamoudzou, echoed Ishmael’s comments, telling French CNN affiliate BFMTV: “It’s as if an atomic bomb fell on Mayotte.”

“The situation is catastrophic, apocalyptic,” said Garcia. “We lost everything. The entire hotel is completely destroyed.”

Residents of the migrant settlements in recent years have faced crackdowns from French police who have been tasked with rounding up people for deportation and dismantling shacks.

The aggressive response to migration reportedly led some families to stay in their homes rather than evacuate, for fear of being apprehended by police.

Now, some of those families’ homes have been razed entirely or stripped of their roofs and “engulfed by mud and sheet metal,” according to Estelle Youssouffa, who represents Mayotte in France’s National Assembly.

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People in Mayotte’s most vulnerable neighborhoods are now without food or safe drinking water as hundreds of rescuers from France and the nearby French territory of Reunion struggle to reach victims amid widespread power outages.

“It’s the hunger that worries me most. There are people who have had nothing to eat or drink” since Saturday, French Sen. Salama Ramia, who represents Mayotte, told the BBC.

The Washington Postreported that Cyclone Chido became increasingly powerful and intense—falling just short of becoming a Category 5 hurricane with winds over 155 miles per hour—because of unusually warm water in the Indian Ocean. The ocean temperature ranged from 81-86°F along Chido’s path. Tropical cyclones typically form when ocean temperatures rise above 80°F.

“The intensity of tropical cyclones in the Southwest Indian Ocean has been increasing, [and] this is consistent with what scientists expect in a changing climate—warmer oceans fuel more powerful storms,” Liz Stephens, a professor of climate risks and resilience at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, told the Post.

People living on islands like Mayotte are especially vulnerable to climate disasters both because there’s little shielding them from powerful storms and because their economic conditions leave them with few options to flee to safety as a cyclone approaches.

“Even though the path of Cyclone Chido was well forecast several days ahead, communities on small islands like Mayotte don’t have the option to evacuate,” Stephens said. “There’s nowhere to go.”

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingThousands Feared Dead in Impoverished French Territory of Mayotte After Cyclone Chido

100,000+ People Across France March to Decry Macron’s ‘Denial of Democracy’

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Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A protester carries a sign called on Michel Barnier, who was selected by French President Emmanuel Macron as the prime minister, to resign at a protest on September 7, 2024 in Nantes, France. (Photo: Maylis Rolland/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)

“Expressing one’s vote will be useless as long as Macron is in power,” said one demonstrator.

In cities and towns across France on Saturday, more than 100,000 people answered the call from the left-wing political party La France Insoumise for mass protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s selection of a right-wing prime minister.

The demonstrations came two months after the left coalition won more seats than Macron’s centrist coalition or the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in the National Assembly and two days after the president announced that Michel Barnier, the right-wing former Brexit negotiator for the European Union, would lead the government.

The selection was made after negotiations between Macron and RN leader Marine Le Pen, leading protesters on Saturday to accuse the president of a “denial of democracy.”

“Expressing one’s vote will be useless as long as Macron is in power,” a protester named Manon Bonijol told Al Jazeera.

A poll released on Friday by Elabe showed that 74% of French people believed Macron had disregarded the results of July’s snap parliamentary elections, and 55% said the election had been “stolen.”

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), or France Unbowed, also accused Macron of “stealing the election” in a speech at the demonstration in Paris on Saturday.

“Democracy is not just the art of accepting you have won but the humility to accept you have lost,” Mélenchon told protesters. “I call you for what will be a long battle.”

He added that “the French people are in rebellion. They have entered into revolution.”

Macron’s centrist coalition won about 160 assembly seats out of 577 in July, compared to the left coalition’s 180. The RN won about 140.

Barnier’s Les Républicains (LR) party won fewer than 50 parliamentary seats. French presidents have generally named prime ministers, who oversee domestic policy, from the party with the most seats in the National Assembly.

Barnier signaled on Friday that he would largely defend Macron’s pro-business policies and could unveil stricter anti-immigration reforms. Macron has enraged French workers and the left with policies including a retirement age hike last year.

Protests also took place in cities including Nantes, Nice, Montpellier, Marseilles, and Strasbourg.

All four left-wing parties within the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) coalition have announced plans to vote for a motion of no confidence against Barnier.

The RN has not committed to backing Barnier’s government yet and leaders have said they are waiting to see what policies he presents to the National Assembly before deciding how to proceed in a no confidence vote.

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading100,000+ People Across France March to Decry Macron’s ‘Denial of Democracy’