Green Party parliamentary candidate for Waveney Valley, Adrian Ramsay: We need to re-nationalise the water industry

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Green Party Adrian Ramsay October 2023.
Green Party Adrian Ramsay October 2023.

Adrian Ramsay, co-leader of the Green Party and parliamentary candidate for Waveney Valley spent the weekend talking to people affected by the flooding in Eye, Suffolk. He said “The scenes and stories of flooding I’ve been seeing and hearing from Suffolk and Norfolk residents have been deeply shocking. This is not the first time East Anglia has been flooded, and it certainly won’t be the last. Climate change experts are shouting from the rooftops that these so-called ‘once in a generation’ events will become increasingly frequent.”

“The Conservative government is letting us down badly.  Not only are they not taking the issue of climate change seriously – reigning in on existing commitments – but they, and private water companies, are also failing appallingly when it comes to flood risk management. ”  

 “Before privatisation, public water bodies were responsible for flood defences. Now defences are at best piecemeal. This is another good reason to take our water industry back into public control.”

“We urgently need a long term and coordinated approach. This can only be achieved with a water industry focussed on investing in plugging leaks and protecting communities, not on syphoning off millions of pounds in dividends to shareholders. And rather than bulldozing planning laws, as Labour proposes, we need to reassess planning regulations which still allow for new buildings on flood plains.”

 “It is clear we will need Green MPs in parliament after the next general election making the case for climate action and protecting communities.” 

Continue ReadingGreen Party parliamentary candidate for Waveney Valley, Adrian Ramsay: We need to re-nationalise the water industry

Friday links

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Image of a Great White Shark
Image of a Great White Shark

Some links if you need some reading X

Video: Starmer caught in outright lie as he tries to cover up his support for Israeli war crimes

Israel caught out in further lie about hospital strike after doctored image exposed

Tory party chairman makes most absurd claim ever in interview on Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire by-elections

Overwhelming majority of British public want immediate ceasefire in Gaza, poll finds

Amnesty Probe Finds ‘Damning Evidence of War Crimes’ by Israel in Gaza

Continue ReadingFriday links

Health professionals risk arrest with road occupation, ‘die-in’ and ‘climate inquest’ outside JP Morgan

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Health for Extinction Rebellion protests at JP Morgan Chase’s London Embankment offices 19 October 2023.
Health for Extinction Rebellion protests at JP Morgan Chase’s London Embankment offices 19 October 2023.

As part of the Oily Money Out week of protests, over 60 health professionals are risking arrest this morning by staging a ‘die-in’ and ‘climate inquest’ in the road outside JP Morgan Chase’s London Embankment offices.

The protest is designed to highlight the bank’s leading investment role in the new fossil fuel extraction which is driving increasing levels of climate-related death and suffering. 

Health for Extinction Rebellion, who have a long running campaign against JP Morgan’s fossil fuel investments (HXR, 2021, 2022, 2022-2, 2022-3, 2022-4), sought to emphasise, through their action today, the intolerable and growing human health impacts of the climate and ecological crisis, and the complicity of firms, like JP Morgan, who continue to drive fossil fuel extraction.

The action comes as the ‘Energy Intelligence Forum’, being held in London this week, is the focus of major protests and demands to get “Oily Money Out” of our politics, out of COP 28, and out of power.

Banner reads Oily Money Out. Protests London 18 October 2023.
Banner reads Oily Money Out. Protests London 18 October 2023.

Today’s action saw 14 health professionals lay themselves, shrouded, in the road outside the conference in military hospital style. Other health professionals circled amongst them, tending their ‘fallen’ colleagues, and laying headstones indicating the climate health impact each represented. A mock inquest was then held, in which health-workers gave testimony on the deaths already caused by the planetary emergency. These included among others, the 6 million deaths every year resulting from air pollution (Fuller, 2020), the 5 million deaths globally each year from extreme temperatures (Zhoa. 2021),  and the 43,000 who died from the climate-change associated drought and famine in Somalia last year (WHO/Unicef, 2021)  

Following the action the group will be handing in a letter addressed to Luke Nelson, JP Morgan Chase’s head of sustainability. It reads:

“Society in the future is likely to judge companies that continue such fossil fuel investments as both immoral and as operating outside international law. What does JP Morgan plan to do right now to avoid such a judgement?”

New extraction goes against the explicit warning of the International Energy Agency (IEA, 2021) and the United Nations (UN news, 2022), yet politicians, lawyers and financiers continue to support a fossil fuel industry that has known for decades that fossil fuels cause deadly global warming (Scientific American, 2015). To emphasise this complicity, health workers today also held ‘Cigarette-style’ Health warnings, and banners reading ‘Fossil Fuels Kill’, and “Cause of Death = Fossil Fuel Finance”. The action sought to draw a direct parallel with the Tobacco industry which was complicit in 100,000’s if not millions of deaths, by knowingly misleading the public around the health impacts of smoking. 

Despite the bleak reality of the climate crisis, the action also emphasised the numerous potential benefits for human health of climate action (The Health Foundation, 2023), and the need to galvanise mass support for the appropriate action needed to safeguard a healthy future.

Health for Extinction Rebellion previously wrote to JP Morgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon,  ( 3rd September 2021 to outline their concerns and to suggest a positive route forward for the bank, but have yet to receive a reply. They have returned on numerous occasions speaking ‘off record’ with concerned employees. 

“During the August heatwave of 2022 my father suffered a heart attack and died the following week. He had chronic physical health problems and like many of the most vulnerable in our society could not manage the extreme heat that climate change is bringing to us. This is not a problem of the future. It is a health catastrophe that we are living through right now”.

Dr Jethro Purkis Specialty Doctor Bristol 

“Governments and companies that continue to finance and license new coal, oil and gas are doing so at the expense of their citizens. Fossil fuels are the drivers of deadly climate change and air pollution in our communities. This is an industry that has delayed and denied climate change for decades in the name of greed, putting profit above all else, and from a health and a moral perspective it’s beyond time to shut it down” 

Dr Juliette Brown, Consultant Psychiatrist

“I am here demonstrating for my pregnant patients, for the new mums and for their babies that I see on a daily basis, I am also here for my own children to say that the fossil fuel companies are destroying any chance of our children being able to live any sort of “normal” future.  That the burning of fossil fuels have caused irreversible damage to our planet and that we need companies to stop all new fossil fuel exploration and to start being world leaders in green energy.  It is possible, we just need them to start putting the planet and people before profit”.

Charlotte Francis. Perinatal Pelvic Health Specialist Physiotherapist

“I am a retired GP and  to my last breath I will endeavour to spread the scientific truths which the powers-that-be try so desperately to conceal from the public. I will always denounce the greed and self-interest borne of their grotesque worship of money which has clearly eaten away at their consciences, even their very humanity, to the extent that they are apparently unable to relate to the  enormous suffering already in the southern hemisphere, let alone envisage the horrors ahead if they continue their love-affair with Fossil Fuels”.

Dr Valerie Davies,  Retired General Practitioner
Continue ReadingHealth professionals risk arrest with road occupation, ‘die-in’ and ‘climate inquest’ outside JP Morgan

Memo to England and Wales Green party

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It’s very easy to despair at you despite being supportive. Please stop being so nice and instead try to get some some serious political clout to save the planet. Be practical instead of nice and accomodating. So with those split roles, split them so you have X addressing these issues Y addressing these issues … got it?

The sort of pitch to take. Make speeches with catchphrases to grab the headlines. You could discuss desperate times needing something actions, votes wasted on the 2 main parties because their policies are indistinguishable, climate deniers and destroyers, denying and destroying the planet … get the idea?

Announce looking into electoral pacts – those desperate times again. FFS get as many MPs elected as you possibly can – desperate times.

Continue ReadingMemo to England and Wales Green party

‘Absolutely Gobsmackingly Bananas’: Early Data Shows September 2023 Hottest on Record

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

Dozens of people spend time at Silgar beach, on 30 September, 2023, in Sanxenxo, Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain.
 (Photo: Elena Fernandez/Europa Press via Getty Images)

“We’ve never seen a record smashed by anything close to this margin,” one climate scientist said.

In another sign of the climate crisis, September of 2023—following the hottest summer ever recorded over June, July, and August—also seems to be one for the record books.

A data set out of Japan found that September 2023 was 0.5°C warmer than the previous warmest September on record and around 1.8°C warmer than temperatures in the preindustrial era, climate scientist Zeke Hausfather wrote on Tuesday on the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

“This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist—absolutely gobsmackingly bananas,” he said.

Hausfather was looking at the the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55), which draws on a wide range of weather observations dating back to 1958. The more than half-a-degree jump from the previous September record is the steepest increase between monthly records to date, The Washington Post reported.

“We’ve never seen a record smashed by anything close to this margin,” Hausfather told the Post.

“This September would not have been out of place as a typical July this decade in terms of global temperatures,” he added on X, formerly Twitter.

Another data set, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ ERA5, also shows September shattering the previous record by around the same margin, according to Hausfather.

“I’m still struggling to comprehend how a single year can jump so much compared to previous years,” Finnish Meteorological Institute researcher Mika Rantanen tweeted of the ERA5 data. “Just by adding the latest data point, the linear warming trend since 1979 increased by 10%.”

The JRA-55 and ERA5 data sets are more immediately available than the monthly analyses from NOAA and NASA, which take longer to complete, The Washington Post explained. The satellite-based data from the University of Alabama in Huntsville is also showing a record September.

2023 has been a record-breaking year in part because an El Niño weather pattern emerged in June, but the primary driver is atmospheric warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of natural carbon sinks. This year has been much hotter than the previous El Niño years in 2015 and 2016.

On a local and regional level, many countries experienced their hottest Septembers on record, among them Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, and Switzerland, according to The Guardian. France’s September beat the previous record by more than 1°C, and Belgium’s September was even hotter than its July and August for the first time since 1961.

“Belgium has never experienced a month of September this warm,” David Dehenauw of the Belgian Royal Meteorological Institute told The Guardian.

On the other side of the world, Japan also had its hottest September at 2.66℃ higher than normal.

“We can’t believe just how high temperatures got,” a representative from the Japan Meteorological Agency toldJapan Today. “It became a record-breaking phenomenon after multiple factors overlapped on top of climate change.”

September also saw a number of extreme weather events, from deadly flooding in Libya to record-breaking rainfall in New York. Warmer temperatures are linked to heavy rainfall, as warmer air can hold more moisture. Separate studies also said the climate crisis made both events more extreme.

So far, October looks set to continue the historic weather trend. The central U.S. began the month with record heat, according to The Washington Post. And Spain had its warmest start to October on record, Reuters reported.

“The bad news is that we don’t see any sign of global temperatures reverting to what is normal for this time of year,” Hausfather tweeted. “They remain close to to the highest anomalies we saw in the month of September as we go into October.”


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

Continue Reading‘Absolutely Gobsmackingly Bananas’: Early Data Shows September 2023 Hottest on Record

Hard-Left activists including Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion and the Young Communist League target the Conservative party conference

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Hard left activists trying to ambush! the Tory party conference 2023.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12582585/Hard-Left-activists-including-Just-Stop-Oil-Extinction-Rebellion-Young-Communist-League-target-Conservative-party-conference.html

Masked hard-Left activists were among hundreds of protesters who yesterday tried to ambush the Tory party conference.

Activists from the Young Communist League wore face coverings as they carried a red banner past the conference centre saying ‘Resist Tory Rule’.

Hundreds of trade unionists also marched carrying hateful banners saying ‘F*** the Tories: rebuild our railway’ and ‘Guy Fawkes had a point’.

Eco-zealots from Extinction Rebellion and protesters from offshoot Just Stop Oil also marched, as well as Bully XL dog owners who chanted: ‘Muzzle Rishi, not our dogs!’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12582585/Hard-Left-activists-including-Just-Stop-Oil-Extinction-Rebellion-Young-Communist-League-target-Conservative-party-conference.html

Continue ReadingHard-Left activists including Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion and the Young Communist League target the Conservative party conference

Net zero isn’t act of economic harm, Theresa May says

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Image of former UK Prime Minister Theresa May
Former UK Prime Minister Theresa May

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66988847

Former PM Theresa May has said the UK’s net zero target should be seen as “the growth opportunity of the century”, not an “act of economic harm”.

Mrs May said the UK had a chance to lead “the green revolution”, in a speech at the Conservative conference.

The former PM’s government passed a law that committed the UK to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

At a conference event, Mrs May said she did that “because climate change is the greatest threat to civilisation”.

But the UK’s approach to net zero has come under intense scrutiny since Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced an overhaul of some green policies last month.

The policy changes, including a delay to the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, provoked a backlash, with the government’s climate change adviser saying the UK had “moved backwards” on net zero.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66988847

Continue ReadingNet zero isn’t act of economic harm, Theresa May says

Questions for climate denier and UK prime minister Rishi Sunak :: Question 3

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Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil's You May Find Yourself... art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.

As a competent adult and member of the human race there’s a responsibility on me to not feck it up for future generations – in this case not to destroy the planet, cause intolerable living conditions and drive the human race as well as many other creatures extinct. I know that the Conservative Party receives huge amounts from the fossil fuel industry and associated cnuts. Are you such a whore to this money that you’re willing to abdicate your responsibilities as an adult, a parent and prime minister?

Question 1

Question 2

Continue ReadingQuestions for climate denier and UK prime minister Rishi Sunak :: Question 3

What Sunak and the Tories have done …

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What Sunak and the Tories have done is provide so many production subsidies to the oil and gas industry in UK that it is feasible to work otherwise useless reserves. The effect is to destroy the planet for the benefit of fossil fuel shareholders.

21/9/23 12.20 I’ll find some references that support this claim. Done see HERE: FFS: Huge Fossil Fuel Subsidies in UK and globally

Continue ReadingWhat Sunak and the Tories have done …

Dutch Climate and Energy Minister estimates NL’s fossil fuel subsidies at up to €46.4 billion a year, more than 4% of the Netherlands’ GDP. Campaigners call for phase-out plan

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Today the outgoing Dutch Minister for Climate and Energy Policy, Rob Jetten, published an analysis of the Netherlands’ fossil fuel subsidies, estimating these at between €39.7 and €46.4 billion a year, more than 4% of the Netherlands’ GDP. According to campaigners the analysis underlines the importance of an urgent phase-out plan, in line with the Dutch government’s long-standing promise to end these subsidies by 2025. 

Recent research by Dutch research and environmental organizations shows that this would allow the Netherlands to reduce its CO2 emissions by up to 20% by 2030, while creating space for innovative and sustainable businesses and freeing up billions that can be reinvested in climate justice and social protection measures. The conclusions of the impact analysis for companies of subsidy removal that were also covered in today’s government publication mainly emphasize the short-term impacts for a select group of large energy-intensive companies that run on cheap fossil energy. Researchers and campaigners say this is too limited a perspective and should not stand in the way of an urgent phase-out plan.

Continue ReadingDutch Climate and Energy Minister estimates NL’s fossil fuel subsidies at up to €46.4 billion a year, more than 4% of the Netherlands’ GDP. Campaigners call for phase-out plan