(no subject)
BYE BUY
The tills are sure to be ringing in the run up to Christmas as shoppers stick more crap they don’t need on the never-never plastic. The UK is already more than £3,000,000,000,000 in debt, but the shopping centres (and landfill sites) remain full to bursting.
www.buynothingday.co.uk. If only the event happened a bit more often - daily perhaps...
PLANE STUPIDITY
Ciaron O’Reilly, participant in the Pitstop Ploughshares action taken against US military aircraft at Shannon airport (see SchNEWS 414), found himself of the wrong end of UK counter-terrorist police when he flew into Luton airport.
“As I entered the Luton terminal, three plainclothes detectives approached me. They stated that the Irish Gardai had alerted them that I was a threat to the aviation industry. They asked me if I was a member of Plane Stupid Having paid £1 for my Ryan Air Flight I responded, 'If I was with them I guess I would have come by train!' A detective responded “You’d be surprised!”
Ciaron was detained under the Terrorism Act.“They continued to ask me about my activist history. I told them, “Look I’m going to stop answering these questions some time, so it may as well be now!” I said I was concerned about the civil liberties ramifications of co-operating with their behaviour. He was eventually released without charge
OXYGENOCIDE
Activists from London Rising Tide are not being fooled by the blag that is the ‘Emissions Trading Scheme’ (ETS). As a corporate-sponsored shindig was being held at the swanky Selfridges Hotel in central London on Thursday (22nd), participants had their fun interpreted when protesters burst into the main conference room. They were giving out free shares granting delegates the “right to own the air we breath.” In an impromptu speech they drew attention to the fact that the ETS is nothing but Greenwash and represents the true nature of corporate Europe’s response to climate change - i.e. they don’t give a toss unless it’s business as usual. Shareholder value, innit’?
On the face of it the scheme, which came into force on 1st January 2005, sounds pretty good; it sets limits to the amount of emissions different parts of the economy can emit. If, for example, a factory belches out more pollution then they’ve been allocated that year they face big fines. But... in the free market you can just buy the right to pollute. If you’ve got enough readies there’s no stopping you.
Rising Tide has been particularly vocal about how the scheme not only fails to tackle the area where carbon emissions are rising at their fastest - air travel - but how it will actually enable ever-greater expansion. Last October, Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute said that the UK will never meet its target to cut carbon emissions by 60% by 2050. Not unless the growth in the aviation industry is curbed, that is. Yet, this week UK plc unveiled plans to build a new runway and terminal at Heathrow…
With such a big increase in carbon emissions on the agenda, the plan is to bring aviation within the ETS and build those extra runways with a few gift vouchers fleeced, perhaps, from some ageing industries in Eastern Europe desperate for a bit of extra cash. Any of the big contributors to global warming over the next century is going to be able to buy up pollution permits from those companies which have reduced their ecological footprint. The shareholders of such businesses will, of course, make a tidy sum from such a venture as the airlines bribe their way to a flightful future.
The tills are sure to be ringing in the run up to Christmas as shoppers stick more crap they don’t need on the never-never plastic. The UK is already more than £3,000,000,000,000 in debt, but the shopping centres (and landfill sites) remain full to bursting.
www.buynothingday.co.uk. If only the event happened a bit more often - daily perhaps...
PLANE STUPIDITY
Ciaron O’Reilly, participant in the Pitstop Ploughshares action taken against US military aircraft at Shannon airport (see SchNEWS 414), found himself of the wrong end of UK counter-terrorist police when he flew into Luton airport.
“As I entered the Luton terminal, three plainclothes detectives approached me. They stated that the Irish Gardai had alerted them that I was a threat to the aviation industry. They asked me if I was a member of Plane Stupid Having paid £1 for my Ryan Air Flight I responded, 'If I was with them I guess I would have come by train!' A detective responded “You’d be surprised!”
Ciaron was detained under the Terrorism Act.“They continued to ask me about my activist history. I told them, “Look I’m going to stop answering these questions some time, so it may as well be now!” I said I was concerned about the civil liberties ramifications of co-operating with their behaviour. He was eventually released without charge
OXYGENOCIDE
Activists from London Rising Tide are not being fooled by the blag that is the ‘Emissions Trading Scheme’ (ETS). As a corporate-sponsored shindig was being held at the swanky Selfridges Hotel in central London on Thursday (22nd), participants had their fun interpreted when protesters burst into the main conference room. They were giving out free shares granting delegates the “right to own the air we breath.” In an impromptu speech they drew attention to the fact that the ETS is nothing but Greenwash and represents the true nature of corporate Europe’s response to climate change - i.e. they don’t give a toss unless it’s business as usual. Shareholder value, innit’?
On the face of it the scheme, which came into force on 1st January 2005, sounds pretty good; it sets limits to the amount of emissions different parts of the economy can emit. If, for example, a factory belches out more pollution then they’ve been allocated that year they face big fines. But... in the free market you can just buy the right to pollute. If you’ve got enough readies there’s no stopping you.
Rising Tide has been particularly vocal about how the scheme not only fails to tackle the area where carbon emissions are rising at their fastest - air travel - but how it will actually enable ever-greater expansion. Last October, Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute said that the UK will never meet its target to cut carbon emissions by 60% by 2050. Not unless the growth in the aviation industry is curbed, that is. Yet, this week UK plc unveiled plans to build a new runway and terminal at Heathrow…
With such a big increase in carbon emissions on the agenda, the plan is to bring aviation within the ETS and build those extra runways with a few gift vouchers fleeced, perhaps, from some ageing industries in Eastern Europe desperate for a bit of extra cash. Any of the big contributors to global warming over the next century is going to be able to buy up pollution permits from those companies which have reduced their ecological footprint. The shareholders of such businesses will, of course, make a tidy sum from such a venture as the airlines bribe their way to a flightful future.