Take a swing over to the Greenpeace website and grab yourself a piece of land… It doesn’t cost you anything.
Basically, the land that was bought up by Greenpeace and various celebrities is on the site of the planned third runway at Heathrow. By signing up, you become a legal owner of part of the land. Genius!
This is from an article published in The Observer yesterday, after NASA scientist Jim Hansen warned that Barack Obama would have to make massive steps to reduce carbon emissions within his first term of office if we are to halt the devastating effects of climate change.
After eight years of an American Presidency that refused to admit that global warming poses a risk, it may already be too little too late to prevent the effects of global warming.
Hansen gave warnings as early as 1988 about the effects of global warming, but was the “victim of several unsuccessful attempts by the White House administration of George Bush to silence his views” according The Observer.
This is one of the most worrying articles I have seen for a while on climate change in the mainstream media, and just adds to the overall dissatisfaction I feel with the way the worlds biggest economies have refused to even recognise, never mind effectively tackle, global warming.
In today’s Guardian, another article has warned that most of the world’s glaciers will have disappeared by the middle of this century, adding to already rising sea levels. The World Glacier Monitoring Service noted that, even though melt rates for glaciers had fallen in 2007, it was still the third worst seen on record.
Compare that to the period between 2005-2006, which saw the worst ever loss of ice since records began. Scientists still believe that that may have been the single biggest loss of ice for over 5000 years, and glaciers in Europe have lost over one quarter of their mass in the last eight years alone.
Now relate this to news last week, with the British Governments plans to go ahead with the third runway and London Heathrow Airport. Surely for a Government that has pledged urgent action on climate change, a hugely unpopular and devastating third runway should be at the bottom of their priorities. For this Government, it appears that climate change is simply a matter of vague rhetoric, with any real and effective action to combat the threat, a forgotten promise.
So what now for the world’s leaders? Although Obama has brought the promise of change in the form of a new direction for American political strategy, for the time being it seems as all we can do is stand by and watch the situation get worse.
There has been some hope however in the form of a strengthening in the global resistance movement, with organisations such as the Campaign Against Climate Change, holding huge protests in central London, and regular demonstrations outside the site of Heathrow’s planned runway expansion.
With renewed and continuing protests from the world’s citizens, a new hope arises that the voice of the people will hopefully force a change in a Capitalist system that places profit above all else. The destruction and loss of thousands of species, as well as irreversible damage to the environment cannot come second to the inflated bank statements of the rich and powerful.
Several MPs stood up in Parliament this week condemning the situation in Gaza. George Galloway again called for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, as well as recalling the British ambassador from Tel Aviv. Nice one George.
Earlier this week, Simon Hughes MP came to LSBU to talk about the conflict in Palestine, and to be fair he surprised me. I didn’t think he would be so openly opposed to it, and it was nice to see another MP calling for an arms embargo. Lets hope he keeps it up.
For any students that are interested, Simon Hughes will be returning to South Bank in a couple of weeks to do another talk, alongside some other speakers for a Stop the War meeting. Contact me for more details.
A friend sent this to me on Facebook, and it’s brightened up my day. Enjoy…