Monthly Archives: October 2011

LSE: Not quite as ‘Tar Sands-Free’ as they should be…

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(This is a bit late posting, having been written a week ago, but I promise the issues haven’t fallen off the table since!)

People & Planet activists picket LSE tar sands event

People & Planet activists picket LSE tar sands event

I’m wearing a suit. This is not something I do a lot, but as it turned it out, it was probably the main reason I had the chance to call Canada’s Natural Resources Minister, Joe Oliver to account, for he and his Government’s attempt to convince LSE students that Canadian tar sands are an ‘ethical’ and ‘responsible’ source of energy for the future.

The LSE – to their discredit – chose to host the Minister, after being approached by the Canadian Government as part of their declared lobbying push to undermine European climate legislation. The public university – who regularly host multiple speakers at their events – chose to let the Minister speak unopposed, on one of the most hotly-contested global environmental issues of our generation. People & Planet, as part of our Tar Sands-Free Universities campaign, see this as a major insult to the countless victims of the Alberta tar sands industry, given the Canadian Government’s track record of ignoring and discrediting the critical issues facing First Nations Canadians and the climate as a whole as a result of the industry.

So Oliver’s presence was inappropriate for a university to host as an ‘educational’ event to begin with. But from the point that we arrived (about 10 of us, from LSE People & Planet and the UK Tar Sands Network), we were greeted by a police presence at the front doors of the venue and a heavy security presence inside, which included body searches and refusal to allow any personal bags in the venue. Having been to a half-dozen LSE public lectures before, this was the first time I’d seen anything like this. Even when I saw the President of Ecuador speak at LSE last year, there had been no parallel precautions taken.

The Chair, Dr Richard Perkins, said that he was keen to have a debate after the lecture, given the contentious nature of the issue, but then prefaced questions with ‘this isn’t a chance to make a statement’…

The event started late, due to the extensive security checks, and was closed early, as too much of the crowd had become vocally critical of the misinformation coming from the Minister. Again, debate was not what the LSE appeared interested in hosting… If I hadn’t broken protocols and jumped up early on to present Oliver with an award for ‘Greenwash Propagandist of the Year’, relatively little criticism would have made it to the forefront.

And unsurprisingly, the Minister’s speech was nothing short of propaganda. Nearly every statement was untrue or misleading, and omitted even mentioning issues as significant as elevated cancer rates amongst First Nations communities, or First Nations legal challenges that tar sands expansion is hinging upon. Some highlights include:

  • Oliver’s claim: ‘Canada is being unfairly discriminated against via the EU’s Fuel Quality Directive’
  • The truth: Tar sands are one of several ‘unconventional fuels’ (including shale gas and liquid coal) that the European Commission has classified as high emissions fuels. The move is clearly an attempt to regulate fuel that is more harmful to the environment than crude oil. There is no basis to claim that Alberta tar sands have been ‘singled-out’.
  • Oliver’s claim: ‘Tar sands aren’t as bad as other fuels the EU allows import of’
  • The truth: Oliver compared Alberta tar sands to Russian, Mexican, Nigerian and Venezuelan high emissions fuels, saying that tar sands were much better than many of these. In truth, the best tar sands, are on par with or worse than, all but the very worst Venezuelan heavy crude and Nigerian flaring. The other countries fuels produce far lower emissions. Tar sands really are *that bad*!
  • Oliver’s claim: ‘In situ tar sands extraction is much less destructive than mining’
  • The truth: While in situ mining doesn’t use as much water, or scar the surface of the Earth in the way open caste mining does, the emissions associated with the process are on average 3x higher than that of mining tar sands, and 5x higher than drilling traditional crude. The Minister and the industry’s claim that the in situ process is more environmentally sound is at best a distortion of the facts, and at worst, an outright lie.

(Details of the above claims can be found here and here).

After the talk, a scheduled media phone-in with the Minister, was cancelled without explanation. We might be able to take a little bit of credit for that one. We also managed to get covered in newspapers and blogs across Canada, as well as in the Times of India (the largest English language newspaper in the world), hopefully throwing a bit of a wrench into the Canadian Government’s attempt to go abroad and paint the tar sands in a positive light.

While LSE may still be a few steps from calling itself a ‘Tar Sands-Free University’ (though our activists there will be pushing to make it one!), we an important question for the university, in light of its choice to host the Minister:

Given the factual inaccuracy of a range of the Minister’s comments and the highly-political agenda he was promoting, how can the LSE justify using student and public money to help a foreign government promote a single perspective, unopposed?

Speakers like Oliver are relatively rare, in terms of the ways that universities support the most destructive project on Earth. They may be banking with tar sands financiers like RBS/NatWest; they might be doing research into tar sands technologies for BP or Shell; their staff’ pensions might be invested in any of these companies… So don’t hesitate to get in touch if you want to get involved in making your university or college ‘Tar Sands-Free’!

Is the Soybean a has Bean

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Environmental group Friends of the Earth are currently working on the Food Chain Campaign in an effort to reduce deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and the increasing loss of wildlife habitat and biodiversity in Latin America.

The soybeans which are grown in this region are exported throughout the world and used as feed for cattle, pigs and chickens. The fact that the bean is so high in protein means that animal feed containing soybean is in very high demand. With 97% of all soybean produced worldwide being used for animal feed and with production levels expected to increase, it has become a massive environmental issue within the international community. However, this is an issue that has failed to be addressed so far.

The result of soybean plantations in Latin America is proving to be catastrophic within these regions and is having worldwide implications. Developed countries have widely used soybean feed as a cheaper form of protein for their livestock. The fact that animal feed prices continue to increase means that the problem is one shared in the UK agricultural sector. The Friends of the Earth Food Chain Campaign aims to highlight this and has released documentation on how to tackle some of the problems.

However, the problems with soybean plantations most also be addressed within countries like Brazil and Paraguay. Despite the fact that the authorities there have tried to stop illegal logging, they have proved to be unsuccessful due to the lack of man power and technology. Governments have also failed to address legal farming. Furthermore, farmers such as José Rosa who are keen to stop illegal logging on their farm see no rules, order, incentives or options when it comes to farming and moving to a more sustainable method. “The land here is perfect for soy. These aren’t poor people doing this [in relation to illegal loggers]. These are land grabbers. They have a lot of money. If they find me out here alone, they will kill me,” said Rosa.

The complex problems surrounding soybean plantations are just some of the many that are interlinked with other environmental problems. Most environmental groups believe that a change in policy within the US and the EU would be a crucial first step in tackling these problems. A less intensive method in farming production would also be supported by most environmentalists as would a move towards producing alternative livestock feed. This would mean that the reliance on soybean meal would not be so high and that different kinds of animal feed could be grown within the UK, which would reduce the amount of energy used in the transport of feed. It would also be a step towards preventing the high levels of deforestation that are ongoing in Latin America.

The problems in relation to soy farming occur both within the local regions where there is little incentive to reduce the practice and internationally where livestock take up 70% of agricultural land throughout the globe. The Friends of the Earth campaign aims to highlight and encourage the changes that are needed if the soybean problem is not to continue.

Researching the effects of past climate change on Antarctic glaciers

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As well as a new remote volunteer of the People & Planet team, I am also a PhD student about to venture out into the wilderness of Antarctica.

Antarctica

My research will focus on areas of the Antarctic ice sheets, looking at specific glaciers/ice streams in the Transantarctic Mountains (which divide the West and East ice sheets). The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has been in the media a lot in the past (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/18/west-antarctic-ice-sheet-melt; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8387137.stm). This is because most of the underlying land is below sea level which makes it very susceptible to warming and rapid melting, and therefore it has a possible threshold point leading to ice sheet collapse. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) is bigger and considered more stable as it rests on a larger proportion of land. The Transantarctic Mountains provide an interesting partial barrier to the EAIS, through which ice streams flow into the Ross Ice Shelf.

“What are you trying to find out, and why?”

The project aims to find out how big the glaciers were in this region of Antarctica at the peak of the last ice age, and to see how they thinned and retreated to their current form. By understanding this past behaviour of glaciers it provides an insight into their relationship with past climate systems and can therefore help towards predicting the future response of ice sheets to climate changes. The data collected will be used to help test and validate ice sheet computer models which look to predict future change.

“How are you going to study this?”

By surveying the material and land features found in the area, one can see the where ice used to flow and what processes occurred. Some rocks can show obvious signs that they have been moved there by a glacier because they are a different rock type to that found locally in the landscape. These rocks are called erratics and are typically collected from the peaks of mountains which poke through the ice (known as nunataks). A technique called cosmogenic nuclide dating allows us to measure how long ago glacially-deposited boulders were left behind by the ice sheet, and from this we can establish the height and length of the ice sheet at different points in time. The results can then be compared to other data from the region such as further ice sheet information, ice cores, sea ice records, etc. But first things first, I need to go out to Antarctica to make some notes and collect some rocks!

This post first appeared on Selwyn’s own blog (http://theterratranscriber.wordpress.com/), where you will be able to find updates of his Antarctic experiences.

From crisis to stability: reasons for local food production and consumption.

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The theme for last week’s World Food Day was ‘From crisis to stability’. Between 2005 and 2008 the price of food staples rose to a 30 year high, the price of rice trebled, and food riots broke out in countries all over the world as people found it increasingly difficult to obtain enough food to feed themselves and their families. In June 2008, as a response to the global financial crisis, prices crashed, falling 33% in six months, but began to rise sharply again in 2010.

has-the-food-crisis-abated_1Food accounts for the majority of many households’ budgets in the global south, making them extremely vulnerable to any fluctuations in price. According to the World Development Movement, 44 million people in developing countries have been driven into extreme poverty since the price spikes of 2010. Through the images of famine in the Horn of Africa we can see the results of this crisis being played out on a tragically large scale.

In Ethiopia, food prices rose by 41% in the month of May alone this year. While the crisis in East Africa has been exacerbated by drought and conflict in Somalia, like many famines its roots lie in the economic choices we’ve made as a global community. The WDM offers a very clear explanation of how ‘food speculation’, has helped to create this new volatility in food prices, and create a healthy profit for banks and traders in the process. After this speculative bubble burst in 2008 and the price of crops collapsed, food prices for consumers were kept artificially high, as companies such as Cargill limited supply by ‘hoarding’ of stocks of grain.

Other short term factors have also been important, such as the transfer of land away from the production of food to the production of agro-fuels and cattle feed, and rising energy prices, which have increased the day to day costs of farming. The huge instability caused by the combination of these factors has lead to a worldwide movement for ‘food sovereignty’.

La Via Campesina is a global movement of small scale farmers and peasants which has lead this charge, and defines food sovereignty as:

…the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It develops a model of small scale sustainable production benefiting communities and their environment. It puts the aspirations, needs and livelihoods of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.

The argument is that small scale farmers are capable of feeding the world – if given the chance. Under President Lula da Silva (2003-2010) Brazil halved the proportion of its population who go hungry people and slashed its poverty rate from 12 percent to below 5 percent. This was done through the introduction of agricultural reforms aimed at connecting consumers to local smallholder farmers and widening access to food for the poor. This month, Lula was jointly awarded the 2011 ‘World Food Prize’ in recognition of the success of these policies.

La Via Campesina are also fighting the power of corporate agribusiness and transnational companies, as well as globalized, export focused agricultural policies. It has had some success in Latin America, for example in March 2009 the Venezuelan government expropriated Cargill’s major rice-processing facility and temporarily took over a plant owned by Polar, Venezuela’s largest private food producer.

Central to the idea of food sovereignty is the prioritizing of local food production and consumption. Globally, we need to regulate the futures markets so that they work in favour of small scale farmers instead of financial speculators, but also to try and break the stranglehold of transnational companies over agriculture. One great way to do this locally is to support small-scale local producers through food co-ops. The main principle behind food co-ops is that by pooling resources and ordering in bulk direct from local suppliers a group of people can buy good food at more affordable prices.

However, as well as personal savings, there are many additional benefits of foods co-ops, including: a reduction in carbon emissions through the transportation of food; less waste through unnecessary packaging; support for local producers; and more money retained and circulated in the local economy. Importantly, it also helps to break the dominance of large transnational companies in food markets and integrates with La Via Campesina’s view of food sovereignty – locally produced food being consumed locally.

Read about “Scoop” – People & Planet’s student food co-op project – here.

My trip to Canada’s Tar Sands – by Philippa de Boissiere

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Philippa de Boissiere was one of 8 students who took part in People & Planet’s tar sands solidarity exchange this summer:

Our Activists join 'pow-wow' dance with Beaver Lake Cree“Our trip to Alberta, Canada marked the start for us of an ongoing commitment to take on the most destructive oil project on Earth. Our visit was in response to an invitation from the former Beaver Lake Cree Nation (BLCN) Chief, Al Lameman, whose community is being directly threatened by the expansion of tar sands.
There was a lot to take in from our experience of this dirty oil extraction industry. We were treated to a full PR assault from Suncor representatives, harassed by industry workers whilst surveying the destruction of the boreal forest and left choking by the fumes emitted from toxic waste ponds.
More importantly however, we developed links of solidarity with indigenous people from Beaver Lake. Over campfires, meals and some dancing at their annual Pow-Wow we learnt of a wise and loving culture. We were able to send a powerful message on behalf of the People & Planet network that the Beaver Lake Cree Nation do not stand alone in taking on the most powerful oil companies on the planet.

Let’s Let Cardiff know the kinda lifestyle they could lead :) – The Life of A Student Activist!

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“The Life of a Student Activist”

The first year of university went very slowly for me. Despite making some great friends and settling in to my course, I was never sure whether I should really be there. Second year, however, was a turning point where my social and political views came together and I started to feel a need to make a difference in the world.

megan-davidAutumn 2010

Over the summer, after spending time as part of my local Fairtrade group and discussing political issues with friends, I realised that to be happy I needed to make the most of my university experience. I needed to get involved in a charity or organisation with people who shared my interests. After seeing a People & Planet society stall at the Freshers Fayre, and realising how dedicated the network was to defending human rights, ending world poverty and protecting the planet, I got involved immediately. At the first meeting I felt really enthusiastic about ethical and environmental issues and was so delighted to realise that I was surrounded by others who shared my passion. I also became more involved in the Green Party and met activists who had campaigned for more to be done around climate change, and felt keen to make an impact myself. At the start of the term I went to a talk from a speaker for the Global Poverty Project and it really inspired me to try and help others. The words I heard and the images I saw that evening triggered something in me and life started to change.

My first encounter with my activism having an effect on people directly was at a Barclays Graduate training scheme talk. Along with some friends I interrogated the Barclays ambassadors on their ethical and environmental policies – or lack of – which resulted in a lot of resentment from the workers, and some very interesting discussions with other students.

As news spread of Nick Clegg’s betrayal of his policies, the student movement began and I was eager to join the campaigning against the rise in tuition fees. The student demo in London inspired me to stand up for what I believed. The anger at the MPs who had gone back on their word was prominent that day and there was a worry that Thatcher Tory days were returning. Despite the small amount of violence that day, there was a sense of unity amongst the campaigners and I felt like a student from the 70s – determined to start a movement and give a voice to the unheard. My family were reluctant about my involvement in such controversial issues, and in some respects my Dad has continued to disapprove of my outspoken, direct action ever since, but my Mum was proud that I was standing up for what I believed in. My lecturer was also very supportive and allowed me to miss a lecture to take part, meaning I felt even more empowered to stand up for future students. The beginning of the student movement was quite special. Many students felt passionate about the cause, there was hope that we could win this and prevent tuition fees rising. As the months drew on, the public’s spirit seemed to dwell and societies’ reaction to who I had become as a person was changing.

Winter 2010

The initial passion of protest had worn off for the majority of those at the original tuition fees demo as snow appeared on the doorstep of Cardiff students, but there were still some dedicated souls ready to keep me fighting for a cause I believed in. As part of “Action Against the Cuts Cardiff” I took part in the occupation of a lecture theatre and organised demonstrations throughout the city centre which gained lots of Welsh coverage and achieved great things. However, the London protest on the day of the national vote, was different. The violence I saw that day from police and students frightened me, but I was defiant that we were campaigning for a serious and important cause and that my activism would not stop. My involvement in such edgy issues and contact with the police after being traditionally a well behaved, suburban A grade student came as a shock to some friends back home as my fiery nature shone through.

UKUncut action in Cardiff

UKUncut action in Cardiff

The student protests built momentum for the rest of society to stand up against the cuts and movements like UK Uncut began. Occupying stores like Vodafone and Topshop was becoming a more prominent part of my day to day life as the tax avoiders were targeted. I knew that when I came back after Christmas, I could not go back to my old self and that I had developed a passion for activism, for devoting myself to worthwhile causes.

Spring 2011

The beginning of the Arab Revolution last spring gave hope to so many individuals across the world. I can remember my Dad saying “When did protest ever achieve anything?” just before Egypt‘s old president Mubarak stood down. It was a turning point in how my father saw my actions and to students and academics across the globe. Being involved in the larger community in Cardiff by now, I felt keen to stand up against the cuts affecting all individuals, and protested against pension cuts and the NHS. In times of need, it was comforting to see society come together and shout for each other’s livelihoods.

Striving for equality is also a continuing theme in my Sociology degree and has meant that my feminist belief has grown significantly since first year. After reading about “Slutwalk”, I took part in a Cardiff demonstration which was empowering but at the same time controversial for the wrong reasons. It made me feel that as a fiery young woman, life was still very different to how it is for a man. Women are treated differently even in issues of activism where we are campaigning for equality. At the student protests, the police were definitely more lenient to frightened young women than to the frightened men. This has only fuelled my desire to fight for equality even more.

In 2011 my participation with the Green Party increased significantly as I volunteered to undertake a media internship. As I learnt more about how we need to change our reliance on fossil fuels and take more drastic action to prevent runaway climate change, my every day life was altered a little. Already being vegetarian, I strived to do more simple things to look after my planet, such as recycling and cycling instead of driving. However, the way I perceive TV shows, individuals and the actions of companies changed significantly as I realised how little others think about their impact on society and our future planet. Being so concerned changes the way I see others, which made me question whether people have changed the way they see me? But my political involvement has become an active part of my lifestyle and I hope it continues that way for the rest of my life.

Year Three

This year I hope to become part of the Student Council and fight for our university to become more ethical and environmentally friendly. I will be campaigning against the Tar Sands in Alberta, attending a demo in London to ban public sector clothes being made in sweatshops and perhaps occupying an oil or gas head-quarters to try and stop the UK’s dependency on unsustainable fuels. I will also be supporting Oxfam and the Global Poverty Project on issues such as Fairtrade and food shortages. This of course will be done alongside campaigning against the cuts to our society.

Being an activist means leading a busy lifestyle and campaigning becomes a priority, but not behind trying to have fun with friends, family and my boyfriend. I have learnt not to preach my views but just to let people know that I will live my life focused on trying to make a small difference to the lives of some individuals somewhere in the world. Life seems very merry when you know you are being the best you can be while living life to the full as a university student in one of the best cities for fun and education in the UK.

Trying to get my head around the jungle and theatre of contradictions that is the garment industry in Bangladesh..

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by Marie, who is currently investigating garment factories in Bangladesh.

After my first three weeks as a project manager of a project to improve the social labour conditions for female line-operators in the garment industry in Bangladesh by providing them with free training and skills-upgrading to become supervisors and move up the hierarchical gendered ladder of highly exploitative factory work, I have been faced with both ups and downs.

So far we have 50 factories officially on board and in agreement to let us provide training to and interview their female workers, however sweet-talk words exchanged through diplomatic performance and acting in shiny factory director offices as well as warm receptions pampering us with cake, chai, factory-gifts, restaurant visits and hummer rides, do not always amount to concrete action, and still 30 out of the 50 factories haven’t signed and returned the memorandums of understanding we have handed them.  The sad reality I have come to realize is that there is a never-ending amount of layers to go through to really get a chance at revealing and changing what goes on behind the scenes in the garment factories.

One of the by far most 'decent' looking of Bangladeshi garment factories I've seen so far. Yet, these workers had no air conditioning.

One of the by far most 'decent' looking of Bangladeshi garment factories I've seen so far. Yet, these workers had no air conditioning.

The overwhelming princess treatment I have received as a ‘white woman’ has been the hardest challenge and has been a real distraction in my attempt to have a formal meeting about a serious issue at social compliance and workers’ rights.

In the middle of conversations, factory directors interrupt me to ask if I am single, where I live, or ask me what if I’m free to meet for a drink later. After meetings they often invite me for lunch/dinner at their fancy restaurants, or offered to give me a ride home in their Hummer cars. One factory director even insisted on giving me a pair of factory produced jeans as a gift – and before I had the change to refuse he snatched his fingers to get one of the female workers to come and take my measurements and within 15min she returned with a shiny new pair of quality jeans. I’ve never felt so embarrassed and awkward in my life. By having to negotiate with these directors I’m trapped in their terms having to accept their fake hospitality for me and therefore implicitly their maltreatment and disrespect of their workers.  One of the things that has hit me the worst on a personal level is that because I hand them over my business card with my mobile number on it, many of them give me sleazy prank calls and text messages with compliments and sexual innuendos. Under these circumstances, keeping up the ‘business etiquette’ mask is tough, and the directors behaviour feels like such a smooth side-track maneuvre when my research team’s sole intention is asking them to commit to training and promoting their female line-operators.

One of the most unexpected experiences I had was probably a meeting I had with a rich french guy, who at the age of 24 is now the director of one of the big garment factories over here due to his noble family connections. The most memorable comment he made during our meeting what when he boasted that “It’s a tough job trying to control my workers here sometimes, they are all connected to the mafia and talk like ‘des petits nègres’ (little negros), without me in charge they would be lost”. After that statement, I simply had no words.

On the other hand, I’ve also had a lot of golden moments of visiting factories highly committed to ensuring the social welfare of their workers. I’ve had meetings with Directors who introduced me to their FEMALE Social Compliance Managers, who were strongly committed to workers’ rights and told me stories about their different workers backgrounds and some of the social difficulties they face in Dhaka and what social benefits they provide them to cope with these.

One of the most inspiring meetings I have had was with a garment factory who had received an award for the best Corporate Social Responsibility practicing firm in Bangladesh in 2008 after receiving the very same training program which my team is now trying to introduce to 96 other factories. This factory had each floor of the factory named after a Bangladeshi freedom fighter to teach his workers about history while they work. They also provide their workers with English lessons, disease-prevention courses on anything from Tuberculosis to AIDs/HIV, free health care and dental care vouchers, maternity leave benefits and ‘newborn’ baby prices. They arrange monthly workers’ sports tournament and cultural festivals where workers’ perform. The director has founded a free school for his workers kids next to the factory. They even had a ‘ladies club’ and a hair and beauty salon for their female workers.  Most remarkably, the factory had implemented rigorous sexual harassment measurements and awareness courses – introducing male/female separated exits, staircases and canteens. At first when I was given a tour of that factory and shown their portfolio of all the seemingly impressive things they do for their workers I was in awe. However, a head of social compliance at a large supermarket firm, he informed me that a lot of these ‘big achievements and social commitments’ are mostly for show for when foreigners come to visit and that there is still a lot of labour exploitation going on behind closed doors, which only local staff working in this field will realise. Alas, my Scandinavian naïveté fooling me again.

Another contradiction I was exposed to was when visiting another factory that had received training two years ago and now demonstrated me that they had 50 % female supervisors and even some female line production chiefs – they even gave me the whole tour of the floor and allowed me to take photos of them (see pictures below). Yet, all my respect for them and their commitments to women’s empowerment was lost when the director slapped and shouted at a female worker who ran up to him crying because she had injured her foot on one of the machines on one of the floor I was shown around on. Horrific.

More generally, there is a lot of mismatching and deceiving information going around both regarding social welfare standards at factories and the CSR of the major international retailers. Some factory directors supplying for a major brand big them up saying how committed a brand they are to training their workers and ensuring high environmental and social standards. However, one of my friends here who is engaged to a man who has  senior position at a garment producing  office in Dhaka told me that it is common knowledge within the garment business in Bangladesh and amongst retailers that the brand are by far the worst at exploiting their factory workers and not living up to social compliance standards – often not even respecting the ban on child labour.

The garment industry over here simply is a jungle and impossible to get your head around – still I’ll keep trying!

Why I’m supporting November 30th strikers – by Megan Fortune

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Why I’m supporting November 30th strikers

I don’t have a pension. I don’t work in a sector where I’m likely to get one any time soon. And I wholeheartedly support everybody planning to take strike action on November 30th.

People in the public sector are being attacked on so many fronts. Over the last year, thousands of workers, mostly women, have lots their jobs or had their hours dramatically cut. The young have been hit hard – cut out of college education by the scrapping of EMA, outpriced from university education and now unemployed in the millions.

Those who are in jobs have seen the greatest insult – government pension plans will force everyone in the public sector to work longer, pay more and receive less. Can it possibly be right that a PE teacher will still be out teaching rugby at the age of 66? In net terms, public sector workers will lose the equivalent of a day’s wages every month. Nothing about this is fair.

Tory politicians have said that taxpayers don’t want our money spent on public sector pensions. Well, I do. In fact, I only want my taxes spent on fair pensions, job creation, free education and decent healthcare. Instead, the government is haemorrhaging cash on illegal wars and dirty deals.

For these reasons, I fully support anybody who chooses to go on strike in November.

Urgent push for European climate action

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This blog was written by Marco Cadena, a member of the Young Friends of the Earth network

push_europe_classic_web1Millions are already facing the devastating impacts of climate change, and the European Environment Council meeting this coming Monday wasn’t even going to discuss emission reduction targets at their meeting.

However, civil society groups all across Europe are campaigning loudly for climate action, one of these campaigns is Push Europe – a youth-led climate campaign building a strong movement demanding real European action on climate change.

It is really simple: we need real emission cuts, there is no time to sweep the emissions under the carpet through the dangerous obsession of carbon trading.

Young Friends of the Earth, People and Planet, 350.org and many other organisations are now calling on European leaders to recognise that there isn’t time to fiddle around: we’re getting closer to the tipping point. We’re heading towards a five degree world, with catastrophic consequences all around the world.


boy-climate

It’s time to tell Chris Huhne, who will represent the United Kingdom this coming Monday (10th October), that climate change isn’t something that Environment Ministers shouldn’t discuss. In fact, there is a need for increased political ambition to bring the stagnate international climate negotiations forward.

Europe has massive historical responsibility for causing climate change, but it’s focussing solely on carbon markets with very low real emission reduction commitments.

It is time for real action for Europe and for the rest of the world.

Email Chris Huhne before Monday to call for strong action now!

http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/press_for_change/eu_climate_32796.html

Book Review: Counterpower, by Tim Gee

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Tim Gee is a blogger, author, activist, and also the nice smiling man in the Quaker adverts that are always in the New Internationalist. His first book, Counterpower, “began as an enquiry into how campaigning might be more effective. But the more I read, the more convinced I became that a successful campaign is an unfinished revolution and that a revolution is the result of a series of successful campaigns.”

And revolution is in the air throughout the book, from the Indians overthrowing the Raj, to the South Africans ending apartheid, right up to the Arab Spring in Egypt that starts and finished the book. Gee has an encyclopaedic knowledge of 19th and 20th century social movements, and a sharp eye for the successes and failures that lie behind the historical myths.


Gee’s general argument is that just as governments use ideological power, economic power and physical coercion to enforce their hegemony, so campaigns for change must counter this with their own power in all three spheres – ideas, economics and physical counterpower. This sounds a little obvious, but so many campaigns today focus only on one aspect (usually the physical or ideological) to the exclusion of others that it remains a useful thing to hear, especially with the wealth of examples that Gee gives to back up his claim. (My only annoyance is his insistence on capitalising it all the time – Counterpower, not counterpower – as if it’s a brand, a trademark, or, worse, an easy-to-utilise product you can pick up off the shelf – “Where’s the Counterpower, love?” “Next to the Brillo pads in the cupboard!”)


So it is that we’re presented, in Gee’s clear and confident narration, with a broad mix of intertwining tactics – radical, ‘unstamped’ newspapers, boycotts, parliamentary votes, window smashing, marches, and even a little bit of outright violence. In the midst of all this Gee manages to wind in a little more theory, arguing that there are four clear stages to all the movements he analyses – consciousness, coordination, confrontation and consolidation – but that they are not necessarily progressed through in a neat and linear fashion, as setbacks befall campaigns and forward motion is stalled, sometimes for decades, before being reinvigorated by new generations of activists.

Gandhi on the Salt March, one of many tactics used by the Indian resistance

Gandhi on the Salt March, one of many tactics used by the Indian resistance

Ultimately, Gee knows that no theory is infallible, just as no victory is certain; and that if we’re ever going to achieve our own revolutions in social, economic and environmental justice, many more successful (and unsuccessful) campaigns will have to be fought, with many lessons learnt along the way. Counterpower is an engaging and at times inspiring read, recommended to those looking at the past and the future of movements for change.