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Catch-all Heathrow protest injunction could bar millions
John Vidal and Dan Milmo, The Guardian
Heathrow airport is targeting climate change activists with a sweeping injunction which could prevent members of the RSPB and the National Trust, plus millions more affiliated to environmental organisations, from attending a green protest.
The airport’s owner, BAA, said it wants to minimise disruption when the Camp for Climate Action is held there from August 14 to 21. The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, gave warning yesterday that disruption to the airport was likely.
BAA named three individuals on the application as well as “members and supporters” of Airport Watch, a coalition of environment groups which together total nearly 5 million members.
Under the injunction, a ban on approaching the airport would cover National Trust, Woodland Trust and RSPB supporters, as well as members of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Campaign to Protect Rural England. The case will be heard next Wednesday.
“This could stop millions of people who are members of these groups going to Heathrow,” said Kate Harrison of Matrix chambers, who will be representing some of the people and groups named on the injunction. “The judge will have to decide whether it applies to all the individual members of the groups. You have to go back to the miners’ strike [in the 1980s] to find an injunction on this scale.” Green groups are working together to challenge the injunction.
Despite assurances from camp organisers that no one would try to occupy runways or go “airside”, the company said yesterday that it feared disruption. “We are throwing the net very wide to make sure the airport can operate securely,” said a BAA spokesman. “People have rights to protest but people also have the right to go on holiday, too.
(27 July 2007)
The BAA spokesperson does not mention the rights of those who are born after us to have an earth not racked by global warming. Nor does he mention the right to survival of those who will be most affected – those in the tropics and Third World. -BA
Related from The Guardian:
Has Heathrow lost it?
Climate activists fight injunction
NASA’s James Hansen on Old King Coal
Joe Hansen, Gristmill
Joseph Romm at Gristmill:
Our top climate scientist has sent out a really, really long email (where does he find the time?), mostly discussing comments on his recent essay on coal. I think Hansen is the clearest thinker on climate among the top scientists in the field, so I will reprint the email, breaking it up into several postings. The first one addresses “Coal-CO2 versus Oil-CO2”:
…In summary, there is a difference between coal-CO2 molecules and oil-CO2 molecules. The oil-CO2 molecules, at least those in large readily extractable deposits, will get into the air anyhow. The coal-CO2 molecules need not get into the air. Once CO2 molecules get into the air, they are practically beyond our reach; they will stay there “an eternity”. It is a tragedy if we continue to release coal-CO2 molecules prior to development of capture and sequestration technology, because these CO2 molecules are the ones that will push climate change into the “dangerous” range. (Refinements to this overview, discussed below [which I’ll post later], e.g., actions to “draw down” atmospheric CO2 and the effects of a rising carbon price on the economics of mining fossil fuels in remote locations or extreme environments, do not alter the essence of this story.
(24 July 2007)
The next parst of the series by Hansen are now online:
NASA’s Hansen on Live Earth, Gore, and coal.
Hansen on ‘trains of death’
Climate change escalates Darfur crisis
Scott Baldauf, The Christian Science Monitor
Less rainfall on the fringes of the Sahara Desert is putting more of a strain on resources than ever before.
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…Competition for water – in refugee camps, between farmers and herders, and between countries – has long sparked conflict in the arid region and forms one of the main causes of the war in Sudan’s Darfur region. But the trouble is only beginning, as it becomes clear that dramatic climate change will have its sharpest effects in Africa, leading to rising hardship, massive population displacement, and, in some cases, all-out war.
Yet a growing number of aid workers here say that the same issue that pits communities against each other can also bring them together. Solving common problems – improving access to water for farmers and herders alike – could be the first step toward reconciliation, and lasting peace.
“In a way, water can be a divider or it can bring people together,” says Caroline Saint-Mleux, head of Care International’s office in Iriba, Chad, which manages two refugee camps in the Iriba area.
“Is [water] the only cause of the problem?” she asks. “Obviously, everyone knows it’s a very complex conflict. But at the same time, you can use [water] to bring the communities back together…. You have to have [the warring parties] talk about a common need, and after that you might have them talk about something else that would start giving other solutions to the conflict.”
Just what set off the conflict in Darfur – and subsequent spillover conflicts here in neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic – remains a topic of vigorous debate.
(27 July 2007)
Huge sea level rises are coming – unless we act now
James Hansen, New Scientist
I find it almost inconceivable that “business as usual” climate change will not result in a rise in sea level measured in metres within a century. Am I the only scientist who thinks so?
Last year I testified in a case brought by car manufacturers to challenge California’s new laws on vehicle emissions. Under questioning from the lawyer, I conceded that I was not a glaciologist. The lawyer then asked me to identify glaciologists who agreed publicly with my assertion that sea level is likely to rise more than a metre this century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow: “Name one!”
I could not, at that moment. I was dismayed, because in conversations and email exchanges with relevant scientists I sensed a deep concern about the stability of ice sheets in the face of “business as usual” global warming scenarios, which assume that emissions of greenhouse gases will continue to increase. Why might scientists be reticent to express concerns about something so important?
I suspect it is because of what I call the “John Mercer effect”. In 1978, when global warming was beginning to get attention from government agencies, Mercer suggested that global warming could lead to disastrous disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Although it was not obvious who was right on the science, I noticed that researchers who suggested that his paper was alarmist were regarded as more authoritative.
It seems to me that scientists downplaying the dangers of climate change fare better when it comes to getting funding. Drawing attention to the dangers of global warming may or may not have helped increase funding for the relevant scientific areas, but it surely did not help individuals like Mercer who stuck their heads out.
I can vouch for that from my own experience.
James Hansen heads NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. A physicist and astronomer by training, he began his career studying the clouds on Venus. Since the late 1970s he has been studying and modelling the human impact on Earth’s climate, and has published more than 100 papers. He entered the public spotlight in the 1980s with his outspoken testimony to congressional committees on climate change. Last year he made headlines when he spoke out against attempts by the US administration to gag climate scientists.
(25 July 2007)
U.S. offers way to atone for carbon guilt
Claudia Lauer, Los Angeles Times
To offset emissions, individuals can buy vouchers that the Forest Service will use to plant CO2-absorbing trees.
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WASHINGTON – You take public transportation to work, use energy-saving lightbulbs and turn off the air conditioner when you’re not home – but still you feel somewhat guilty that your lifestyle isn’t totally pollution-free.
The federal government may have an answer for you.
For years, companies have been allowed to compensate for greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing “carbon offsets” – vouchers for investment in alternative energy sources, tree-planting and other projects that can mitigate global warming.
Now the idea is spreading to individuals, with the Forest Service’s announcement Wednesday that it will be the first federal agency to offer personal carbon offsets through an initiative called the Carbon Capital Fund.
“We came up with the idea because everyone is looking at what they can do in terms of climate change,” said Bill Possiel, president of the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit partner of the Forest Service. “The money goes to a restricted fund for projects on national forests.”
Trees and forests are “carbon sinks,” Possiel said, because they draw carbon dioxide – the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming – out of the atmosphere and store it for long periods of time.
(26 July 2007)
