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How to go to Climate Camp – and enjoy it
Leo Hickman, Guardian
This Sunday a week-long camp begins in Kent against plans to build a new coal-powered fire station. Many who might like to go will be put off by stories of heavy policing – and an even heavier atmosphere. They shouldn’t be, says Leo Hickman
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We don’t want people who are thinking of coming for the first time to feel intimidated,” says Peter McDonnell, a spokesperson for the Climate Camp, the week-long protest camp starting this Sunday at Kingsnorth in Kent which aims to highlight the “climate madness” of plans to build the UK’s first coal-fired power station for 30 years near to the site. “That’s really, really important. People mustn’t be put off by scare stories.”
It’s easy to see why the organisers might be keen to stress this message to newbies: protest camps have a reputation for being heavy on politics and light on fun. But forget, say the organisers, images in your head of baton-wielding police and burning tyres: what first-timers will find on Saturday as they arrive will be a horseshoe-shaped camp divided up into 11 neighbourhoods representing different areas of the country, such as the south coast, West Midlands or Yorkshire. (Tellingly, Oxford has its very own neighbourhood.) Each neighbourhood will have its own camping area as well as its own catering facility. The idea is to help people form friendships and links that can then continue beyond the climate camp back home in their own locations.
(31 July 2008)
Melting ice threatens Arctic park
BBC Online
A national park in Canada’s Arctic has been partly closed after record high temperatures caused flash flooding.
Hiking trails were washed away and 22 visitors had to be evacuated by helicopter from the Auyuittuq National Park on Baffin Island in Nunavut.
A combination of melting permafrost and erosion means part of the park will remain shut until geologists can examine the damage.
The park consists mainly of glaciers, rock and polar sea ice.
The Auyuittuq – which means The Land that Never Melts – covers an area of over 19,000sq km (7,340sq miles) and is dominated by the huge Penny Ice Cap.
It is popular with hikers, climbers and skiers…
(1 August 2008)
Sierra warming: Climate change puts heat on high country
Tom Knudson, Sacramento Bee
Standing atop Yosemite’s tallest peak in August 1950, Hal Klieforth looked out across the Lyell glacier and marveled at how solid and unyielding it appeared.
“It was like Grand Canyon or the Sierra itself,” the 81-year-old meteorologist said recently. “It had been there for many years and probably would be there for many more.”
Today, as the boulder-strewn sheet of ice recedes in the summer sun, Klieforth is no longer so confident. “Now I guess there might be more people making a pilgrimage to these glaciers before they go,” he said.
No longer is climate change a distant drama of shrinking polar ice caps. As year-round ice fades from the saw-toothed summits of the Sierra Nevada, as Klieforth and others watch a world change in their lifetimes, it’s clear an unwelcome reality is at our doorstep: Global warming is local warming.
Just as rising worldwide temperatures are sowing problems in the far north and parts of Antarctica, so, too, are they bringing big changes to our own northern exposure in the Sierra and other mountain regions.
You can see it in the dead rust-red pines west of Yosemite National Park, the fading easel of wildflowers near Carson Pass south of Lake Tahoe and the parched bare banks of lakes and reservoirs.
(3 August 2008)
