Rob Edwards

Official warnings over climate-busting projects ignored

for Sunday Herald, 05 July 2009

 

Scottish ministers have ignored warnings from official advisers that their plans for improving airports and building roads could bust their targets to cut climate pollution.

Both the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) and the Sustainable Development Commission cautioned that major developments approved in the government’s National Planning Framework, published ten days ago, could put the aim of cutting emissions 80% by 2050 in jeopardy.

But ministers decided to go ahead with the developments despite their “potential for adverse effects” on the grounds that they were needed to support economic growth and “connectivity” within the UK and with other countries.

New Forth road bridge ‘could be cancelled’

from Sunday Herald, 28 June 2009

Government plans for a new road bridge over the Firth of Forth, airport improvements and coal-fired power stations have been thrown into doubt by the target to cut climate pollution agreed by the Scottish Parliament last week.

Senior civil servants are privately warning that major polluting projects will now be vulnerable to legal challenge and cancellation because they pose a threat to the new statutory target to cut greenhouse gas emissions 42% by 2020.

As a result, fears are growing that ministers will backtrack on the historic and world-leading climate change bill passed unanimously by MSPs on Wednesday. The eleventh-hour government amendment agreed by the parliament enables the 42% target to be lowered if experts advise that it is not achievable.

World calls on Scotland to act tough on climate

from Sunday Herald, 21 June 2009

Scotland’s target for cutting the pollution that is wrecking the climate will still hurl the world into an environmental catastrophe in which billions will suffer, scientists are warning.

The Scottish leader, Alex Salmond, and other political leaders are being told by 13 top climate experts that the current aim to reduce emissions 34% by 2020 is “wholly inadequate”. The target must be raised to at least 42% to help save the planet, they say.

The scientists’ dramatic plea, to be delivered tomorrow, is the latest in an extraordinary global groundswell of voices putting mounting pressure on ministers and MSPs to strengthen their climate change bill, due for its final debate in the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday.

Business leaders, celebrities, politicians, trade unions, students, faith groups, community organisations and environmentalists have united with leaders and campaigners in developing countries like Malawi, Ethiopia and the Maldives to demand tougher action from the Scottish government.

Three days to save the world

from Sunday Herald 21 June 2009

In three days time the Scottish Parliament will take the most important decision of its life. Ministers and MSPs will vote on what the nation will do over the next few years to combat one of the greatest threats facing the world.

There is now no doubt that, without urgent action to cut the pollution that is warming the globe, disaster beckons. Heatwaves, droughts, floods and storms will sweep across continents, killing millions and evicting millions more.

This is the year in which the world will decide, at a summit in Copenhagen in December, how to respond. And this is the week in which Scotland will choose how to help shape the arguments now brewing in London, Brussels, Washington and Beijing.

Alex Salmond and his Scottish Nationalist ministers are adamant that they are crafting a bill to combat climate change that will lead the world in its ambitions. But almost everyone else disagrees, including, most pointedly, an impressive collection of leading climate scientists.

As the Sunday Herald reveals today, 13 experts from major universities and institutions are damning the Scottish government’s target to cut emissions 34% by 2020 as “wholly inadequate”. They say that a target of at least 42% is essential to prevent “catastrophic climate change”.

BP lambasted for ‘greenwash’ over £10 tree-planting scheme

from Sunday Herald, 21 June 2009

One of the world’s biggest oil multinationals, BP, has been accused of climate “greenwash” by environmental groups for funding a £10 million project to plant trees in Scotland.

Part of BP’s investment in a massive ten-year woodland creation scheme has paid for a study to estimate the amounts of carbon stored by the trees. This information could be used by the company to duck responsibility for cutting the carbon pollution caused by its oil business, campaigners say.

The Scottish Forest Alliance, which brings BP together with the government’s Forestry Commission, the Woodland Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, is today unveiling its annual results.  Since 2000 almost 3.5 million trees have been planted or allowed to regenerate over an area one and a half times the size of Inverness.

The alliance predicts that this will result in the capture, or sequestration, of 377,000 tonnes of carbon over the next 100 years. This suggests that more than 50 tonnes of carbon pollution could be “offset” by planting a hectare of woodland.

Changing Cockenzie from coal to gas would create ‘carnage’

from Sunday Herald, 21 June 2009

A plan to upgrade one’s of Scotland’s dirtiest old power stations from coal to gas has come under fire for failing to do enough to cut climate pollution and for threatening “environmental carnage”.

Spanish-owned ScottishPower has announced a proposal to turn the coal-fired station at Cockenzie in East Lothian into a modern gas-fired plant. Because it is so polluting, the old station has to close by the end of 2015, and the company is now “examining options” for its replacement.

But environmentalists say that it may not be necessary to replace Cockenzie if enough electricity is generated by renewable sources like wind, wave and tidal power. And they point out that that gas, while less polluting than coal, still results in significant emissions of climate-wrecking carbon.

“Replacing one fossil fuel plant with another is the logic of the 20th century,” said the Green MSP, Patrick Harvie. “Ministers and power companies should be drawing on our own clean energy resources rather than making our future dependent on unreliable Russian gas imports.”

Eloquent plea for climate action now

02 June 2009

This short video makes an eloquent plea for action to cut the pollution that is wrecking the climate. It was made for Friends of the Earth Europe, and made quite an impression when it was shown at a climate change conference for environmental activists in Edinburgh at the weekend. 

It was made by the award-winning film director, Nic Balthazar, and involved more than 6,000 people cavorting in a highly choreographed fashion on the beach at Ostende on the Belgian coast. Further details about the video are here.

Malawi plea for climate justice from Scotland

24 May 2009

The Scottish government will this week come under strong pressure from leading Malawians and MSPs to close the loopholes in its proposed law to cut the pollution that is warming the globe.

A major conference of the Scotland Malawi Partnership and a new report will back moves by MSPs to amend the climate change bill now on its way through the Scottish Parliament.

There is mounting concern over the bill’s failure to set targets for reducing climate pollution before 2020, when cuts are most needed. The bill also sets no limit on the pollution credits it can buy in from other countries.

Scientists have warned that Malawi, like many other developing countries, will suffer more floods, droughts and malnutrition as global temperatures rise. The prospect has been described as “horrifying”, by Dr Peter West, chairman of the government-backed Scotland Malawi Partnership.

LibDem ‘hypocrisy’ over airport policy

from Sunday Herald, 24 May 2009

The Liberal Democrats have been accused of being “cynical and hypocritical” over environmental policy after it emerged that they are split over plans to expand Heathrow airport.

The Conservatives are also divided on the issue, which pits leading councillors in the north east of Scotland against their party colleagues in Edinburgh and London.

The divisions have opened up over the Labour government’s highly contentious plan to build a third runway at Heathrow airport, outside London. Although it is LibDem and Conservative policy to cancel the plan, it has been strongly backed by councillors in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.

Nationally, the two parties argue that the new runway will boost dangerous climate pollution and so should not be built. But in the north east, they say it is needed to support the region’s economic development by giving flights from Aberdeen airport more landing slots.

Revealed: a web of police bids to infiltrate protest groups

from Sunday Herald, 26 April 2009

A long-running and intricate web of covert police attempts to spy on peaceful activists and infiltrate legitimate protest movements in Scotland has been uncovered by the Sunday Herald.

Citizens protesting against nuclear bases on the Clyde have been offered cash for intelligence by Ministry of Defence (MoD) police, it has been claimed, while environmental activists report similar offers from Strathclyde Police.

They all back up the revelation made yesterday that Strathclyde police offered to pay Tilly Gifford, an anti-airport protester with Plane Stupid, for inside information. She recorded two police officers making the offer.

The veteran anti-nuclear activist, Jane Tallents from Helensburgh, spoke about how she and five others arrested for blockading the Coulport nuclear armaments depot on Loch Long were offered money. They were all invited one by one for “cosy chats” with two female MoD police officers, she said.

Police tactics backfire, say protesters

for Sunday Herald, 26 April 2009

One of the aims of police informers is to undermine, demoralise and divide protest groups, but in fact they can have the opposite effect.

At least that’s what campaigners said yesterday as details of attempts by Strathclyde and Minister of Defence police to offer cash for intelligence emerged.

“They want us to break up and disband but exactly the opposite is happening,” said Dan Glass, from the anti-airport group, Plane Stupid. “We’ve had lots of people getting in touch and offering us their support.”

RBS under fire for investing in climate pollution

from Sunday Herald, 12 April 2009

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is coming under mounting pressure to stop investing in climate-wrecking fossil fuels in favour of climate-friendly renewables.

Environmental campaigners are planning a series of new moves aimed at forcing the troubled bank to stop supporting controversial coal, oil and gas developments and back plans for solar, wind and wave power instead.

They say that, although the bank is now 70% publicly owned, it is still investing billions of pounds in projects that will increase the pollution that is warming the globe.

A coalition of environmental and development groups is demanding that the the Treasury tell the bank to switch its investments. They have also taken legal action to find out what environmental impact assessments have been made of the government’s £20 billion bailout of RBS.

Revealed: the relentless rise of Scotland's climate pollution

from Sunday Herald, 05 April 2009

For years successive governments have been proudly assuring us that Scotland’s climate-wrecking emissions have been going down. But it’s not true: they’ve actually been going up. 

An expert report due out this week will give the lie to the comforting and widespread notion that as a nation we are doing our bit to help protect the planet from catastrophic climate change.

In fact, because of all the pollution caused by the increasing number of goods and materials imported from other countries, the emissions for which Scotland is responsible have been relentlessly rising.

The revelation poses major challenges for the Scottish government’s climate change bill, currently on its way through parliament. Pollution from imports has historically been ignored by Scottish ministers.

Disaster death toll on the rise

from Sunday Herald, 05 April 2009

The number of major disasters in the world is bound to increase as global warming brings worse and worse storms, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is warning.

On the eve of World Health Day on Tuesday 7 April, the WHO’s director-general Dr Margaret Chan is calling on countries to do more to protect health services so they can help those injured by floods, winds and extreme weather.

“Worldwide, the number of emergencies and disasters is rising,” she says. “This trend is certain to continue as urbanisation crowds people together on unsafe sites and climate change brings more frequent and more severe extreme weather events.”

Scary scenario if Copenhagen climate talks fail

for The House Magazine, 31 March 2009

It’s been billed as the most important global summit ever. When leaders from nearly 200 countries gather in Copenhagen this December, they will literally hold the fate of the world in their hands.

Their task will be to agree how to cut the pollution that is disrupting the climate and threatening disaster. The decisions they make are likely to set the framework for global action on climate change for much of the rest of the century.

Unfortunately, the indications so far are that countries are not doing anything like enough. So the British government’s newly formed Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is facing huge diplomatic challenges if it is serious in its aim of negotiating a deal that will prevent global warming from becoming dangerous.

Climate catastrophe beckons unless world agrees pollution cuts

from Sunday Herald, 29 March 2009

The world is heading for an unparalleled climate catastrophe unless rich and poor nations agree drastic cuts in pollution over the next few months, according to a frightening new analysis by leading international experts.

All the current promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions will still see global temperatures rise by an average of four degrees centigrade by the end of the century, they say. This is hot enough to make most of the world uninhabitable, killing or making refugees of billions of people in Asia, Africa and America.

Even if Scotland, Europe and the US succeed in cutting their emissions by 80%, new coal and oil plants planned by China, India and other Asian countries will still double global carbon dioxide emissions to 16 billion tonnes by 2100, This would push carbon concentrations in the atmosphere well above the danger level.

The resulting floods, droughts, storms and mega-disasters would trigger mass starvation, mass migrations and resource wars, experts say. That’s why it is vital, they argue, that the rich nations now help fund developing countries to avoid repeating the mistakes of the industrial revolution.

Economic growth is a ‘horrible distortion’, say government advisers

from Sunday Herald, 29 March 2009

The economic system is broken, and attempts by governments to fix it by kick-starting growth and consumerism are “delusional” and “pathological”, ministers will be warned this week.

A ground-breaking new report by the leading environmental advisers to First Minister Alex Salmond and Prime Minister Gordon Brown will deliver a damning verdict on capitalism - and demand a radical shift to a fairer, more sustainable society.

The report has been compiled by the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), a group of 19 experts chaired by Jonathon Porritt which directly advises Salmond and Brown on environmental issues. Entitled ‘Prosperity without Growth?’, it is due to be published tomorrow.

The relentless and unquestioned pursuit of economic growth, founded on the ever-increasing consumption of material goods, has failed to bring social justice, prosperity or happiness, the report says. And it has trashed the planet in the process.

Ministers under fire for failing on climate

Exclusive, 22 March 2009

Scottish ministers are going to come under fire for failing to do enough to cut climate pollution by promoting energy efficiency and renewable heat technologies.

A report from the Scottish Parliament’s Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee to be published this week will criticise the government for leaving an “excessive” amount of policy detail unclear.

“This lack of clarity on the direction of policy makes it difficult for the committee to fulfil its responsibility to scrutinise the policy,” the report says. “The committee believes that this is regrettable.”

And the winners of the awards for stupidly trashing the planet are...

from Sunday Herald, 22 March 2009

The Scottish government, two power companies, a well-known bank, a no frills airline, an aristocrat, a water watchdog, a European anti-pollution scheme, and a billionaire tycoon with dodgy hair.

They may not seem to have much in common, but last night they were united at a tongue-in-cheek ceremony to celebrate their stupidity in Edinburgh. They were all shortlisted in the “stupid awards” for their heroic efforts to “insult the planet and the intelligence of the people of Scotland”.

The less-than-glittering affair was organised by Friends of the Earth Scotland and the World Development Movement to mark the release of a new film about the dangers of the world’s deteriorating climate. Called ‘The Age of Stupid’ and starring Pete Postlethwaite, it is being screened at venues across Scotland this week.

The colours of danger in India and Romford

comment, 13 March 2009
Mumbai, India

"You are advised not to leave your hotel in the morning", I was warned. Don’t venture onto the streets, or you will be doused with water and smeared with brightly coloured powder.

I was in Delhi and it was the Holi festival. Like many modern rituals, it has its roots in ancient religion but now seems to mostly involve excessive alcohol consumption, some cannabis and a little dancing.

It made the city feel very different, as for once the roads were empty and the ceaseless honking silenced. But it didn’t come without a few government health warnings.

Don’t drink and drive, warned large road signs reminding us how many drivers had recently been nicked for so doing. And the government put adverts in the newspapers urging Holi revellers to use only natural coloured powder.