Rob Edwards

Over 5,000 march for action to cut climate pollution

from Sunday Herald, 29 November 2015

Political parties, green campaigners, faith groups, trade unionists, students and an array of pantomime animals braved the biting wind and rain in Edinburgh yesterday to demand global action to cut the pollution that is causing climate chaos.

Over 5,000 colourfully dressed protestors from across Scotland marched through the city from the Meadows to Princes Street Gardens in the bitter cold to a rally demanding “climate justice” from world leaders gathering in Paris on Monday.

The march was Scotland’s contribution to more than 2,300 actions around the world designed to put pressure on negotiators at the United Nations climate summit. Up to 200 countries will be deciding over the next two weeks what they must do to prevent global warming causing more floods, droughts, heatwaves and other disasters.

The march was organised by the umbrella group, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, which urged leaders not to let the world down, as they did in Copenhagen in 2009. “We will be watching you,” the coalition’s chair, Tom Ballantine told the rally.

“We demand action because science and honesty require it,” he declared. “We demand action because justice requires it for our children and generations to come” and for “fairness for the poorest people in the most fragile places”.

Fury over proposal to ban camping by roads

from Sunday Herald, 29 November 2015

The Forestry Commission has sparked outrage by privately proposing to bar thousands of people from camping on roadsides across Scotland.

The government agency, one of the country’s largest landowners, suggested “a blanket ban on camping within 400 metres of a public road” in an internal minute from 2014, just released under freedom of information law.

According to countryside campaigners, such a widespread ban would undermine the “right to roam” law, turn the clock back more than a hundred years, and criminalise people enjoying the countryside. The commission, however, says it was “a throw-away comment”.

The comment was made during a meeting with Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority on 22 September last year. The meeting was to discuss the park’s controversial proposal to ban camping without permission on long stretches of loch shores, currently being considered by ministers.

A minute of the meeting records Forestry Commission Scotland as being “keen to secure solutions which covered all situations”. The commission complained that ”the current understanding of the meaning of wild camping was poor and that car boot camping and motorhome issues were growing across all of Scotland.”

The commission promised to raise concerns about the need for “wider review of car boot camping and antisocial behaviour and instigation of new measures to deal with it,” the minute said. “A possible suggestion for this could be a blanket ban on camping within 400m of a public road or recognised formal recreation facility car park.”

Trident spending leaves UK without adequate defences, says SNP

for Sunday Herald, 22 November 2015

The UK government failed to adequately protect Scotland from a Russia spy ship capable of monitoring and cutting vital underwater internet cables, an SNP MP has claimed.

The SNP blames plans to spend £167 billion on replacing the Trident nuclear weapons system for depriving conventional defences of the money they need to ensure that the UK is kept safe.

The defence minister, Penny Mordaunt, has revealed that a naval fleet meant to escort Russian ships through UK waters was not deployed when the Russian research vessel, Yantar, sailed up the east coast towards Norway on 24-26 October.

Instead Yantar was tracked by a single offshore patrol vessel, HMS Severn, because ”it made the most operational sense”. Mordaunt, however, kept further details secret in order not to “prejudice the capability, effectiveness or security of the armed forces.”

According to US naval officials, the Yantar has two self-propelled submersible vehicles capable of observing and cutting cables miles under the sea. As well as being seen around the UK, the boat was tracked last month by US forces as it moved down the east coast of America on a visit to Cuba.

Major wildlife conference under fire for corporate “greenwash”

from Sunday Herald, 22 November 2015

A major international conference in Edinburgh this week aimed at conserving wildlife is facing protests for helping big companies “profit from greenwash”.

The World Forum on Natural Capital to discuss how businesses can value and protect nature has run into fierce criticism from campaign groups in Scotland and India for hosting companies with controversial environmental records.

Amongst those due to give a presentation is Mary Draves, a global director of the US chemical giant, Dow. Critics hold the company responsible for the fallout-out from 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, which caused 25,000 deaths.

Carina Mueller, a scientist from the UK-Dutch consumer goods firm, Unilever, is also scheduled to address the conference. The company has been attacked for failing to properly clean up mercury contamination and compensate former workers at a thermometer factory in Kodaikanal in South India.

The World Forum on Natural Capital is organised by the Scottish Wildlife Trust and backed by other major environmental groups. Due to take place on 23-24 November in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, it is expected to attract over 500 delegates from more than 35 countries.

Planned cuts in carbon emissions ‘not enough’ to prevent climate disaster

from Sunday Herald, 15 November 2015

Cuts in climate pollution so far promised by countries around the world will fail to prevent floods, droughts, heatwaves and other catastrophic changes, according to the latest analysis by the United Nations (UN).

Current commitments to reduce carbon emissions in the run-up to the crucial Paris climate summit at the end of the month are only about half of what’s needed to reduce the risk of disaster, creating a widening “emissions gap” over the next 15 years, the UN has warned.

Environmentalists, experts and politicians fear that the summit of world leaders – the most important since Copenhagen in 2009 - could end in failure unless major polluters agree further reductions. Some insist they are still optimistic about the outcome, but others are distinctly pessimistic.

“Paris is obviously going to be a failure,” said Dr Richard Dixon, director of Friends of the Earth Scotland. “The proposed targets fall far short of the effort needed to deliver the 2ºC world that world leaders have promised, let alone the 1.5ºC temperature limit which is needed to protect the most vulnerable people, nations and wildlife.”

The world is aiming to limit global warming to an average of less than two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial temperatures. Scientists say that this is the limit beyond which the impacts of climate change are likely to become catastrophic and irreversible - though some also suggest that a rise of 1.5 degrees could have serious consequences.

Most countries have now set out in reports to the UN for the Paris summit the cuts in emissions they plan to achieve. An analysis by the UN Environment Programme has added them all together and concluded out that they will only result in a reduction of around 11 gigatonnes of carbon by 2030 – less than half of that required to give the world a good chance of staying within the two degree limit (see table below).

Scottish ministers under attack for cutting air tax

from Sunday Herald, 15 November 2015

Scottish ministers have come under fierce fire for planning to boost climate pollution by cutting one of the few taxes on flying.

The government’s promise to halve and then abolish air passenger duty (APD) in Scotland would be “totally counterproductive” say leading environmentalists, who are pressing for the tax to stay.

The SNP government wants to help the Scottish economy by cutting APD 50 per cent in April 2018 and then getting rid of it altogether “when public finances permit”. But the plan has provoked growing opposition because it could make it more difficult to meet Scotland’s ambitious targets to combat climate change.

Mike Robinson, a board member of the umbrella group, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, who sits on the government’s APD stakeholder forum, pointed out that aviation has kept growing despite the tax.

“All this cut will do is to leave a handful of regular fliers slightly better off, the aviation industry a little richer, and the tax man and the environment very much the poorer,” he told the Sunday Herald.

“And this in an industry which according to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the UK Treasury is one of the least taxed industries in the world.”