Dear friends,
Welcome to the Rising Clyde #13, and a belated happy lunar new year! As usual, be sure to subscribe to our joint Coalition Calendar to stay up to date on our events, and check in on this edition’s soundtrack to remind yourself why we need trade unions
From 27-28 March 2021, we will hold our second Global Gathering for Climate Justice. Join us for From the Ground Up #2: Take Action Now, to move our thinking towards how we can collectively tackle the multiple crises we are facing.
The COP26 Coalition is all of us – please lend us your capacity and time to work together. Whether you’re a tech wizard, a facilitator, or can help us spread the word, we need all hands on deck. Join our crew here.
Get involved!
As ever, there’s plenty of ways to lend a hand! For those of you who love messaging, framing and social media, the Comms WG are meeting on Wednesday 25th at 3pm.
Next week we’re having another policy discussion, this one on the Climate and Ecological Emergency (CEE) Bill, on Tuesday 2nd March at 6:30pm! With the Bill soon being returned to Parliament, we will have the CEE Bill Alliance presenting to us the newest draft, as well as Biofuelwatch outlining some concerns around the bill – join us to learn and discuss!
Also next week, the Mobilisations WG will be meeting on Wednesday, 3rd March, 6:30pm to plan actions in Glasgow on 6th December.
News and Resources
We’ve often spoken about “net-zero” pollution targets and the offsetting mechanisms and “nature-based solutions” companies and governments will rely on to deliver them but nothing tells the story as starkly as the news that Shell’s 2050 net-zero target actually involved them expanding their production of fossil gas by 20%, exposing the potential or indeed inevitability of this sort of thing happening. It was a bad few weeks for Shell, who prior to their much-ridiculed announcement had been ordered by a Dutch court to pay damagesto Nigerian farmers for oil spills between 2004-2007.
The fact is that fossil fuels have got to stay in the ground. From a climate perspective, it’s crystal clear. But it is also clear from a very immediate global health perspective: a new study has linked 1 in 5 deaths worldwide to fossil fuel air pollution.
Unfortunately, a lot of states around the world have invested their funds into National Oil Companies (NOC), and are continuing to do so, even though the oil majors are lowering their price estimates. With the energy transition speeding up, these state oil firms risk losing 400 billion dollars that could have been spent on healthcare, education or other things that aren’t silly and actually help their citizens. The result could be the worsening of global inequality, as most of the NOCs are located in nations with 280 million people live below the poverty line.
Rather than transitioning away from deadly fossil fuels, we’re seeing a renewed push for dangerous false solutions. The latest nonsense is from the Swedish State-owned Space Company that is involved in the development of solar geoengineering technology that would reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth. Our governments would rather fight the sun rather than changing our economic system!
Greenland possesses some of the world’s largest oil and gas and mineral reserves.Currently, there are about 70 active large-scale exploration and exploitation licenses in Greenland – which could turn into active extraction projects very soon. 141 NGOs have come together urging the Danish government and European Union to issue a moratorium for mining and oil and gas extraction projects.
Our friends at 350 have written a really important brief on how the climate movement have gotten it wrong in how to speak on climate migration. Even if it was well-meaning, climate groups using “crisis language like ‘mass migration’, ‘unprecedented migration’, ‘waves of migration’ feed into this perceived ‘fear factor’ or ‘threat narrative’ and will be used to justify treating those that have been forcibly displaced by a rapidly warming world with walls, bullets, drones, cops, and cages.” Here is how to fix it.
If you want more detail on how to talk about climate migration (for example, because you’re interested in joining our comms group), feel free to read thisbriefing.
In case that you haven’t read it yet, check out Framing Climate Justice, an amazing project on how our movement can better frame climate change as a human and a justice issue. Read it and join our comms working group straight after!
Also, our friends in the Asian movements have sounded the alarm this lunar new year – if you’d be interested in helping them out from a UK perspective, click here.
Dear friends,
Welcome to 2021, and to the Rising Clyde #12! As usual, be sure to subscribe to our joint Coalition Calendar to stay up to date on our events, check out this edition’s music video for a short glimpse into the future climate negotiations, and check out our amazing youtube videos, with new content from our global gathering last November!
Also, a public service announcement: Take to the streets on the Global Day of Action on 6th November 2021 – as not everyone can come to Glasgow this November, we will mobilise across the world in every country and continent, as well as in every town and city in the UK. Spread the word and start organising now.
Last November, 8000 of us gathered to educate each other and strategise together on Climate Justice. From 27-28 March 2021, we will hold our second Global Gathering for Climate Justice. Join us for From the Ground Up #2: Take Action Now, to move our thinking towards how we can collectively tackle the multiple crises we are facing.
Our Call for Contributions is still open until 15 February for our allies from the Global South. Submit a session here.
The COP26 Coalition is all of us – please lend us your capacity and time to work together. Whether you’re a tech wizard, a facilitator, or can help us spread the word, we need all hands on deck. Join our crew here.
Last week, our political strategy working group held a discussion meeting discussing Net-Zero and what to do about it. If you missed it, read the notes here, and be sure to come to our next political strategy meeting on levers and intel this Tuesday at 6pm.
If you’re interested in helping the coalition out on our website, socials and newsletters, please come to our Comms Working Group on Wednesday, 3pm!
Even with Covid-19 uncertainty, Glasgow will remain a centrepiece of our mobilisations. Come to our Glasgow Local Working Group Meeting on Wednesday, at 5pm, to discuss how we can make the most of it from now to November!
And in the week after, our Trade Union Caucus will reconvene on Tuesday, 16 February at 7pm, while our next Mobilisations meeting, focusing on our strategy of escalation towards COP26, meets on the day after, on Wednesday, 17 February at 6:30pm.
News and Resources
Heard the fuzz about carbon pricing? Here’s a good article on why carbon pricing sounds good on paper, but isn’t the genius silver bullet governments think it is – because for all of its theoretical appeal, carbon pricing ignores political power.
In totally unsurprising news, it turns out that one of the parent firms of a COP26 sponsor has just last year opened four gas-fired power plants in Mexico. We urgently need to kick polluters out of…basically everything, so consider going to this event on how a web of money fuels polluters around the world, by Friends of the Earth Scotland if you want to get your hands dirty.
In further bad news, the fossil fuel industry is building a pipeline through the baltics, which is a major move to lock us further into gas infrastructure.
Africa isn’t one of the main source of greenhouse gases, only responsible for about 4% of global emissions – at the same time, the continent is one of the most vulnerable to climate change. Additionally, Africa is home to over 70 geoengineering projects, as this interactive map shows. Mainly funded by North America, Europe and Australia, the very places most responsible for climate change are now using Africa as a playground for large-scale and high-risk geoengineering projects.
But we don’t want to only complain about things, so here’s some good news: Shell has been ordered to pay for oil damages done to Nigerian farmers – or as Eric Dooh, one of the plaintiffs says: “Finally, there is some justice for the Nigerian people suffering the consequences of Shell’s oil.”
If you’re pondering what this sudden drive to put a price on nature means, we’ve got you covered: Listen to George Monbiot’s “The Pricing of Everything” to find out where this all comes from, and that commodification of nature isn’t actually a good thing.
If you’re wondering what’s going on with all this Green New Deal chat, here’s a good article for you explaining how a Green New Deal is only a first step that lays bare the contradictions in our economies, and needs to push further for “cooperation over competition; create public accountability rather than private control by an unelected few; offer solidarity when unity is scarce; restore a public utility to common ownership; and fund programs and launch initiatives of economic empowerment for all working people.”
And lastly: Solidarity with British Gas Workers! Thousands of GMB members at British Gas are taking action over the company’s strategy to fire them all and rehire them on worse terms and conditions. Read our Solidarity Statement here, and donate to our Solidarity Fundraiser to support the strike!
Dear friends,
Welcome to 2021, and to the Rising Clyde #11, our first edition for an exciting new year! Be sure to subscribe to our joint Coalition Calendar to stay up to date on our events. As it is also Burns Night soon, tune into this edition’s soundtrack to get you in the mood for our upcoming Coalition Social.
We can’t wait until November for Action on Climate Justice. This Spring, 27-28 March, we will come together again for From the Ground Up #2: Take Action Now.
Due to the difficulties of school closures and another national lockdown in the United Kingdom, we have extended the deadline for submissions until 31st Jan 2021 for all UK & European contributors.
International allies from the global south are invited to attend our International Assembly on 4th February to discuss potential topics, and can submit contributions until 15th February.
As we look into the new year, there is lots to be done!
ICYMI, in December we projected an important message onto the COP26 venue. The “Climate Ambition Summit” that the Government was hosting brought the expected high score on our bullshit bingo cards.
Though the U.K. did, at least, announce the end of public financing of fossil fuels overseas, somebody had to cut through the celebratory jamboree and remind the suits that 2020 was the hottest year on record and that “Carbon Neutrality” is a fairy tale, that Net-zero is not zero, and that an assumption that we will be saved by technologies like Carbon Capture and Storage are, at best, wishful thinking.
Of course, these summits always find new ways to achieve next to nothing meaningful, as Greta Thunberg noted about the One Planet summit in Paris this month.
In the face of such inaction, it’s heartening to know that Extinction Rebellion have released a new action strategy and waves of rebellion which you can read here and that Fridays For Future International have announced the next Day of Action as 19th March, which you can support by calling for #NoMoreFalsePromises.
If any of you in Scotland do plan on taking direct action during these lockdown times, these activist COVID Guidelines will come in handy. But even if you’re not up for direct action, you can help local residents in Fife in their campaign to close the Mossmorran petrochemical plant.
And if you were still wondering whether the UK government’s race to zero is enough to tackle the multiple crises we face, here’s the youth with some real talk for you.
Dear friends,
Welcome to the Rising Clyde #10. Be sure to subscribe to our joint Coalition Calendar to stay up to date on our events, and as this is our last newsletter for this year, tune into this edition’s soundtrack to bring you into a festive mood.
Tomorrow, the UK Government wants to brand itself as a climate leader at their “Climate Ambition Summit”, when in reality, their target is unlikely to keep us below 2°C, never mind 1.5°C warming. We’re heading to 3 degree warming if we continue on the current path.
The UK’s claim of leadership rings especially hollow while it continues to finance fossil fuels, and uses green pledges to reward the corporations that caused the climate crisis, instead of genuinely addressing the climate crisis in a way that would tackle inequalities in the UK at the same time.
We don’t need ambition, we need action. The science is very clear – the climate emergency we are facing will have catastrophic impacts, far beyond the already devastating ecological crises affecting so many across the planet. These impacts will hit working-class communities, communities of colour, and people in the Global South the hardest. Winning slowly is the same as losing in this fight. We need concrete action now.
So, what to do tomorrow? Play along at the UK Government’s Climate Ambition Summit tomorrow, starting at 2pm with our bingo! Listen out for false solutions, greenwashing and lies and mark them off on your bingo card! Share your results on socials under #ClimateAmbitionBingo and let us know what your favourite empty phrase was!
But we don’t just shout from the sidelines, we platform those speaking truth to power: Last Wednesday, representatives from the international climate justice movement came together to hold governments and those in power to account and to call out the hollow lack of ambition in the Cop26 President’s Climate Ambition Summit.
Watch the recording of our international press conference here:
While getting ready for our holiday break, make sure you tune into next week’s Culture Working Group Meeting on Tuesday, 15 December at 6pm. We are also having a first science meeting on Wednesday, 16 December at 12pm to talk about what role the scientific community can and should play in the Coalition – if you’re interested in how scientists can help us explain the urgent need for societal transformation, please come along!
Also, we have been active on the streets of Glasgow again – keep an eye out on our socials this weekend for something big!
In good news concerning bad people, Shell is falling apart over how fast their energy transition should go. Of course, even their best target was never enough, and we should not trust the companies who caused the crisis to fix it – but it’s still delightful to see the infighting.
In further good news, the youth are again showing how it’s done: six young folk from Portugal have sued 33 European states over climate change – and the European Court of Human Rights took it seriously, requiring the defendant states to respond.
Earlier this week, Denmark announced that it is phasing out all exploration of North Sea Oil and Gas… but not until 2050. Notice a pattern here? Still, this is arguably a lot more than Scotland has done…
Earlier this year in South Africa, on October 22, anti-coal activist Fikile Ntshangase was assassinated at her home near young grandchildren. Ntshangase, 63, was shot five times by a gang of six men a few weeks after refusing a $20,000 bribe by the coal mine: “I refused to sign. I cannot sell out my people. And if need be, I will die for my people.”
Here’s your bi-weekly reminder that carbon offsetting is a load of crap big conservation organisations are scamming us with.
And if you haven’t had enough of UK government hypocrisy yet, we’ve got you: Supporting oil pipelines in Africa is not “climate leadership” no matter how you dress it up.
In breaking news that will surprise absolutely nobody: The world’s wealthiest 1% account for more than twice the combined carbon emissions of the poorest 50%, according to the UN. Let’s save the climate by helping the rich adopt a more modest lifestyle.
And while we are all glad to see the last few weeks of Trump, Biden and Harris need to be held accountable: Over 100 orgs representing millions of people in the US have written a letter to Biden-Harris outlining what the US must do to make “returning to the Paris Agreement” anything more than a cheap publicity stunt.
And finally, as we are at the last newsletter for this year: 2020 was grim, but there also have been important victories for our movement across the world. Nathan Thanki from Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice explains what it takes to win Climate Justice. Happy holidays!
Dear friends,
The last few weeks have been a blast! From The Ground Up: Global Gathering for Climate Justice has seen 8000 registrations for 53 sessions. But we are just getting started, with some massive mobilisations ahead of us over the next year!
Here’s how you can join us in the coming months:
👥 We are holding an All Coalition Meeting on the 3rd December at 7pm, to reflect on the Global Gathering, and to discuss the road ahead of us until COP26. Everyone is welcome to join!
⚠️ On 12th December, the UK government is going to use the five year anniversary of the Paris-Agreement to put out a bunch of hogwash to look green and “ambitious”. We all know that the UK government and their corporate allies are pushing for a death sentence with net-zero 2050. Stay tuned for our plan to let them know that we aren’t falling for their lies.
🌸In Spring, we will hold From the Ground Up 2, focused on how our movement across the world is resisting governments and corporations, and how we can use these strategies to disrupt business as usual in the lead-up to COP26.
Tune into this newsletter’s soundtrack while reading, and subscribe to our joint Coalition Calendar to keep up to date with coming actions and gatherings.
If you have time and capacity to lend us, please join one of our upcoming working group meetings:
Comms WG, Every Wednesday, 10am
Global Solidarity, Wednesday 2nd December, 5pm
Trade Union Group, Tuesday, 8th December, 6pm
Policy and Perspectives, Tuesday, 8th December, 7pm
Glasgow Local, Wednesday 9th November, 6pm
Do you hate greenwashing? Want to call out governments and corporations for their false solutions? Work for us! We’re looking for an experienced Scottish campaigner to join the COP26 Coalition as a Mobilisations and Digital Engagement Officer, to help us bring hundreds of thousands of people to the streets next year! The deadline is 7 December, apply here!
Our logistics group has been busy and hosted a few meetings on how to best support our international allies in coming to Glasgow next year. One of the most important discussions was on how we should help organise venues during COP26. If you’ve missed this, we have recorded the meeting here with some excellent presentations on COP26 and Venues.
On Monday, our pals at Stop Climate Chaos Scotland are hosting a webinar on Finance and Climate Justice, on the need for increased climate finance to global-south countries hit hard by climate change, and Scotland’s role in creating such change. Join here!
Right now until November 19, young people from across the world are taking responsibility while adults aren’t: Watch this video from young climate activists calling out governments on their failures, join them in debates during Mock COP, and let’s all hope that our governments are going to copy some of their homework from the youth.
And if your appetites for webinars and zoom discussions is still not satisfied, come to the Right to Energy Forum 2020 to debate energy poverty, how it affects those worst off the most, and how we can create a united movement to end energy poverty across the world.
Help the Kick Polluters Out Campaign get to 15,000 signatures to keep Polluters away from COP26 (they’re almost there!). This is especially important considering that one of the sponsors of COP26 is the second worst polluter in Scotland.
And remember, if you have exciting news and resources from our movement, send them to us so that we can share!
Welcome to a special edition of the Rising Clyde, the COP26 Coalition’s newsletter! Tune in to this edition’s soundtrack (which we will teach everyone in the Coalition to sing for next year), and get ready for the Global Gathering starting this Thursday!
We’re now less than a week away from From the Ground Up: Global Gathering for Climate Justice, with over 3000 people now signed up! Continue to spread the word, prepare for some amazing programme announcements, and SIGN UP!
To make the festival a success, we need YOUR help to get the word out as far as possible. Please give us a follow, and help us out by liking, commenting and (most importantly!) sharing our events.
Here’s a preview of some of our best sessions, from Trade Union organisers discussing just transition to indigenous campaigners teaching us about indigenous territorial rights for climate action.
Same Storm, Different Boats: Second Political Statement
We, the COP26 Coalition, have come together under the common cause of climate justice. In our last political statement, we drew attention to the deeply entwined nature of the multiple crises we face. Of course, these still persist – we still face a devastating pandemic that is devastating the most vulnerable in society, as well as an unprecedented recession destroying people’s livelihoods, and all the while the climate crisis continues.
But one important thing has changed since then: everywhere around the world, grassroots movements are collectively speaking truth to power, holding those responsible for the many crises we face.
To reflect this, and to further unite activists across the world to challenge the greenwashing coming from governments and corporations around the world, we have released a second political statement.
Any civil society organisation can sign in support, but please make sure you do this by Wednesday 11 November. Please circulate the statement in your circles.
And now, as a treat, one last peak at an amazing session from our gathering next week…
Welcome to the Rising Clyde #7, the COP26 Coalition’s newsletter! Take a minute to sign up to our shared calendar before tuning into this edition’s soundtrack…
…and get ready for our Global Gathering!
We’re so excited to finally be able to share our promo video for the Global Gathering.
To make the festival a success, we will need YOUR help to get the word out as far as possible. Please give us a follow, and help us out by liking, commenting and (most importantly!) sharing our upcoming announcements.
Here’s an exclusive preview of some of our confirmed sessions, with many more to follow:
FEMINISM DURING THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY – with Silvia Federici (feminist theorist and activist), Sabrina Fernandes (Brazillian Activist, Sociologist, Professor, and Youtuber), Veronica Gago (Ni Una Menos, Argentia), Dilar Dirik (Kurdish Women’s Movement), Judith Flores (Assembly of Popular and Diverse Women, Ecuador)
INDIGENOUS SOLUTIONS TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS – with Tuntiak Katan (Global Alliance of Territorial Communities) Levi Sucre, (Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests) Sonia Guajajara (Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil)
RED, BLACK AND GREEN NEW DEAL – convened by the Movement for Black Lives, this session seeks to deepen connections between the struggles for Black liberation and for Global Climate Justice. Bringing together Black leaders in North America, Africa and across the African diaspora, we’ll be convening a strategic discussion on how we can leverage this political moment of international uprisings in defence of Black life to unify calls for reparations for colonialism, enslavement and exploitation, ecological and climate debts, as well as what forms of transnational Black solidarity are needed to build towards them.
We are urgently looking for volunteers to support our online gathering with:
Technical Support (Zoom)
Online Facilitation (Zoom)
Social Media Moderation (Slack, Facebook)
Please sign up on this spreadsheet with your availability, and share it with your networks and organisations!
We will host a tech & facilitation training session for all crew members on:
Our Trade Union Group is meeting again on November 4th – if you’re a Trade Union member or labour organiser, please join us for a comradely discussion on the climate justice and labour movements, and how we can organise to win. Sign up here for the trade union mailing list, or join a Trade Union today if you’re not already a member!
We are in the process of forming a group for people of colour in the coalition, as well as a group for our young members. If you’re interested in getting involved with either of these, please get in touch!
Our Mobilisations Working Group is meeting again in the first week of November. Join us to discuss how we can take action on the weekend of the G20 meeting, and against the UK government’s Paris Agreement celebration event on December 12th.
Week of Action for a Just and Green Recovery! From 4th-11th November, groups across Scotland will be taking action for a recovery plan that works for the people and the planet. Hundreds of you have already signed up to meet your MSPs as part of the Virtual Lobby for Real Change, and workers will be taking their demands directly to politicians on Wednesday November 4th.. The Just and Green Recovery campaign is backed by nearly 100 organisations from across Scotland, including trade unions, community groups and NGO – find out more on their new website.
After a great session on “What Climate Negotiations are Really Like”, our speaker series Boiling Point sadly comes to an end this week. All of our previous sessions are now available to watch on our Youtube Channel – please send us any feedback and ideas for future sessions!
In happy local news, Extinction Rebellion Scotland today blocked the entrances of INEOS Headquarters in Grangemouth! INEOS is Scotland’s worst polluter, circumventing Scotland’s ban on fracking by importing fracked gas from the US, while their multi-billionaire owner Jim Ratcliffe recently moved to Monaco to avoid paying taxes on his profits. Sending strength and solidarity to the activists blocking them!
This was not the only exciting development in Scotland, where for the first time local residents held a rally against Shell and Exxon’s Mossmorran Gas site, protesting the pollution, noise and flaring from the plant. This coincides with Shell’s latest threat to cut health and safety jobs at the site, making Mossmorran even more dangerous to local communities. You can read more about Mossmorran’s impact here.
This week, the EU attempted to reform their Common Agricultural Framework to make it less damaging. Sadly, they’ve not quite managed to do that – as Friends of the Earth Europe explain, the Green Deal package and its component parts “fall short of what is needed to tackle the climate and ecological emergency.”
In Colombia, a huge procession of Indigenous peoples has arrived in Bogota, amid a national strike. The minga brought together tens of thousands of people from all over the country, with leaders asking to meet the President as they demanded the 2016 peace deal to be implemented, proper measures to combat rising COVID-induced poverty, and for their stolen lands to be given back. The President has fled the city.
A resounding victory for MAS in the recent Bolivian elections means that the extreme right extractivists have been defeated at the ballot box by an incredible antifascist and anti-imperialist mobilisation. We’re in awe of all the campaigners, activists and trade unionists who made this victory happen.
Thousands-strong protests in Nigeria against police brutality by SARS, the “Special Anti-Robbery Squad, have unfolded into widespread civil unrest against the Nigerian government.
Japan becomes the latest country to announce a 2050 “net-zero” target. As one of Asia’s leading financiers of coal, Japan’s pledgeshows how meaningless a “net”-zero target can be. Watch this video from Boiling Point on why “Net-Zero” is a great slogan, but a dodgy policy….
Across the Global South, many movements who fight for climate justice fight for other related causes, including debt cancellation. Last week, they held a global week of action targeting the IMF/World Bank and G20 Finance Ministers meetings.
And as you all know, the US Election is happening very soon. Obviously we don’t know what’s going to happen, but this week we got a glimpse into the timeline where Donald Trump loses and concedes: he’ll come back to Scotland to build a second golf course in Aberdeenshire…
…and we’ll be there to show him exactly what we think of that.
Welcome to the Rising Clyde number six, the COP26 Coalition’s newsletter! We have some big announcements to make in this one, so make sure to get comfortable, sign up to our shared calendar and listen to this to remind yourself that land belongs to the people and not to rich landowners. Also, remember to submit any news and resources you have from the climate movement here!
Over the two weeks, we have worked hard on the global gathering and are excited to announce that we are open for registration. We had over 160 amazing submissions from across the climate movement, and have asked organisations to cooperate wherever possible to include as many perspectives and contributions as possible in our programme. You can register here.
To make this gathering a success, we will need a lot of hands on deck. We will need teams to
(1) help coordinate the facilitation of sessions,
(2) help with the technical aspects of the gathering, and
(3) help organise translation and captioning of key sessions.
If you’re able to help with either of these, please message us, and join one of these teams at the next project team meeting on Wednesday 14 October, 1pm-2:30pm.
Now, please share our event widely across our networks, and bring your family and friends (and enemies) to the gathering.
We are going towards the 5th session of our speaker series, “Boiling Point: Everything you ever wanted to know about international climate change negotiations but were too afraid to ask.” where we explore the basics of international climate change politics and the infamous COP. Experts with years of experience working behind the scenes of major summits will share their knowledge of the history and process of the talks as well as the major issues and main players. Boiling Point runs weekly on Thursdays until 22nd October.
In some really exciting news, we had a first call with our newly established Trade Union group last week, creating a space in the Coalition for rank and file union members and organisers to meet, chat and openly discuss ideas and topics around climate change and just transition. If you are a union member, join our mailing list, and join our trade union slack channel. If you’re not a trade union member, you should change this.
As we are a broad and diverse Coalition with a lot of perspectives and viewpoints on how to best fight for climate justice, we’re going to host a discussion on nature-based solution on 20 October, 1pm-2:30pm, to chat about what they are, and what chances and risks come with them. Come along!
As the UK still presides over the worst immigration system in Europe and continues to explore options to make it worse, we need to start thinking about how to best support our international allies coming to Scotland for COP. Join the logistics group’s meeting on Visa support to help with this crucial task.
As always: our Comms group needs support. Whether you’re interested in Social Media, Press, or anything else, please join us next Wednesday, 14 October at 10am in our Comms working group. The zoom link will be in here.
Also, here’s a few other events happening across Scotland:
The amazing Glasgow Calls Out Polluters are campaigning to Kick Out Polluters from COP, and are organising a discussion about this tomorrow at 11am!
Our friends at Extinction Rebellion Scotland have this week occupied the Scottish Parliament to call for Scotland to drop Big Oil. Join their campaign to Make the Connections between Finance, Fossil Fuels and Government!
To raise money for asylum seekers in Glasgow, Climate Camp Scotland is organising a Webinar on Borders and Climate Justice on Tuesday, 13 October at 6:30pm. Everyone welcome!
From 19 November to 1 December, the MockCOP will bring together youth delegates in discussion about climate justice. Find out more here.
You’re probably aware that Exxon is one of the worst companies on Earth. However, this week, it has been revealed that the company has been secretlyplanning for even more carbon emissions. And if you need an illustration on how bad this will be for communities across the world, Exxon’s Mossmorran plant in Scotland has been flaring again this week, looking like a gigantic fireball visible from Edinburgh and beyond.
Amazingly, that wasn’t the most evil news these past few weeks, as the British Government’s head villain Priti Patel took the opportunity of a pandemic to propose using decommissioned oil rigs as detention centres for migrants.
Welcome to the fifth edition of The Rising Clyde, a newsletter from the COP26 Coalition! Just a reminder to send us any resources, articles and random things from the climate movement here! Also, remember to join our shared calendar to make it easier to find the dates and details for upcoming meetings and events. For now, click here for the Soundtrack for #5 and enjoy your pre-2nd-lockdown read!
As announced in the last newsletter, the Coalition is organising From The Ground Up: An Online Global Gathering for Climate Justice from 12 to 16 November 2020. The Gathering will not only mark the moment COP26 was supposed to take place, but will be an opportunity for us to connect with allies across the world to learn from each other, to educate ourselves on climate justice, and to strategise together about where our movement should go in the coming months.
After this, we will coordinate days of action around the weekend of the G20, 21-22 November, to hold world leaders accountable for their failing to address the multiple crises we face. Join the Mobilisations group to help develop our plans.
Thank you for the overwhelming interest, we already received over 100 submissions for sessions, and are still waiting for contributions from our international allies. In the next few weeks, we will arrange a programme that reflects the depth and diversity of our movement and enables us to develop a joint strategy for the coming year. If you would like to help with this, join us at the project team meeting on Wednesday, 30 September at 1pm.
If you have any questions, contact our coordinators Quan and Camille at any time. In the meantime, spread the word!
We are currently running our online speaker series, “Boiling Point: Everything you ever wanted to know about international climate change negotiations but were too afraid to ask.” In it we explore the basics of international climate change politics and the infamous COP. Experts with years of experience working behind the scenes of major summits will share their knowledge of the history and process of the talks as well as the major issues and main players. Boiling Point runs weekly on Thursdays from 17th September through 22nd October.
The next and third session, “A Potted History of Climate Change Negotiations – Part 2” will take place on 1 October at 2pm (BST). Our third session will explore developments since the Paris Agreement with the Third World Network’s Meena Raman, a Malaysian public interest lawyer who has actively participated in the UNFCCC negotiations since 2007. Register here!
The COP26 Coalition is launching our Trade Union Working Group on Wednesday 30th September at 6pm. This meeting is open to all rank and file activists, officials, and trade union staff. Please help us reach out to beyond the usual suspects – and forward this invite to trade union members who you think would be interested! You can join the meeting here.
As one of the ways to mark this November, the Glasgow Local Working Group will hold live readings of key passages of the IPCC reportthat focus on frontline communities, indigenous groups, and the necessity of societal transformation. If you’re based in Glasgow, or live close to fossil fuel infrastructure in Scotland, and are interested in reading parts of the report, please get in touch with Patrick and Katie!
There’s some exciting actions coming up: Our pals at Extinction Rebellion Scotland plan a series of actions to make the connectionsbetween fossil fuels, finance, and the government. If you’re free between 19-25 October and want to disrupt those most responsible for the climate crisis, join them!
In further Scottish news: Tripod and Young Friends of the Earth Scotland are offering an organising training for Scottish climate, environmental and social activists. If you’re a Scottish activist, apply here for Building Power.
And lastly: Climate Camp Scotland is fundraising on behalf of Migrants Organising for Rights and Empowerment (MORE), who are in urgent need of funding. If you have anything to spare, please support their fundraiser, and if you’re broke, share it with your rich friends!
This month wildfires yet again ripped through California, displacing thousands of people and causing untold damage. In the blazes, over a million 1000-year old Joshua trees perished. Will what follows be, as Mike Davis writes, a new apocalyptic “second nature?”
If not fire, flood: ¾ of a million people have been affected and many displaced across Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Ghana, Niger, Mali, Nigeria, Congo Republic and Senegal. This is worrying for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) who point out that these populations are now increasingly vulnerable to epidemics.
Worryingly, displacement is only going to increase as climate change intensifies. The Ecological Threat Register this month predicted that 1.2 billion people could be displaced in the next 30 years.
The U.N. is not only worried about humans but also for many other species. A recent landmark report warns that the rate of species extinctions is accelerating.
Such unprecedented destruction is not, however, everyone’s fault. Oxfam’s recent “Confronting Carbon Inequality” report points out that, between 1990-2015, the richest 1% alone were responsible for double the carbon emissions of the poorest half of the world’s population. This builds on their earlier findings that the richest 10% of the global population are responsible for the same emissions as the poorest 3.1 billion people.
Another way of attributing responsibility shows that the global supply chains of multinational companies such as BP, Coca-Cola and Walmart are responsible for 20% of carbon emissions.
Of course blame must be laid at the door of the likes of CDC, the UK’s development finance agency, who continue to invest in fossil fuels overseas.
Why let inconvenient facts get in the way of a good story, though, when you could do as the EU does and simply use the “creative accounting” of net-zero to pretend you have ceased polluting when in fact you have done no such thing!
After huge pressure from the EU, this week Xi Jinping pledged his country would peak carbon emissions by 2030 and reach “carbon neutrality” by 2060. While these are encouraging sounds we have to ask if China is going to copy the EU by saying one thing and doing another.
We may be able to answer such questions thanks to new initiatives such as Climate Trace, which aims to to track human-caused emissions to specific sources in real time—independently and publicly.
Tracking emissions, however, won’t be enough. Stopping emissions, in the words of Ende Gelände, needs to happen with our own hands. Follow them here to keep up to date for their ongoing direct action against German coal and gas infrastructure – and very importantly for us, explore their COVID-19 hygiene concept here, which is arguably more sophisticated than the one from the UK government.
And lastly, check out this fantastic poem by Glasgow councillor Graham Campbell on Glasgow’s role in the slave trade, how Scotland’s colonial history was buried through organised forgetting, and how we can together move towards an organised remembering.
Welcome to the fourth edition of The Rising Clyde, a newsletter from the COP26 Coalition! Just a reminder: if you’ve read good articles on climate justice, watched an amazing video on climate struggles, or simply discovered some really good tunes for the revolution, send them to us here!
We have a lot of exciting news for you in the coming weeks. With so many Coalition meetings taking place, things can quickly get confusing – which is why we have created a shared calendar to make it easier to find the dates and details for upcoming meetings and events. For now, click here for the soundtrack for #4 to remind yourselves how essential the trade union movement is for any progress in society.
From 12-16th November, the COP26 Coalition is hosting From the Ground Up – a global online gathering that will be a space to educate, activate and strategise. We will discuss the need for a global green new deal and work towards a global plan of action to create the change we need from the ground up.
We need your help to bring together thousands of activists and participants from across the world to develop the strategies and tactics necessary to achieve climate justice and build for a year of climate action towards the COP26 meeting in Glasgow next year.
From the Ground Up: Global Gathering for Climate Justice will be an opportunity to
We would like to invite contributions from climate justice activists, community leaders, campaigners, scientists, researchers, & trade unionists – you might want to suggest a speaker, a workshop, cultural event, or a topic for debate. We will be organising the following sessions:
Please fill in this Submission Form by 22nd September. The COP26 project team will be curating and coordinating the programme and will be in contact about your submission to ensure that as many voices from our movement as possible are represented in the gathering.
In the meantime, spread the word about the gathering, and share the call for contributions!
Speaking of upcoming events… we are very pleased to finally announce that registration is open for our online speaker series, “Boiling Point: Everything you ever wanted to know about international climate change negotiations but were too afraid to ask.”
In this series of six one hour-long webinars we will explore the basics of international climate change politics and the infamous COP, or “Conference of the Parties.” Activists, policy analysts and journalists with years of experience working behind the scenes of major summits will share their knowledge of the history and process of the talks as well as the major issues and main players. The Boiling Point series will run weekly on Thursdays from 17th September through 22nd October.
The first session “Climate Negotiations for Beginners” starts on September 17th, with Dorothy Guerrero from Global Justice Now and Doreen Stabinsky from the College of the Atlantic walking us through the basics of the process, terms and concepts of the UN climate negotiations.
Mark your calendars for the next All-Coalition Assembly which will take place on 23rd September from 6.30 – 8.30pm BST. Call-in details will be shared via email and on the Coalition’s Slack workspace.
Shortly after this, our amazing Global Solidarity Working Group is hosting the 3rd International Assembly on the 24th September, 9am-11am BST, where we’re starting to organise and strategise together with our international allies. If you are in contact with international groups, send them an invitation!
Also have a look at the Climate Fringe website, a home for events of all kinds in the run-up and during COP26, in Scotland and beyond! Curated by our friends at Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, the Climate Fringe hosts webinars, discussions, and events ranging from how to end racism and classism in environmentalism to the campaign launch of Free Our City, a new coalition campaigning for free public transport for everyone in Greater Glasgow.
How will we live in a world that is 3 degrees warmer? The Journal “The World +3 Degrees” is collecting perspectives and stories on what will be important in the coming years. Whether it’s about how people will travel, how housing and energy will be organised, or how we can build communities adapted to a world at +3 degrees, submit a contribution on what you think will or should happen! Submission deadline is the 15th October 2020. Find more information here: plus3degrees.carrd.co
Also, because it’s this time of the year again: here’s a video for those of you who are tired of politicians, newspapers and talk show hosts yet again blaming immigrants, young people and neighbouring countries for everything that’s wrong.