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.

From The Ground Up: Take Action Now / 27-28 March 2021

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.

• What are our tactics and strategies for meaningful change? What are their context, history and diversity, and how do they play out for different people in different places?
• How do we build an inclusive, equitable, intersectional and radical movement for change?
• How do we mobilise a million people to take to the streets this year?

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. 

Get involved!

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!