October, 08 2018, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Karin Nansen, chair of Friends of the Earth International:
+598 98 707 161
chair@foei.org
Sara Shaw, Climate Justice and Energy Program Coordinator
+44 7974 008270
sara.shaw@foe.co.uk
'This Is a Climate Emergency': Global Mobilization Against Dirty Energy as IPCC Warns of Climate Catastrophe if Warming Continues
Amsterdam and Globally
Today the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change launched its Special Report on Global Warming at 1.5 degrees, Friends of the Earth International groups are mobilizing for equitable and ambitious climate action that keeps global warming below 1.5 degrees without the need for dangerous techno-fixes.
The IPCC's new report provides evidence that governments must now heed: there are still ways to avoid runaway climate change, but only if the world acts now, and with determination--going well beyond the commitments made under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change's Paris Agreement.
Karin Nansen, Chair of Friends of the Earth International says:
This is a climate emergency. The IPCC 1.5 report starkly illustrates the difference between temperature rises of 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees - for many around the world this is a matter of life and death. It is crucial to keep temperature rise well below 1.5 degrees without offsetting, carbon markets and geoengineering, but the evidence presented by the IPCC shows that there is a narrow and shrinking window in which to do so. Activists across the world are mobilizing to call for an end to fossil fuels, dirty energy and dangerous technologies. Common but differentiated responsibilities and payment of the climate debt must be at the foundation of climate action. We want a just transition to a clean energy system that benefits people not corporations.
The IPCC 1.5 report shows that temperature increases must remain well below 1.5 degrees: too many people are already suffering and dying because of climate impacts at 1 degree of warming. The consequences of a 2 degree rise will be severe and potentially irreversible. The report shows that if we limit the increase to 1.5 degrees rather than 2 degrees we could halve the number of people who might suffer from water scarcity, and significantly reduce the risks of extreme weather events (including severe droughts and forest fires), food shortages, heat-related illnesses and death, and damage to biodiversity and ecosystems. We could avoid the displacement of up to 10 million people due to sea level rises.
But, many of the 1.5 pathways analyzed by the IPCC contain dangerous assumptions about risky, unproven technologies that claim to suck carbon out of the atmosphere. One dangerous method, BioEnergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), would require growing crops on vast amounts of land, burning them for fuel and then storing the carbon. This will create additional problems and crises, especially for the poorest peoples in the world.
Friends of the Earth International rejects these risky technologies. They are not inevitable: the IPCC reviews some pathways that can keep temperature rise below 1.5 degrees without relying on untested false solutions. But a safe and just pathway will require nothing less than a radical and immediate shift away from dirty energy globally and a huge flow of finance from the global North to the global South to finance the transition. It will require nothing less than radical system change.
KarinNansen says:
The IPCC itself says that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees "with no overshoot would require rapid and far-reaching systems transitions occurring during the coming one to two decades, in energy, land, urban, and industrial systems". This proves what Friends of the Earth International has been saying for years - only radical system change offers a pathway towards hope and out of despair. Only with a radical transformation of our energy, food and economic systems, embracing environmental, social, gender and economic justice, can we prevent climate catastrophe and temperature rises exceeding 1.5 degrees.
Contact:
Karin Nansen, chair of Friends of the Earth International:
+598 98 707 161
chair[at]foei.org
Sara Shaw, Climate Justice and Energy Program Coordinator
+44 7974 008270
sara.shaw[at]foe.co.uk
General Press:
press@foei.org
Background:
The IPCC launched itsSpecial Report on Global Warming at 1.5 degrees on Monday 8 October in Incheon, South Korea.
As part of the global fight against climate change, grassroots environmental groups from Friends of the Earth International will mobilize in a Week of Action for climate justice from 6-13 October 2018.This will include events by Friends of the Earth Korea around the launch of the IPCC report.
Spanning six continents, the campaign aims to highlight the climate emergency, fight dirty energy, such as coal, oil and gas, and to call for a shift towards clean alternatives like solar and wind power. It will also highlight the role of communities in pushing for change in the current energy system, both locally and globally.
Climate change is unjust because the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet, who have done least to cause climate change, are hit hardest by its impacts. It is deeply unfair that we risk exceeding 1.5 degrees and crossing tipping points because of longstanding inaction by the global North that has benefited most from the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels which caused this crisis.
The global North must reduce its emissions to zero as soon as possible, whilst ensuring a Just Transition for workers and communities. This means countries in the global North must cease any NEW fossil fuel projects, including exploration, pipelines and infrastructure anywhere in the world, and rapidly phase out existing reliance on fossil fuels. They must also stop funding fossil fuel extraction in the South.
The global South should divert urgently fromdevelopment pathways that rely on fossil fuel extraction and burning, and forge clean sustainable futures free from corporate control and dirty energy infrastructure that almost always bring local pollution, land grabbing and human rights abuses, in addition to climate change. But equity must be respected: massive public finance must flow from the North to the South to pay for the energy transformation, for adaptation and for the loss and damage which has already been suffered.
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
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'Racist POS' Mike Collins Cheers Video of Ole Miss Mob Attack on Black Student
"This is not about Israel, Palestine, or Gaza. This is old-fashioned American racism and misogyny," said one observer. "These are the types of young white men who will grow up to be Republican governors, senators, and members of Congress."
May 03, 2024
Republican Georgia Congressman Mike Collins came under fire Friday over a social media post applauding video of white University of Mississippi students racially abusing a Black woman participating in a campus protest for Palestine.
Collins posted the video—in which numerous people can be heard grunting like apes and one young man is seen jumping up and down like a monkey in front of the Black woman—with the caption, "Ole Miss taking care of business."
Collins—or whoever's in charge of his social media accounts—sparred with Black leaders who called out his racism. When former Democratic Ohio state senator Nina Turner said the video showed "anti-Blackness," the congressman shot back, "*Anti-terroristness."
When Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) accused Collins of "fueling white supremacy," the Republican retorted, "Don't take down any more signs at our workplace, please" along with a photo of the Democrat triggering a fire alarm in a House of Representatives office building last year.
Around 30 protesters were rallying in support of Palestine in the Ole Miss Quad when counter-protesters gathered near the demonstrators. Some booed and chanted, "We want Trump!" Others singled out the Black woman—who NBC Newssaid is a graduate student at the school—chanting "Lizzo, Lizzo, Lizzo," "take a shower," "your nose is huge," "fuck you, fat bitch," and "lock her up!"
The counter-protesters also sang the "Star-Spangled Banner." Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves shared a separate video of the singing students on social media, captioning his post, "Warms my heart" and "I love Mississippi."
No racist language can be heard in the video shared by Reeves.
The Daily Mississippianreports the demonstrators were escorted off the Quad after counter-protesters threw water bottles at them.
Collins is no stranger to accusations of racism. Earlier this year, he suggested murdering migrants by throwing them from helicopters into the sea, in the manner of U.S.-backed South American dictators in the 1970s.
He also
introduced the Restricting Administration Zealots from Obliging Raiders (RAZOR) Act, which would ban the federal government from removing or altering "any state-constructed barriers installed to mitigate illegal immigration," such as the razor buoys installed in the Rio Grande by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Collins was also
accused of antisemitism after he amplified an anti-semitic social media post by an avowed neo-Nazi targeting a Washington Post reporter for being Jewish.
Ole Miss said Friday that "statements were made at the demonstration on our campus Thursday that were offensive and inappropriate."
"We cannot comment specifically about that video, but the university is looking into reports about specific actions," the school added. "Any actions that violate university policy will be met with appropriate action."
The Ole Miss incident comes amid rapidly spreading campus protests across the U.S. and around the world in response to Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, which has killed, maimed, or left missing around 5% of the embattled strip's 2.3 million people, most of them civilians, while forcibly displacing nearly 9 in 10 people and driving hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation.
While numerous Ole Miss students said they did not understand what the pro-Palestine protesters hoped to accomplish, others voiced support for the demonstrators—and for Palestine.
"As we've seen throughout history, time and time again, the student movement is never wrong. Time and time again, anytime there's a student protest, and you're against it, you're on the wrong side of history," Xavier Black, a junior majoring in international studies, told
The Daily Mississippian. "So I would like to be on the right side."
One Palestinian American Ole Miss student was teary-eyed as she thanked the protesters.
"Hey guys, I know that what just happened was really intimidating, and it was a little scary, but I just want to say I'm so proud of you guys," the student—who gave only her first name, Jana—said,
according toMississippi Today. "This wasn't going to happen... without all of you guys. Palestine was being heard. And I just want to thank you guys so much."
"I know that was such a big risk, but this is the most that people have ever thought for us, so don't give up," she added. "I know that was really hard, but we need to keep fighting. This was just the start of it, okay?"
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UK Voters Send 'Shout' for Change to Tories as Labour Sweeps in Local Elections
"We are probably looking at certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, Conservative performances in local government elections for the last 40 years," said one analyst.
May 03, 2024
Nearly two weeks after the British Conservative Party pushed through a proposal to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda in what one lawyer called "performative cruelty" in the name of winning the general election expected later this year, the local election results announced throughout the day Friday made increasingly clear the ploy hadn't worked.
Elections expert John Curtice projected the Tories could ultimately lose up to 500 local council seats as vote counting continues into the weekend, following elections in which voters cast ballots for 2,661 seats.
The Conservatives have lost around half of the seats they are defending Curtice told BBC Radio.
"We are probably looking at certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, Conservative performances in local government elections for the last 40 years," the polling expert said.
Curtice added that if the results were replicated in a general election, Labour would likely win 34% of the vote, with the Tories winning 25%—five years after the right-wing party won in a landslide in the last nationwide contest.
Labour leader Keir Starmer said the results represented a decisive call for "change" from British voters, particularly applauding the results of a special election in Blackpool South, where Labour candidate Chris Webb won nearly 11,000 votes while Conservative David Jones came in a distant second with just over 3,200.
Webb's victory represented a 26% swing in favor of Labour.
"That's the fifth swing of over 20% to the Labour party in by elections in recent months and years. It is a fantastic result, a really first class result," Starmer said. "And here in Blackpool, a message has been sent directly to the prime minister, because this was a parliamentary vote, to say we're fed up with your decline, your chaos... your division and we want change. We want to go forward with Labour."
"That wasn't just a little message," he added. "That wasn't just a murmur. That was a shout from Blackpool. We want to change. And Blackpool speaks for the whole country in saying we've had enough now, after 14 years of failure, 14 years of decline."
The Conservatives also lost ground in the northern town of Hartlepool, where they lost six council seats. The region swung toward the Tories after the party led the push for Brexit, the U.K.'s exit from the European Union.
A similar result was recorded in York and North Yorkshire, which includes the area Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak represented as a member of Parliament.
"Yorkshire voted for Brexit in 2016," wrote William Booth, London bureau chief for The Washington Post. "But long gone are the days when many Conservatives want to stand before the voters and extol the advantages of leaving the European Union, which has been, in most sectors, a flop."
Sunak, added Booth, is "betting that immigration is still an issue with resonance and has promised to 'stop the boats,' the daily spectacle of desperate migrants risking their lives on rubber rafts trying to cross the English Channel. Sunak's government plans to fly asylum seekers arriving by boat to Rwanda. No flights have taken off yet. But the Home Office last week began a self-proclaimed 'large scale' operation to detain asylum seekers destined for removal."
The Labour Party has called Sunak's Rwanda plan a "gimmick" and said it would reverse a Tory policy blocking refugees from applying for asylum.
Average wages in the U.K. last year were "back at the level during the 2008 financial crisis, after taking account of inflation," according toThe Guardian.
"This 15 years of lost wage growth is estimated by the Resolution Foundation thinktank to have cost the average work £10,700 ($13,426) a year," reported the newspaper in March. "The performance has been ranked as the worst period for pay growth since the Napoleonic wars ended in 1815."
Analysts noted one setback for Labour in Oldham, where the party lost some seats in areas with large numbers of Muslim voters to independent candidates, costing it overall control of the council.
Arooj Shah, the Labour leader of the Oldham Council, told the BBC that the party's support for Israel in its bombardment of Gaza was behind its losses.
"Gaza is clearly an issue for anyone with an ounce of humanity in them, but we've asked for an immediate cease-fire right from the start," said Shah. "We have a rise of independents because people think mainstream parties aren't the answer."
The losses "should be a wake-up call for the Starmer leadership: Every vote must be earned," said the socialist and anti-racist group Momentum. "That means calling for an immediate arms ban to Israel, calling out Israeli war crimes, and delivering real leadership on climate."
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Israel Briefs US on Plan for 'Ethnic Cleansing' of Rafah
"A military invasion in Rafah would be CATASTROPHIC... There can be no more 'evacuations.' There is no safe place to go," said Oxfam, calling for an immediate cease-fire.
May 03, 2024
Israeli officials have told the Biden administration and humanitarian organizations how they plan to start forcibly expelling Gazans from Rafah ahead of a likely ground invasion—a move critics have likened to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's Arabs during the establishment of the modern state of Israel.
Politicoreported Friday that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials informed the U.S. government and aid agencies that a plan is in place to remove Palestinians from Rafah, where approximately 1.2 million refugees forcibly displaced from other parts of Gaza are precariously sheltering alongside around 280,000 local residents in the embattled strip's southernmost city.
According to an unnamed U.S. official and two other people familiar with the plan, Israel would "move people out of Rafah, the main humanitarian hub in the enclave, to al-Mawasi, a small strip of land on the southern Gaza coast." Politico also obtained a copy of a map containing some details of the plan.
The Wall Street Journalreported Friday that Israel has given Hamas until next week to submit to a cease-fire proposal or face an invasion of Rafah.
"Such an invasion could lead to horrific massacres and raise scenarios of a second Nakba," the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights said recently. "After 200 days of horrific genocidal acts in Gaza, the real objectives of the attack are the continuation of the 76-year-long ongoing Nakba and the erasure and genocidal destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Israel is laying the groundwork to fulfill its settler-colonial plan of colonizing Gaza."
Human rights defenders have warned that Israel may ultimately seek to ethnically cleanse as many Palestinians as possible from Gaza.
The situation in Rafah is already dire. Water and other necessities are in desperately short supply. According to James Elder, the global spokesperson for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), there is approximately one toilet for every 850 people in Rafah and one shower for every 3,500 people.
On Friday, Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters in Geneva that an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah would put hundreds of thousands of Palestinians "at imminent risk of death."
"Any ground operation would mean more suffering and death," Laerke said, warning of not only "a slaughter of civilians, but also at the same time an incredible blow to the humanitarian operation in the entire strip, because it is run primarily out of Rafah."
Around 5% of Gazans have been killed, maimed, or left missing by Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, according to a report published Wednesday by the U.N. Development Program and the U.N. Economic Commission for Western Asia. That's more than 120,000 people, the vast majority of whom are innocent civilians, according to Palestinian officials and international human rights groups.
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