Andrew Simms's Blog, page 6
April 21, 2015
As climate talks belch hot air, activists are putting their lives on the line | Andrew Simms
How is it that in a year stuffed with conferences on environment and human development, from climate talks in Paris and on new development goals in New York, those actually trying to save the environment are at best dismissed as enemies of progress, and at worst are being killed at an increasing rate and with almost complete impunity?
There is a recognisable theatrical form at UN summits where environmental agreements get negotiated and signed. It starts with general anticipation, the unreasonable expectations and triumph of hope over experience. There are the well-meaning but often leaden stunts by campaign groups in conference halls. Rumours flow for days like tides about good and bad deals being cut. Then, insomniac civil servants wage self-important all-night battles like mythic warriors transplanted to the set of The Office, over the wording of compromised treaties. The final act always combines face-saving statements against a chorus lamenting how far short proceedings have fallen. And then the cycle repeats.
The very authorities who should be investigating the crimes against activists are often implicated
Related: We are the last generation that can fight climate change. We have a duty to act | Ban Ki-moon
Continue reading...
April 7, 2015
Are we reaching a positive climate change tipping point?
Despite low oil prices, the latest figures reveal a striking turnaround in solar and wind power investment, but are we really about to win the carbon war?
Are we tipping the right way? One of the great environmental stories is of how catastrophe can creep up and be noticed only when it is too late to act. Examples range from the sudden, inexplicable collapse of bee colonies, to ice cores revealing the potential for dramatic climatic upheavals that happen not in millennia or centuries, but the time it takes to pass through a coalition government or two.
It is hard enough to identify tipping or “inflection” points when you are consciously looking, like monitoring the so-called known unknowns of future forest die-back, deep-sea methane release, ice melt and sea level rise. Worse, in complex systems, are the unknown unknowns. All you have is nebulous worry. It’s why we are supposed to obey the precautionary principle relating to any activity which at scale is capable of altering whole systems.
Continue reading...March 19, 2015
Developed nations have sown the wind, Vanuatu has reaped the whirlwind | Andrew Simms
When the president of Vanuatu said that years of progress had been wiped out by a single extreme weather event, it was both a warning and an echo. Hurricane Mitch did the same to Nicaragua and Honduras in 1998; and in 2005 political failure combined with the collapse of sea defences under the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina to wreck the rich, vibrant culture of New Orleans. Climatic extremes in a warming world stand to reverse human progress and expose broken social contracts.
But in the case of Vanuatu there seems to be a crueller twist. Vanuatu is distinguished by having come top of a global index that measures how ecologically successful (low in impact) nations are at producing good lives for their people – so-called “happy life years”. Vanuatu beat all other nations through treading lightest on the Earth for the quality and length of life its people enjoyed. Now it sits in the pathway of a giant climatic steamroller, fuelled by the energy-intensive lifestyles of nations much further down that index.
Continue reading...March 12, 2015
Honourable Friends? Parliament and the Fight for Change by Caroline Lucas
Somewhere to hang your sword? It’s what every socially progressive, green politician needs. That was the offer made to the UK’s first Green MP, Caroline Lucas, when taking her place in the House of Commons, and this account of her Westminster years reads like the field journal of an incredulous anthropologist stumbling on an unusual tribe. You can’t, of course, even call colleagues by their real names during parliamentary business; instead, MPs have to work out if they are an honourable member, a right honourable one or an honourable friend. The latter gives the book its ironic title. It is the term reserved for members of your own party and, in the Commons, Lucas is a party of one.
Related: Caroline Lucas: 'The Green movement has to talk about the positives'
Continue reading...March 11, 2015
The current economic development model is defunct – we need to ditch it | Andrew Simms
A radical shift in distribution to favour the poorest is the only way to reconcile the twin challenges of halting catastrophic climatic change and ending poverty
21 months and counting
What is development? To many conventional economists it has been China, though not without irony. Its export-led development model and advantage in all economic sectors created its superpower status, and left it accounting for the vast majority of those lifted out of extreme poverty globally.
Continue reading...February 4, 2015
Fossil fuel companies are the greatest threat to life's party – not greens
People who argue it’s a good idea to respect nature’s thresholds get labelled spoilsports, but the real party-poopers are those who recognise no limits at all
22 months and counting
“Will we go ahead?” asked Shell CEO, Ben van Beurden, rhetorically, about the oil company’s plans to drill in the Arctic. “Yes if we can. I’d be so disappointed if we wouldn’t.” Van Beurden had the grace to concede that his plans “divide society,” but he seemed unable to comprehend that they might condemn it.
Continue reading...January 5, 2015
Paris climate talks the most significant task ahead of us in 2015
Failure will mean irreversible global warming and kissing goodbye to sustainable development goals
23 months and counting
This year’s almost mythic, defining task is to roll the boulder of a new climate agreement uphill to Paris. There’s a whole sack of new sustainable development goals to sign-off as well. Intended to allow the whole human population to thrive within planetary boundaries, these 17 principal goals were meant to be concise, global, limited in number, action-oriented and easy to communicate.
Continue reading...December 1, 2014
Black Friday consumer frenzy is bad for the environment
A day once synonymous with fighting for social justice has been rebranded to being associated with fighting for large, flat panel TVs and energy hungry gadgets
24 months and counting
‘Gifts you never knew you needed,’ shouts the headline in the Sunday Times magazine’s ‘Fully Charged Tech Issue.’
Continue reading...November 3, 2014
Like Daedalus, we should use our judgment to thrive within limts | Andrew Simms
Lets kick the carbon habit and shift to benign sources before the civilisation wrecks its own life support systems
25 months and counting
I would annex the planets if I could, wrote Cecil Rhodes, arch colonialist, mining magnate and architect of division in Southern Africa. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far.
Continue reading...October 2, 2014
Forests are emerging out from the shadow of fossil fuels in climate debate
Letting people living in forests become natures guardian is bringing both development and saving ecosystems
26 months and counting
Forests seem to be emerging from the 1980s environmental ghetto of concerns where they appeared to be consigned.
Continue reading...Andrew Simms's Blog
- Andrew Simms's profile
- 5 followers
