Events

We carried a giant 10 metre long, "chinese-dragon" style, "missile", carrying the message "Climate Change is the Real Weapon of Mass Destruction" to the Labour Party Conference on the day of its opening. We also took our 'globe-in-a-greenhouse', placards with the message etc... from Meyrick Park down to the Conference centre. Getting the "missile" ready in time at the gathering point in Meyrick park was quite a struggle, but Phil and John Ackers had been working on it from early in the morning, and then Barry Botley and a team from Shepway FOE added some finishing touches to make the thing carriable.... thanks also to Enid and New Forest FOE and Roger Eede from the local Green party.

A weapon of mass destruction on Bournemouth beach

The missile progressed under police escort through Bournemouth centre to its 'target' at the Conference centre where Phil used a very effective megaphone to barrack the Labour Party and Tony Blair for spending more time looking for non-existent WMD in Iraq than they were doing anything (eg in particular exerting pressure on G W Bush) about the 'REAL' WMD, the real mega-threat to the future security of the planet, Climate Change. After this John Ackers had the bright idea of transferring the missile down to the beach where its presence was particularly striking and did attract at least one film-cameraman. Meanwhile Judith from Camden FOE, and Auriel from Merton FOE, and others, were busy handing out leaflets, something that was continued over the next few days by Phil (who stayed down in Bournemouth till Tuesday evening).

The leaflet included the full text of the Guardian article by Sir John Houghton (ex-chief of the Metereological office) which was the main inspiration for this action (in it he called Climate Change a 'WMD': to read his article click here).The strong simple message that the destabilisation of global climate threatens a global tragedy of almost unimaginable proportions and that much, much, more needs to be done about it, is one that must have resonance to any party that aspires to any kind of morality, conscience or sense of global responsibility...and is a message that needs delivering to people close to power, over and over again!

At a climate conference in Moscow Putin not only failed to set a timetable for ratification of Kyoto (as expected) but indicated a distinctly negative attitude towards it. This is desperately serious because Russia is needed for the Kyoto Climate treaty to become operative. The treaty needs countries that together can account for 55% of global emissions, to ratify before it can become operative. Without the US only Russia can make up the full 55%....no other country in addition to Russia is now needed, but no other country than Russia can make upthe full 55%. So their non-ratification threatens to derail the whole Kyoto process, the world's only attempt so far to initiate a desperately needed limit on global emissions of climate-destabilising 'greenhouse gases' (mainly CO2).

As our Press release (approved by Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute!) read : "In breaking his promise to ratify Kyoto Putin has demonstrated that narrow, old-fashioned, national self-interest... or the interests of the gangster-oligarchs who now run Russia.... dominate his policy. But he will find out that unless he and the world discover a new sense of global environmental responsibility and proceed apace with the Kyoto process then any advantage he seems to gain by not ratifying Kyoto will be rapidly swept aside when the full terrifying impacts of uncontrolled and accellerating climate change become apparent. The idea that Russia will benefit from higher temperatures is not only supremely selfish and cynical given that other countries, would inevitably suffer from drought and famine, as a result of a rise in global temperature, but also laughably naive, to think we could stop the process of climate change just where we want to and not see it spiral destructively out of control. Like George W Bush, Putin has a mind too small to deal with the biggest challenge the world faces today: the catastrophic destabalisation of global climate"

We made sure there was some kind of reaction to Putin's fateful decsion - a depressing and desperately serious development - and put our message across at the Russian embassy. We had our Globe-in-a-Greenhouse as usual, that very loud megaphone to blare out the message, and a "Putin", now arm-in-arm with fellow 'small-mind', "Bush" and a 'Grim Reaper', who they have now, as it were, jointly invited to have a spree on planet earth....also a 'fire-lady' to ram home the 'global-over-warming' point.