A family-friendly weekend festival May Day for the Planet Friday-Monday, with events themed around the climate crisis.
Saturday 30th April
Plymouth
March and festival for Peace and Climate Justice - assemble 12pm Plymouth Guildhall, followed by a climate festival with live music, stalls and speakers at the Leadworks, Rendle Street PL1. Details
Norwich
March and Rally, with the theme 'Fighting for a Sustainable Future'. Assemble from 11am, City Hall Facebook event
Lancaster
Assemble Dalton Square, 11.30. March with music at 12pm, 1pm, rally Dalton Square.
Sunday 1st May
London
Assemble Clerkenwell Green from 12pm, march leaves 1pm. Rally in Trafalgar Square from 2.30pm. Climate bloc meeting outside Marx Memorial Library, Facebook event
Manchester
Assemble at 11:15am in St Peter's Square, march at 11:30am to Sackville Gardens for 1pm for the festival of speeches, live music, food, drink and stalls. Bring banners, flags, family, workmates and friends. Or join the RMT Trans Pennine Express pickets at Piccadilly Fairfield Street from 9am onwards, marching at 11am to join the May Day crowd in St Peter's Square.
Bath
Rally for a Just Transition, 11am Kingsmead Square. Speakers, activities for children, music. Then from 1pm at The Bell, Walcot Street: Seize the Day performing live; Syrian veggie and vegan buffet.
Monday 2nd May
Salford
May Day march and rally from noon, meeting in Bexley Square to march to Sacred Trinity Church.
Waveney
May Day People's Festival: debates, music and art, 12-5, United Reform Church, Lowestoft Road North NR32 1HB
Boris Johnson is set to make a statement on the UK's energy policy soon. With the war on Ukraine and prices rocketing, households who were already struggling with the cost of living crisis face further energy bill hikes. Europe may have imposed sanctions, but gas and oil sales are still funding Putin's military.
We have all the solutions to end the UK's dependence on fossil fuels. This includes cutting our energy use by insulating our homes, the most leaky and poorly insulated in Europe, investing in renewable energy and encouraging energy efficiency throughout the economy to get back on track to meet our climate targets.
We're already paying higher bills because of past failures to act on climate. In Cameron and Osborne's assault on 'green crap', zero carbon standards for new homes were scrapped, and energy efficiency schemes cut back, causing insulation rates to plummet. The onerous planning restrictions introduced in 2015 to fulfil the Conservative Party manifesto pledge to 'halt the spread of onshore wind' are still in place and have effectively blocked new wind turbines, even where they have local support. These short-sighted cuts have added at least Ā£8.3 billion to today's energy bills. More recent policies could be described as half-hearted in the face of climate breakdown. The Green Homes Grant scheme for home insulation was badly mismanaged then withdrawn.
But opportunists like Nigel Farage have seized the opportunity to try and halt the transition, to revive zombie ideas like fracking, and to keep us dependent on fossil fuels.
We can't drill our way out of this crisis
It takes years to develop oil and gas fields. And their production is limited. Of the six North Sea fields rumoured to be under consideration, three would produce gas. They wouldnāt start operating until about 2026. By 2028 they would reach peak output, but even then they could supply only about 2.4% of UK demand for gas, and from the early 2030s, their output would decline. So future drilling cannot immediately replace Russian gas. But what if more oil and gas fields were licensed, locking us in further to fossil fuel use?
The profits would go overwhelmingly to oil companies, not to struggling families. After nearly 50 years of production, 70% of whatās left to extract from the North Sea is oil, not gas ā and not the type of oil that we use in UK refineries. So companies export 80% of it. As for the gas extracted, in recent months, as gas prices have risen, companies respond by exporting more gas to sell to the highest bidder. So increasing production would not affect our energy bills.
But the emissions from all this oil and gas burning would certainly affect the climate. As of last October, 30 offshore projects had either applied for development consent or were expected to do so by 2025. If they were all approved, the combined lifecycle emissions would be over one billion tonnes of CO2
There have even been attempts to persuade the government to revive fracking - deeply unpopular with the public and highly unsuitable for production at scale in the UK's densely populated landscape.
You can sign on to an open letter against more North Sea drilling here.
The real solutions remove our risky dependence on fossil fuels for ever
Investing in renewable energy, including removing the block on onshore wind. In total, 649 individual onshore wind and solar projects have been identified which have already been granted planning permission, but are not yet built because of a lack of Government support. If all of those projects were built, they would generate more energy than the total amount generated by all the Russian gas the UK is currently importing every year from Russia.
Insulating homes and install heat pumps. UK homes are in general very poorly insulated. For example about a third of homes with a loft have no loft insulation. Measures like loft insulation, draught stripping and new windows are relatively simple to install, and could provide immediate help for those in fuel poverty. For those houses already at Band C or above, a heat pump can cut gas consumption by 80%.
A clear long-term strategy is desperately needed to avoid previous failures. And it needs to set the right level of ambition, as we ultimately need every home and public builidng to be well-insulated and energy efficient. To find out more about what could be achieved by long-term investment in renewable installation and energy efficiency, creating climate jobs around the country, read our trade union group's new publication Climate Jobs: Building a workforce for the climate emergency. There is also a useful briefing by E3G setting out nine steps the government could take this year to improve energy efficiency and cut bills by Ā£150.
Households in fuel poverty need immediate help
The cost of living crisis pre-dated Russia's invasion of Ukraine. For many in the UK, the reality of further price increases in energy and food is not skipping holidays but skipping meals. A vital part of energy policy is meeting these families' needs. This means providing benefits, for those in work and those who cannot work, at levels which do not leave people in poverty. We also need targeted support that covers the expected rise in energy bills for households on low incomes (including those not protected by the energy price cap).
A windfall tax on the profits of energy giants who have profited from price rises could help fund this: Shell and BP combined earned Ā£900 a second in the final quarter of 2021.
The scientists of the IPCC (the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have just published their latest report, on the damage that climate breakdown is causing to humans and ecosystems. They warn that the time left to act is running out.
There could hardly be a worse time for the messages in this report to catch public attention while all eys are on bombed Ukrainian cities and fleeing refugees.
Even for those of us who think we have a good understanding of the dangers of climate change, this report is important, setting out starkly the peril we are in.
Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General, spoke out at the report's launch:
"I have seen many scientific reports in my time, but nothing like this. Today's IPCC report is an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed leadership."
"The facts are undeniable. This abdication of leadership is criminal. The world's biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home.
But according to current commitments, global emissions are set to increase almost 14 per cent over the current decade. That spells catastrophe. It will destroy any chance of keeping 1.5 alive."
The world's most eminent scientists and academics in these fields - cautious, fact-checking, balancing evidence - are backing up what climate justice advocates have known and have been saying for years.
We're running out of time
There is more than a 50% chance that even in the most optimistic scenarios for cutting emissions, global average temperatures will soon rise by 1.5Ā°C or more (compared to temperatures before humans started burning fossil fuels for energy).
If the planet heats up by more than 1.5C, impacts such as wildfires, mass mortality of trees, drying of peatlands, and thawing of permafrost are likely to release additional greenhouse gases, making it even more difficult to lower global temperatures again. Some impacts will be irreversible.
How bad things get depends on what we do now and in the immediate future to cut emissions. It also depends on adaptation - taking action to protect people and ecosystems from risks which are now unavoidable (such as higher sea levels). With every fraction of a degree of global warming the risks and related losses and damages escalate.
Climate change impacts are more severe than estimated in previous IPCC assessments. The last time the IPCC reported on impacts and adaptation was back in 2014, and since then there is more evidence on the harms that climate change is already causing.
Climate change is hurting people now - especially in the Global South
Approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change
Climate change is contributing to humanitarian crises. Climate and weather extremes are increasingly driving people to leave their homes, with small island states disproportionately affected.
The scientists of the IPCC (the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have just published their latest report, on the damage that climate breakdown is causing to humans and ecosystems. They warn that the time left to act is running out.
There could hardly be a worse time for the messages in this report to catch public attention while all eys are on bombed Ukrainian cities and fleeing refugees.
Even for those of us who think we have a good understanding of the dangers of climate change, this report is important, setting out starkly the peril we are in.
Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General, spoke out at the report's launch:
"I have seen many scientific reports in my time, but nothing like this. Today's IPCC report is an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed leadership."
"The facts are undeniable. This abdication of leadership is criminal. The world's biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home.
But according to current commitments, global emissions are set to increase almost 14 per cent over the current decade. That spells catastrophe. It will destroy any chance of keeping 1.5 alive."
The world's most eminent scientists and academics in these fields - cautious, fact-checking, balancing evidence - are backing up what climate justice advocates have known and have been saying for years.
We're running out of time
There is more than a 50% chance that even in the most optimistic scenarios for cutting emissions, global average temperatures will soon rise by 1.5Ā°C or more (compared to temperatures before humans started burning fossil fuels for energy).
If the planet heats up by more than 1.5C, impacts such as wildfires, mass mortality of trees, drying of peatlands, and thawing of permafrost are likely to release additional greenhouse gases, making it even more difficult to lower global temperatures again. Some impacts will be irreversible.
How bad things get depends on what we do now and in the immediate future to cut emissions. It also depends on adaptation - taking action to protect people and ecosystems from risks which are now unavoidable (such as higher sea levels). With every fraction of a degree of global warming the risks and related losses and damages escalate.
Climate change impacts are more severe than estimated in previous IPCC assessments. The last time the IPCC reported on impacts and adaptation was back in 2014, and since then there is more evidence on the harms that climate change is already causing.
Climate change is hurting people now - especially in the Global South
Approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change
Climate change is contributing to humanitarian crises. Climate and weather extremes are increasingly driving people to leave their homes, with small island states disproportionately affected.
In a rich country like the UK, people should not have to choose between warm homes and decent food. But with a combination of rising gas prices, a failure to insulate homes or build enough renewable energy, and a deeply unequal society after a decade of austerity and benefit cuts... this is the reality for many.
In a rich country like the UK, people should not have to choose between warm homes and decent food. But with a combination of rising gas prices, a failure to insulate homes or build enough renewable energy, and a deeply unequal society after a decade of austerity and benefit cuts... this is the reality for many.
On 12 February there were protests around the country about the cost of living crisis. Further days of action have been called for 5 March and 2 April.
The crisis is being used by some in the rightwing media and Conservative party to argue that we 'can't afford' climate action, or that pumping more fossil fuels from the North Sea could solve the problem - despite the obvious fact that in a global market, oil companies will export their product to wherever they get the best price.
As families struggle, oil companies' profits have shot up with rising gas prices.
Shell recorded $19.3 billion profits in 2021, while BP raked in $12.8 billion
A windfall tax on energy giants' profits would help ensure that no one has to choose between eating and heating their homes - sign the petition here
More fundamentally, the UK's heavy dependence on gas and failure to insulate our leaky, energy inefficient housing that have left us so exposed.
In the past decade this government has failed twice over on warm homes: rates of home insulation plummeted because of a lack of support, and new houses are still being built which are not energy efficient.
The short answers to these questions are simple: in the face of escalating climate breakdown, COP26 did little to shift our trajectory away from catastrophe, away from business-as-usual and towards curbing fossil fuel use. Rich countries have refused to step up and meet their obligations to those who have least to cause the climate crisis.
In the words of Greta Thunberg, more āblah, blah, blahā.
And as for what comes next, of course we go on fighting to keep the chance of staying beneath 1.5C alive.
The long version? After two weeks with a flurry of announcements, greenwash, struggles over seemingly minor details of text, and anger from civl society massed on the streets of Glasgow, itās worth unpacking some of the details of what was really agreed, or not. How does the jargon translate into real world outcomes, literally of life and death? In these details we can see beneath the media spin and glossy announcements the brutal realities of power, money, and neocolonialism.
1.5C āon life supportā
As the window of opportunity is closing to stay within 1.5C heating and avoid the worst climate catastrophe, where are we left as COP26 ends?
Under the Paris climate deal, nations had to submit updated voluntary commitments to climate action (known as nationally determined contributions or NDCs) before the talks. Unsurprisingly, these are generally lacking in substance or urgency. Many lack clear deliver plans and delay meaningful change until after 2030. Climate Action Trackerās useful analysis finds that even with all new pledges for 2030, we will still emit roughly twice as much in 2030 as required for 1.5C.
They estimate if all current pledges for emissions cuts by 2030 are met, this gives only a 50% chance of staying below 2.4C.
Of course 1.5C itself is no āsafe levelā. Many areas have already experienced devastating wildfires, floods, hurricanes and heatwaves at 1.1C. These, in combination with longer-term impacts such as drought, disproportionately affect countries who have done least to cause the problem and have fewest resources to deal with them.
The short answers to these questions are simple: in the face of escalating climate breakdown, COP26 did little to shift our trajectory away from catastrophe, away from business-as-usual and towards curbing fossil fuel use. Rich countries have refused to step up and meet their obligations to those who have least to cause the climate crisis.
In the words of Greta Thunberg, more āblah, blah, blahā.
And as for what comes next, of course we go on fighting to keep the chance of staying beneath 1.5C alive.
The long version? After two weeks with a flurry of announcements, greenwash, struggles over seemingly minor details of text, and anger from civl society massed on the streets of Glasgow, itās worth unpacking some of the details of what was really agreed, or not. How does the jargon translate into real world outcomes, literally of life and death? In these details we can see beneath the media spin and glossy announcements the brutal realities of power, money, and neocolonialism.
1.5C āon life supportā
As the window of opportunity is closing to stay within 1.5C heating and avoid the worst climate catastrophe, where are we left as COP26 ends?
Under the Paris climate deal, nations had to submit updated voluntary commitments to climate action (known as nationally determined contributions or NDCs) before the talks. Unsurprisingly, these are generally lacking in substance or urgency. Many lack clear deliver plans and delay meaningful change until after 2030. Climate Action Trackerās useful analysis finds that even with all new pledges for 2030, we will still emit roughly twice as much in 2030 as required for 1.5C.
They estimate if all current pledges for emissions cuts by 2030 are met, this gives only a 50% chance of staying below 2.4C.
Of course 1.5C itself is no āsafe levelā. Many areas have already experienced devastating wildfires, floods, hurricanes and heatwaves at 1.1C. These, in combination with longer-term impacts such as drought, disproportionately affect countries who have done least to cause the problem and have fewest resources to deal with them.
The Department for Transport has finally published its plan, Decarbonising Transport: A Better, Greener Britain. In terms of aviation, the proposals are hugely disappointing, extremely limited and essentially a charter for the industry, desperate to recover from the pandemic, to build back the same. Many colleagues in environmental and analytical organisations are preparing detailed responses, based on flight numbers, the viability or otherwise of so-called sustainable fuels and climate impact statistics. While these are much needed dissections that provide the ammunition with which to call for more radical action, there is also a need to remind ourselves of the fundamentals, a plain English telling of where we are and where we need to go.
First, technical and scientific solutions to the climate impact of aviation are to be welcomed. No one would disagree with that ā a successful call for a reduction in the amount of flying would not exclude us from wanting to see whatever flying remains from being carried out in a more climate friendly way. Whether alternative fuels, aircraft technology, or a combination of both, in principle we would welcome investment aimed at the development of such solutions.
Fatal delay
What we do object to is that these solutions are used as industry greenwash that ignores reality in order to justify the continuation (or restoration) of business as usual. All actors agree, including government and industry, that viable solutions will not be available till the late 2030s at best, maybe the 2040s, or even 2050. Many of the solutions currently proposed are either āfalseā (i.e. create as many problems as they solve) or āneed workā (i.e. unproven, requiring more R&D). In particular, synthetic or so-called sustainable fuels are either a long way off development, are expensive and energy intensive to use, are impossible to scale up, or produce more emissions than conventional kerosene.
So we are looking to some future time for the possible advent of alternative ways of flying, hence the DfT commits to ānet zero domestic aviation by 2040ā and net zero for all aviation by 2050. Even leaving aside the problematic nature of the term ānet zeroā that is a long way off.
In the meantime plans for traffic growth, and associated airport expansions, remain. These have nothing to do with such solutions and are purely about an increase in fossil fuelled flying, including recovery to 2019 levels by 2025 and then continuing to grow thereafter ā more flights in 2026, more in 2027, 2028 and so on.
We should ask:
i.How does such growth in emissions square with a climate emergency for which radical action is needed by 2030 to keep within 1.5C (clue: it doesnāt), and
Wendy Smith is a Unite member, member of CACCTU and one of the founders of Norfolk Campaign against Climate Change.
People have been shocked at the recent news of deaths from extreme heat and flooding across the globe. Three of the worldās wealthiest men have been racing into space in an effort to find new sources of profit. Meanwhile our government here seems determined to rush the UK into a return to pre-pandemic business as usual. There has never been a more urgent need to fight for effective action in the face of climate catastrophe. The COP26 talks in Glasgow in November present our world leaders with a vital and timely opportunity to deliver more than vague targets and future promises.
The Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union group (CaCCTU) will be launching this autumn the eagerly-awaited update to their groundbreaking pamphlet, āOne Million Climate Jobsā, first published in 2004. At the heart of this new report is a core model for a new public service ā a National Climate Service ā that can get the job done by seeing to the integration of training, redeployment, planning and the interface between sectors (e.g., between industries and energy, or the complex planning needed to integrate and balance public transport).
The Climate Jobs campaign argues we need a sustainable transformation of construction, transport and power among other sectors. Several unions organise workers in these industries and, in order to win the changes we need, these unions should get behind these demands, building support for a transition of the economy and for massive investment in well paid jobs which tackle the climate emergency. In particular, Unite, one of the biggest unions in the Britain, can play a crucial role. Unite is in the process of electing a new General Secretary.
