Tag: climate crisis

Understanding Climate Change

Myles Allen has made an important contribution to our understanding of  role of human activity on the global climate.  He was interviewed on Radio 4’s ‘The Life Scientific’ last week.  Well worth listening to the podcast on BBC Sounds.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000fgcn

myles allen

Climate Learning Week

UCU, NUS and other organisations have got together to produce themed resources on the climate crisis.  The aim is to get as many schools, colleges and universities as possible using the resources in the week 10th – 14th February.  The resources are relevant and useable at any time and we’ve added the link to the Resources page on this site.  If you are a student or work in education do check them out and think about how they can be used in your institution.

climate learning week

Climate emergency – a model motion

New Year 2020 is a critical time to be taking the campaign for climate action into our workplaces.  Below we’ve pasted a model motion that can be used or adapted in your own workplace context.  (You can also download a PDF here and a Word version here.  If you have already raised a similar motion in your workplace we’d love to hear about it and would be pleased to share the text (with permission) so that others can build on your experience.  We think there’s a particular case for developing clear policies in education, from school through to university, and would be really interested to get feedback on particular demands and actions for the education sector.  Please send feedback to triple.e.scot@gmail.com 

Draft model motion 

This (branch/region/committee/trades council/union/conference) notes the urgent need for action on the climate emergency, both in response to existing negative impacts such as extreme weather, fires, droughts, floods and loss of habitat and species; and to avoid the catastrophic and irreversible climate damage which people increasingly realise the world is on course for, after the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

We recognise that big business, the military and the richest individuals are responsible for the vast majority of climate change, yet the global working class and poor are disproportionately at risk. A just transition (that protects the lives, livelihoods and rights of the poor and disadvantaged) to a decarbonised economy is not only right, but is the only way the movement against climate chaos will secure the mass support needed to win, and avoid a rich minority protecting themselves at the expense of the planet and the vast majority of people.

We congratulate the school students striking around the world for real climate action and welcome the decision of the TUC to support them and call for a solidarity stoppage. We note that many workers did strike on 20 September 2019, despite Britain’s repressive legislation, by campaigning to pressure employers not to apply sanctions to climate strikers.

We note that there is discussion about the possibility of making Friday 1 May 2020, traditionally International Workers’ Day, also a climate strike. We note that the UN ‘COP’ climate change conferences have become a major focus for campaigners, that COP26 will be taking place in Glasgow from 9-20 November 2020, and that many organisations are already making plans.

We resolve to:

  1. Publicly state our support and solidarity with the climate strikers and the wider movement for rapid and effective climate action
  2. Invite climate strikers to speak at our meeting
  3. Educate our members about the climate emergency
  4. Give practical support to the climate strikes, without adults taking it over. This will include asking schools and local authorities to commit to imposing no sanctions against striking students, promoting the strikes on social media, encouraging members to attend, taking our flags or banner if agreed with the strikers. If requested, it could include co-hosting events, providing sound systems, staging and stewards, using our public liability insurance, help with press releases or police liaison.
  5. Support workers joining climate strikes and maximise member involvement
  6. Work with other local labour movement and environmental organisations to arrange discussions locally and within workplaces about practically how workers and unions can learn from 20 September, join climate strikes or show solidarity
  7. Promote through the labour and climate movements the idea of making 1 May 2020 a climate strike as well as International Workers’ Day
  8. Organise to make COP26 in Glasgow, 9-20 November 2020, a major focus of campaigning for effective action on the climate emergency
  9. Call on employers and local authorities to declare a climate emergency and involve workers and communities in planning, implementing and monitoring to rapidly achieve zero carbon emissions, including ending investments in fossil fuels
  10. Call on employers to recognise union green/environmental reps and give them work time for their activities
  11. Create climate action groups at workplace level and within union structures
  12. Look for opportunities for unions, communities and the climate movement to work together, for example for improved housing and public transport
  13. Call on unions and the TUC to back the climate strikes, call and build action
  14. Call on our union to carry out a major exercise to understand the potential positive and negative impacts of the climate crisis and responses to it on employment
  15. Campaign for a legal right to strike and to repeal all legislation that makes it harder to strike over climate
  16. Discuss what climate-related demands to include in collective bargaining, including ones which could be the basis of a lawful “trade dispute” under current legislation and to call on our union to produce guidance on this
  17. Ensure that unions are visible as relevant and useful organisations within the climate movement and that participants are encouraged to join a union
  18. Demand massive public investment in the jobs required to address climate emergency, including massive improvements in renewable energy, housing and public transport
  19. Send this motion to our local trades union council, up through our union structure, and to local SNP, Labour Party and Green Party branches

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Housing and climate action

One of the workshop streams at the Scot.E3 conference in November was devoted to housing. This report is from Mike Downham who was one of the facilitators of the discussion.  

  1. Housing in Scotland is a disgrace – from the Muirhead tower blocks to new-build. A participant from Hungary, who has been in Glasgow for a year or so and has had extreme difficulties in finding somewhere to live and which is affordable to heat, said that Scotland’s housing compares very badly with Hungary’s, which at least has thick walls. “You’ve got to do something about it”.
  2. Student housing. The Universities are supplying student housing which is unaffordable except for wealthy students, mostly from the Far East, and make it difficult for most students to find less expensive accommodation. There has been a lot of public criticism about students having such high quality housing, while many citizens are homeless. But the reality is that the majority of students have huge difficulties in finding housing they can afford to rent and heat. It’s not unusual for them to end up on someone else’s sofa.
  3. Commodification of housing since 1980 is at the root of the housing crisis in Scotland. Housing policy has been primarily aimed at growing the national economy, instead of housing being recognised as a human right.
  4. What we can do together towards a just transition in Scotland’s Housing:
  • Demand that Councils bring building standards up to passive-house specifications and replace building control jobs lost in the name of austerity, without which new housing can’t be adequately inspected. These changes are perfectly feasible for Councils.
  • Put pressure on the Scottish Government to ensure that the new Scottish Investment Bank will direct enough funding to build the new houses needed (this is urgent – the Scottish Investment Bank Bill is going through parliament now).
  • Put pressure on Pension Funds to invest in housing.
  • Support grass-roots protest as demonstrated by Living Rent’s support for Muirhouse tenants, which started with door-knocking to get all tenants’ views.
  • Suggest to XR that they target some of their direct action on grass-roots projects such as Muirhouse
  • Suggest that grass-roots projects such as Muirhouse deliver their demands to the COP 26 – to both the formal and the alternative meetings.
  • Keep in our sites the eventual objective of a National Housing Company through which communities will choose the type of housing, local facilities and green species they need
  1. Climate is just one part of the wider argument – so the challenge for the Climate Movement is to build links with all other movements concerned with social injustice.
  2. “We need to close this down” – just as we would have no hesitation in doing if there was a proposal to build an asbestos factory at the end of our street. Though this was said in respect of the climate polluters, the fact that it was said in a discussion on Housing, Health and Fuel Poverty suggests that it should be our approach to all forms of social and planetary injustice.

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Image (Construction of the Passive House) CC BY SA 2.0 from Sustainable Sanitation Alliance