Co-founder of activist group Plane Stupid, Joss Garman reflects on the environmental movements' successes and why, when things look bleaker than ever, we need to remember this
It probably isn’t too much of an exaggeration to suggest that most people are hard pushed to name a politician they really admire. In Britain, however, one name will come up time and again.
Barack Obama and Ban Ki Moon, Labour and the Conservatives, green groups and trade unionists, Nicholas Stern and even Peter Mandelson - everybody is talking about a 'Green New Deal'. Faced with an economic downturn, climate breakdown and an energy system in need of billions of new investment anyway, the idea is simple and attractive.
What started as a pub chat evolved into Greenpeace’s most audacious coup yet. Joss Garman reports on a plan to pull the carpet out from under BAA ’s third runway at Heathrow – by buying up the very land beneath its feet
‘Britain’s astounding retreat from reason is now legitimising anarchy.’ That was the conclusion of the hotblooded screaming radical Melanie Phillips, writing for The Spectator.
Britain lingers near to the bottom of the European league table for renewable energy, so why does it seem that the government are willing to add more coal nails to the coffin?
It provoked an absolute storm. CNN’s ticker screamed that Britain was ‘under siege’ from environmental activists. Sky News dubbed it ‘the world’s most organised protest’ and the New Statesman ‘the most important protest of our time’
As an excuse to do nothing itself, this Labour Government has often hidden behind US intransigence on climate change, so it’ll be interesting to see how Gordon Brown might respond to a US President more progressive than he on global warming.
In the first of the Ecologist's new 'If I...' series, the co-founder of aviation campaign group Plane Stupid imagines what he would do if he were in charge of the government's aviation policy.