Zero Hour the campaign group behind the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill have sent a letter to all East Sussex County Councillors.  The groups Campaign Coordinator writes that that the decision to not support the Bill was based on statements that were either untrue or countered positions previously stated by the Government. Therefore, it was an act of bad governance. It asks certain Councillors to admit mistakes and correct the record as is customary when such errors have been made. It also asks for the decision to be reconsidered.

The full text of the letter is pasted below;

Dear Cllrs Galley, Bennett, Taylor and all East Sussex County Councillors,

Climate and Ecology Bill (CE Bill) aka Climate and Ecological Emergency (CEE) Bill

On 12^th October 2021 East Sussex County Council voted not to support the CE Bill. That decision was based on incorrect information, false statements and by misleading interpretation of Government policy. To make decisions on this basis is...

On August 22, I was listening to Rebecca Stott speaking of the rhetoric of climate change on Radio 4’s A Point of View.

She said that when communicating climate change it was hard to avoid the use of abstract nouns. Words such as climate change, climate justice, weather, future, ineffective, decarbonisation, deforestation and mitigation. According to her, these words are unemotive and easily forgotten. For a message to be effective it needs to convey feeling.

She explained that during her public relations work she often used Aristotle’s three principles of rhetoric: Ethos, Logos and Pathos during her. Ethos involves establishing the moral authority of the speaker. Logos uses statistics and facts to give the message credibility. Pathos is about conveying emotion. Scientists communicate via logos and find it difficult to tie the emotional message to facts.

Ms Stott described the scale of the communications problem for scientists at The United Nations (UN) Climate...

Tackling the Climate Emergency - A “No Regrets” Plan

Sir Dieter Helm, professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Economics, outlines a plan to solve climate change in the final chapter of his book, ‘Net Zero. How we stop causing climate change’. It will rapidly bring emissions down if implemented.

Carbon consumption pricing is at the core of professor Helm’s plan. It works by making consumers pay more for carbon intensive products and this alters their buying habits and rapidly brings emissions down.

The alternative, carbon production pricing, puts a price on emissions from producing goods. However, the production of goods that would have been made in the UK is exported to developing countries instead. Additionally, China and India have less effective environmental regulation and polluting coal powered manufacturing. This way the UK government can claim that UK emissions are down but globally they rise.

The government should...

Dawn Butler was recently suspended from Parliament for pointing out that Boris Johnson had misled it during the pandemic. She complained that she was in trouble for pointing out a liar when the liar himself was getting away with it.

In fact, the government is not above lying to the public on just about everything, including the coming life-threatening disaster of climate change.

It claims it is making good progress towards meeting an emissions target. Ministers reassure people that the current policies are working. But in reality the public is being misled into thinking that things are under control.

The response to a recent petition demonstrates the type of comforting patter that they use. Signatories of petition number 574678 are asking for the climate crisis and air pollution to be tackled by introducing charges on carbon emissions. The government responded: “In June 2019, the UK became the first major economy to legislate for net zero emissions by 2050 and the Government...

"Is it the end of the world dad?"

Dr Chris Shaw lecturer at The University of Sussex and Senior Researcher of Climate Outreach recently tweeted, “How do you answer your 20-year-old son, the light of your life, in his last year of university, trying to think of his future when he says, "It’s like the end of the world isn't it?" I can't bring myself to say, don't worry, we've got Net Zero and that is going to make everything OK.”

Families across the country are likely to be having this sort of conversation.

The government amended The Climate Change Act in 2019 committing the UK to 'net zero' carbon emissions by 2050. Should we be reassured that the government is taking appropriate action? To answer this question, we need to access the current state of the climate.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a United Nations body that assesses the state of the climate. They provide reports that governments can use to develop policies to avoid global...

To avoid catastrophe, it is essential that there is a reduction in the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels gas such as coal or oil must stop now. Only governments can achieve this and ensure the survival of life on earth. Emissions have to be quickly reduced and a plan made of how we will adapt for changes in the future. This has to happen through policy changes by the governments of the world.

Currently, the global economic system is increasing climate change and harming humans and environmental well-being. It is also jeopardising the future of all species on Earth. Governments are supposed to protect the well-being of their citizens including those who are not yet born or too young to vote.

The four main challenges that climate change poses are as follows;

• How to lower high amounts of C02 to 350 ppm? How to decarbonise the economy whilst addressing global economic disparities?
• How to alter society so that carbon footprints are reduced and people adapt for...

What will happen if climate change is not addressed.

Severe climate change is already happening. The pre-industrial global mean surface temperature was .2°C. Currently it is 1.1°C. The ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting at an unprecedented rate. Half of the Great Barrier Reef has died while record-breaking wildfires have destroyed forests in America, Australia and The Taiga.

If nothing is done to stop climate change it’s predicted to rise to 2°C by between 2030 and 2040.

The climate could change to a new state if a series of cyclic events are triggered; this is known as a tipping point. One example of this is the Arctic, where permafrost, earth that has been kept below zero °C, is thawing. Its dark surface absorbs heat and releases methane which then further adds to planetary warming.

Temperatures of above 4°C are likely to cause more tipping points and some that trigger other tipping points which could further raise temperatures to 6 or...

Global heating is accelerating and adversely affecting every aspect of life. One consequence of climate change is the increased risk of pandemics. Scientists say that we have entered a pandemic era and that COVID-19 may just be the start.

Ecosystem and Habitat changes

Climate change is altering and destroying ecosystems around the world. As habitats become unsuitable species relocate or move into new ones.

In Yannun in China global warming caused major changes to the vegetation which increased the abundance and diversity of bat species many of which had coronaviruses. It is theorised that the coronavirus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic (SARS-CoV-2) crossed from animal to human at a Chinese wet market where live wild animals were sold and slaughtered. This ultimately caused the 2019-2020 pandemic.

Another ecosystem and one of the largest affected by climate change is the Arctic. As sea ice and permafrost melt it exposes diseases that have been trapped in the ice for thousands of...

Climate change is already causing a dramatic ecological collapse.

         It’s no use speaking of the need to prevent an ecological collapse. It’s here, now – we’re living it.

         It’s getting hotter. The climate is unravelling and entire ecosystems are falling apart at this moment.

         Global warming reached temperatures above 1°C for the first time in 2015 and the trend is upwards. The years 2010 to 2019 were the hottest decade ever recorded. The consequences are a global catastrophe. From the Arctic to Australia.

Western USA

Archaeological evidence shows that about 750 years ago wildfires raged across the whole of what is now the Western USA after it became aid after being hit by a decades-long mega drought.

          Scientists have known for a long time that one degree of...

Is it climate change or global warming? The language we use to describe this is important. A phrase or term can communicate an idea consciously and unconsciously. So, let's get it right when we talk about the climate.

Climate Change

The term Climate Change no longer reflects what is happening. David Wallace-Wells puts it eloquently in his book The Uninhabitable Earth: "The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and comes to us bundled with several others in an anthology of comforting delusions; that global warming is an Arctic saga, unfolding remotely; that it is strictly a matter of sea level and coastlines, not an enveloping crisis sparing no place and leaving no life undeformed; that is a crisis of the "natural" world, not the human one; that those two are distinct..." The full quote on page one of his book is well worth reading.

Climate Warming

Climate Warming is a term usually used to describe...