By Ana Dragalina, Friends of the Earth Scotland volunteer.
Last Saturday we paid a visit to the people of Rosyth, Fife, and had a chat with them about one of Forth Energy’s proposed biomass powered plants which is planned to be built near the town’s port. Sheila Duffy, concerned resident of Rosyth and Friends of the Earth Scotland activist, invited us along to help her raise awareness.
Did you know that across the UK as a whole, biomass accounts for a whopping 82.5% of renewable energy currently produced? At Friends of the Earth Scotland, we believe there is a space for small, community-owned biomass boilers making use of heat and using locally sourced wood.
But – take heed, readers, and take action: big biomass in Scotland a far cry from this romantic ideal. It is simply riding on the ‘clean and green’ image to try and attract heavy subsidies for renewable energy, which are currently up for review. Please get in touch with the Scottish Government soon to call for it to stop putting our money into this false solution.
Here are five myths about biomass that the Friends of the Earth Scotland team is working to dispell: Continue reading
2011 wasn’t a great year for the environment or the climate, and, after this year, few of us will be in any doubt about what is meant by the term ‘extreme weather’. The year kicked off with Australian floods in January, followed by cyclones, landslides and earthquakes. No region seemed safe, but the US was hit particularly hard by flooding, wildfires and drought. The Guardian called 2011 “the year of too much or too little water”, and wrote: “It began with devastating floods in Australia which covered an area the size of France and Germany combined, and ended with tropical storm Washi killing nearly 1,000 people and making 300,000 homeless in the Philippines.” Continue reading
If you read the EU commissioner for climate action Connie Hedegaard’s summary of the outcomes of the Durban climate summit, it sounds like the talks were a great success. Hedegaard is trying to enforce the story that the EU is leading on tackling global climate change. In fact, what Durban gave us was another ‘we agree to agree on a deal later’. The sad truth about the so-called roadmap agreed in Durban is that it fails spectacularly to take action against the climate crisis. Instead of leading on climate change action, the EU is part of a band of culprits comprising rich developed countries, who refuse to act. This band of brothers is the US, who never signed up to the Kyoto Protocol in the first place, Canada, who dropped out of Kyoto yesterday to continue their climate wrecking tarsands operations, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Russian and finally the EU. Together, these countries are responsible for 75% of all emissions historically, yet continue to avoid and dodge their responsibility to act. Continue reading
Good news in a guest post from Kev Smith at Platform, a group we’ve been working with on our Clean Up RBS campaign.
News has reached us that RBS isn’t sponsoring the 2012 Climate Week, due to take place in March. RBS was a controversial sponsor of last year’s event, which many saw as an opportunity for the bank to gain some ill-deserved environmental credentials in the face of public criticism over its appalling record of fossil fuel finance. Continue reading
This is a version of a talk given at the Scottish Parliament in November 2011.
The Hunterston case was brought by Marco McGinty, a bird-watcher from Largs who visits the site on an almost daily basis. With the support from a number of NGOs, including Friends of the Earth Scotland, the local community and a solicitor called Frances McCArtney, Marco lodged a judicial review in September 2009 against the Scottish Government over the inclusion of Hunterston in the second National Planning Framework.
Last month, Lord Brailsford ruled against Marco McGinty. The case raises serious questions, not just with the Hunterston application, but with Scotland’s planning and justice system more generally. Continue reading
In June this year, Friends of the Earth Scotland became the first Scottish NGO (and the first environmental NGO in the UK) to intervene in a case at the UK Supreme Court. The case relates to insurance claims by victims of asbestos exposure who suffer from pleural plaques – scarring of the lungs – an apparently asymptomatic condition. The insurers are challenging the validity of a 2009 Act of the Scottish Parliament that ensures individuals can sue for damages if they contract the condition.
An interesting case, but what on earth has it got to do with Friends of the Earth Scotland, you might think? Continue reading
It’s been pointed out endlessly, not the least by the Scottish Government, that we have a world leading climate law in Scotland. The targets in the act are good and necessary, but what we need now is action, and funding in place, to be able to reach those targets.
As part of the Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS) coalition, we are putting pressure on the government to live up to the intentions in the climate act, and start budgeting accordingly. SCCS have submitted evidence to the Finance Committee, highlighting transport and homes as two main areas where funding in the coming budget will make a huge difference. Part of our argument has been that if we don’t start to budget to reach our emissions targets, it will be immensely expensive for all of us eventually, not just economically but health-wise and environmentally. Continue reading
Last December, I graduated with a Masters in Environmental Law, but felt unemployable. What I needed was some hands-on work experience where I could see what environmental campaigners do, and have a go at campaigning myself.
So when I came across an internship in the Projects and Campaigns team at Friends of the Earth Scotland, I jumped at the chance. Juliet, head of Projects and Campaigns, assured me that this would be no boring internship. Continue reading
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