Read all about it! Courtesy of Bexhill and Hastings Global Justice Group.

Bexhill action for climate justice

As the Paris climate talks began, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world demonstrated in favour of radical and fair action on climate change at the conference. In Bexhill, Global Justice Now supporters handed out newspapers setting out hopes for climate justice at and beyond the Paris meeting, as they report.

“Despite it being a cold and blustery day, our group was set to spend an hour distributing 100 plus copies of the Global Justice newspaper, but they were all snapped up within half an hour,” group member Julia Dance reported. “We were aware that a good proportion of people were already very knowledgeable about climate change and keen to learn more from the free newspaper.”

One question asked was, “How do we solve climate change?” Barbara Echlin, another member of the group, responded, “Simple! Stop burning the fossil fuels coal, oil and gas which put ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thus retaining more of the earth’s heat and changing the climate. But will the Paris climate talks put that solution into practice? Changing the way we produce energy from fossil fuels to renewables or nuclear is expensive.

“And that brings in the question of fairness. The rich nations have put the CO₂ into the atmosphere for two centuries and have caused most of the problem. The poor nations reckon the rich nations should pay the bill. Getting agreement on that issue is what caused the Copenhagen climate talks to fail.

“This time most of the 195 countries meeting in Paris have made climate plans showing how they will get their emissions down. One trouble is that these plans are not enough to keep the expected warming below the accepted ‘danger-threshold’ of 2˚C above pre-industrial levels. So the other vital thing those in Paris need to agree on is to meet every five years to revise their plans and to have some way of checking that everyone is doing what they say they will do.”

Advance notice: On 18 January, Bexhill and Hastings Global Justice group will be screening This Changes Everything, the film based on Naomi Klein’s highly acclaimed book of the same name.

For details, or for more information on the group, visit ww.globaljustice.org.uk/bexhillandhastings or contact Christina Lucey at christina.lucey@hotmail.com or on 01424 845225.

Also in: The HOT Planet