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Thank goodness, climate change policy is in good hands

As if fighting climate deniers and vested interests using illegal methods wasn't hard enough, we are confronted with yet more evidence of the immense power of the legal but fatal embrace of governments and corporations.And to add insult injury, most of the 23 employees of major energy companies who are currently seconded to Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change are paid by the government - paid, that is, with our money.The details have become public thanks to Green MP Caroline Lucas' use of the Freedom of Information Act - which former prime minister Tony Blair has described as his biggest mistake.The final paragraph of the Guardian report of this perfectly respectable relationship (further reinforced by equally respectable movements of DECC civil servants to energy companies) ends with the \[...\]
from Daniel Nelson on Dec 31, 2012.

Glaciers? Lynas got there first

Watching Chasing Ice, a documentary on glaciers that’s showing in some cinemas this week and which tells how James Balog hit on the idea of dramatising global warming through time-lapse photography, I remembered how former OneWorld journalist Mark Lynas used glacier retreat for his  book High Tide: How Climate Crisis is Engulfing Our Planet.In an article for The Observer Lynas later recalled a Christmas 2009 slideshow during which his father showed “my favourite photo. A huge, fan-shaped glacier loomed over a small lake” in Peru.His father, Bry – who still works for OneWorld under the alias of Tiki the Penguin – wondered whether the scene had changed. “That moment,” wrote Lynas junior, “marked the beginning of a three-year journey that would take me \[...\]
from Daniel Nelson on Dec 17, 2012.

Why Balog went Chasing Ice

How do you show people climate change? By Chasing Ice, that’s how.Photographer James Balog was once a sceptic about climate change: it didn’t seem possible to him that humans could affect climate. But he took the trouble to check it out, found it was true and wondered how he could bring the message home to a wider public.Then he hit on his Big Idea: take thousands of time-lapse photographs of retreating glaciers and let people see for themselves, on the big screen and in lectures, that our reservoirs are melting – fast. It’s effective, as he explains, because glaciers are the canaries in the mine.Chasing Ice is the story of how he did it and what he found: “I never realised you could see something so big disappearing in so short a time.”For not only are the \[...\]
from Daniel Nelson on Dec 14, 2012.

Climate finance: on a wing and a prayer

The case for an air passenger tax to raise money to help developing countries tackle climate change was made – again – at a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Development & the Environment in London on Tuesday.Saleemul Huq of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development said a levy on international flights of $5 for economy class passengers and $60 for business class would raise an estimated $8bn-$10bn a year.The levy, proposed during international climate negotiations, was fair because it applied to both developing and industrialised countries, he said, but was borne by the better-off, because the poorest people do not take international flights.It would be easy to collect and would be a new source of funding that would come from \[...\]
from Daniel Nelson on Dec 12, 2012.

Aid agencies and the Taliban

A couple of days after the final film in the BBC's excellent \"Why Poverty?\" documentary7 film series closed with a look at how aid agencies had slumped to the point at which their compounds were indistinguishable from military forts and where many Afghans regarded them as worse than the warlords, comes a briefing paper saying that the only way forward for embattled aid workers is to learn how to work with the Taliban.In the documentary, former Oxfam chief Tony Vaux wonders aloud whether the Afghanistan experience marks the death of humanitarianism. Another agency spokesman shows little patience with this idea: \"The show has moved on,\" he says, suggesting that the aid business should stop unnecessary navel-gazing and get on with the job, however much it has changed over the years and however much that means \[...\]
from Daniel Nelson on Dec 11, 2012.

Corporate social irresponsibility

PR babble about about \"corporate social responsibility\" has gone eerily quiet. The media advisers must be advising the execs that when the news is dominated by banks paying £1.9 billion to settle allegations of running money for Mexican drug barons and $670m in penalties for breaking sanctions on Iran, and by Google, Starbucks and Amazon paying laughable amounts of tax to the British authorities, this may not be the best time to boast of \"responsibility\". 
from Daniel Nelson on Dec 11, 2012.

Getting to Zero: Forum for the Development of Youth with Disability

As part of AWID’s Getting to Zero project today we are profiling the work of Forum for the Development of Youth with Disability (FDYD).  The Forum is a non-profit organization for youth with disabilities based in Malawi.  Below we also share Fatima’s Story.  Fatima is the program coordinator FDYD’s HIV and AIDS program and here she shares a bit about how she came to understand her disability and her rights.Forum for the Development of Youth with DisabilityForum for the Development of Youth with Disability (FDYD) is a non-profit organization for youth with disabilities based in Malawi. The organization is based in Bangwe Township in the city of Blantyre and was established in November 2009.The FDYD works to prevent HIV/AIDS among youth with disability \[...\]
by Chelsea on Dec 9, 2012.

The largest wave of suicides in history

Cotton for my Shroud is about what it describes as the largest wave of suicides in history. In India, now. It also says that the 250,000 farmers’ deaths by their own hand in Maharashtra in recent years is tantamount to genocide: “The gas chamber is not the only way of committing genocide.” A development paradigm, argue film-makers Kavita Bahl and Nandan Saxena, can be equally lethal. The GM multinationals and the government are to blame, they say: the former for working towards a system in which they control, and repeatedly sell, their seeds - in this case, Bt cotton and the accompanying seeds, fertilizers and pesticides; the latter for acting on cahoots with the giant corporations and for pursuing a policy of forcing small farmers off their land. The system sets up a \[...\]
from Daniel Nelson on Dec 9, 2012.

Getting to Zero: SAYWHAT

As part of AWID’s Getting to Zero project we are profiling the work of Web for Live Network a program of SAYWHAT.  The Web for Life Network is made up of young female students in tertiary institutions including colleges, universities and polytechnic institutes.  These young women leaders promote advocacy and active participation of women students in gaining access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services including HIV and AIDS prevention, treatment and care in their colleges and universities.Web for Life NetworkThe Web for Life is a program of SAYWHAT which began in 2007. It is a dynamic network for female students in tertiary institutions which promotes leadership, advocacy and the active participation of female students in addressing their Sexual and Reproductive \[...\]
by Chelsea on Dec 6, 2012.

Climate Act under threat?

Many comments on the British government's energy policy have said it is part of an escalating threat to Britain's groundbreaking Climate Change Act - which a group of Tory MPs boo every time it is mentioned in Parliament. No surprise for OneWorld readers.I reported in April that at a meeting in London \"a couple of NGO representatives voiced concern about the security of the Climate Change Act.\"I wrote: \"There's nothing definite,\" one NGO activist at the London meeting told me (Chatham House rules means no-one is quotable by name) \"but there's a feeling growing that by a small change in policy here and a little change there, and making it impossible to meet the targets in the Act, it might amount to the death of the Act by a thousand cuts.\"A battle is brewing.
from Daniel Nelson on Dec 6, 2012.
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