Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Polar bear asks the Bradford climate criminals to stop.

Sam Nexter | 31.03.2007 13:25 | Climate Camp 2006 | Climate Chaos

A polar bear today visited a number of travel agents, and the Tomas Cook call centre in Bradford, to ask these climate criminals if they would kindly stop destroying his habitat.

The Banner
The Banner

The Bear
The Bear


Today Bradford witnessed the unusual sight of a placard-waving polar bear. The placard, with the simple message; “You fly, I die”, was aimed at the selfish minority who continue to fly despite this being a major contributor to climate change – and the fastest rising source of carbon dioxide emissions in Western Europe.

The bear and his human friends visited a variety of travel agents in the city centre with a letter asking that the climate criminals stop destroying the Arctic. After that, he made his way to the Tomas Cook call centre on Godwin Street, where several local residents had erected a banner and were busy posting the windows with “You Fly, They Die” stickers (see  http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/2283 for ordering information)

The local citizens – inspired by the excellent Camp For Climate Action last summer - were dismayed that the climate crimes of this firm seem to be going unnoticed. A spokeswoman for the group pointed out that there were two great lies about flying which needed to be challenged. The first is that flying is a small contributor to green house gases; the people who say this rely on figures which don’t include return flights or flights to and from Britain made by foreigners, and ignore the extra damage done by emitting pollutants high in the atmosphere. The other lie is that flying is a common activity for ordinary people. Studies clearly show that flying is overwhelmingly an activity for the rich to take part in, at great cost to the rest of us. The average income of passengers using Stansted - supposedly Britain’s “low cost” airport – was recently found to be £48,000!

Without immediate action it is likely that summer sea ice in the Arctic will be totally absent within 30 to 70 years – this would spell extinction in the wild for the Polar Bear, which relies on sea ice for hunting. The Arctic is already one of the fasted warming parts of the world.

In the face of the reckless, criminal and selfish actions of a minority of people that threaten us all, surely the time has come for sane and moderate people to stand up and say that enough is enough. The profit terrorists and climate criminals must stop before they kill us all.

The police rather politely asked who wanted to be arrested, and five people decided to attempt to continue their important public-spirited work through the courts. The bear went home for tea and biscuits.

Sam Nexter
- e-mail: info@climatecamp.org.uk
- Homepage: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Comments

Hide the following 20 comments

The text of the bear's letter

31.03.2007 17:52

Dear Travel Industry people,

Air flights are the fastest growing source of UK carbon emissions, which lead to climate change. When the uniquely damaging effects of emitting CO2 at high altitude are taken into account, the aviation industry already emits the equivalent of 10-15% of UK carbon emissions, and the level of pollution increases with every passing year. If aviation continues to expand in line with government plans to 2030, emissions from aircraft will increase by between 156% and 191% from a 2000 baseline. This growth would counteract CO2 reductions made in other sectors of the economy, and destroy any chance to avoid catastrophic global warming.

Without urgent action it is likely that summer sea ice in the Arctic will be totally absent within 30 to 70 years, and it will not just be us polar bears who feel the effects:-
The addition of melt water to the ocean may have catastrophic consequences for Britain, because it is slowing ocean currents that have kept our climate clement for thousands of years. Paradoxically, global warming could make the UK colder, by “turning off” the Gulf stream.
A three degree temperature rise over the next century could lead to the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, ultimately resulting in a 7 metre sea level rise.

It is time for a big change. We are calling on you lot to act as responsible global citizens by reducing the number of flights you sell, and switching your business to concentrate on less environmentally damaging forms of transport such as coach, ferry and rail. Instead of cooking the planet by encouraging people to take hugely polluting long-distance flights, we ask you to put more effort into promoting the many attractions of holidays here in the UK.

Thanks for your help and co-operation.

Sam Bear

Sam Nexter
- Homepage: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk


cite

02.04.2007 09:51

Got a cite for this -The average income of passengers using Stansted - supposedly Britain’s “low cost” airport – was recently found to be £48,000. not doubting but just a bit curious.

Mary


Average income of Stansted passengers

02.04.2007 19:42

See www.stopstanstedexpansion.com/documents/BAA_STANSTED_BRIEFING_NOTE_2005.doc. This excellent document gives a figure a little higher than the one quoted in the article, but it is three years old - maybe the rich are getting poorer???

Sam Nexter
- Homepage: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk


I will survive - signed 'A Polar Bear'

03.04.2007 00:20

My ancestors survived the period from about 400 AD to 1400 AD when the climate was a whole lot warmer than it is now. In those distant times the Vikings named Greenland green because it was. It's only in the last few centuries it was ice-laden. I survived

Global warming theory via carbon emissions is the ruling party's favourite theme = more taxes, reduced mobility, restrictions on personal freedom, ignorance of natural cycles, disguise of upturn in the Schumann vector resonance, control of the population through yet more fear-mongering
Why buy it and play with it?

dh


Schumann Resonances

03.04.2007 09:29

Poor dh seems a tad confused about the role of Schuman Resonances (SRs) in the climate change debate. It has been postulated they might be a way of monitoring processes affecting the global climate, but dh seems to have read this as somehow causing warming?? Back to the drawing board, weirdo.

As for Polar Bears surviving the coming (only just possibly avoidable?) loss of arctic summer sea ice, I'd like to see the references for sea ice density for the time periods dh quotes. I guess they don't exist, so the theory that polar bears have survived the loss of sea ice before is unprovable. Add to that the far greater human presence in places where polar bears sometimes end up (north Iceland and Alaska, for example) and its clear that the polar bears have a problem - and not just from oddballs who' ve mis-read a wikipedia article about something they don't understand. We do know for sure that the arctic ice is thinning at an alarming rate right now. Do your homework dh and come back when you've got a grip on reality.

Madison "Popemobile" Langton


Greenland ice a sheet recent occurance??!!??

03.04.2007 10:00

OK, I missed a bit - sorry. If the Greenland ice sheet is a recent phenomena (??!!) how come sea levels haven't fallen in the last few centuries? (Maybe god turned up and made a load of extra random ice???) Check the facts, and get back to us to admit you haven't got a clue what you're talking about.

Madison "Popemobile" Langton
- Homepage: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk


Schumann

03.04.2007 23:24

Sorry - I believed, perhaps wrongly - that the Resonance was an effect measured in the Cavity of the Earth, ie the atmosphere, that reflected the sphere's own vibrational frequency, and that this latter is measurable as creeping upward from a century-long steady state, since around the mid-eighties
I thought this might result in consequences such as the increased fleeting of time as experienced personally, as well as the microwave oven effect of a body increasing its frequency and thus becoming hotter

dh


And I'm with you for the most part

03.04.2007 23:46

I'm not in the least part against the environmentalist theme for the most part. I know our resources are needlessly exhausted in the relentless consumerist game.
I just also realise that it's all being used against us while being sold to us.
In the end it's all supposed to be our fault.
Well fuck that- it's all their fault - these luckless masters who we've created out of our own dependence
I'm not dependent enough to try to annihilate my own desires at the service of these manipulators as some seem to be

dh


Was it green?

03.04.2007 23:53

Of did they just say it was green to encourage migration to expand their empire? I mean if things worked then anything like they worked now just because they said it was green isn't a reason to believe it was...

And isn't the ice sheet far older than the Medieval Warm Period?

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

Viking


More on the greenness of Greenland

03.04.2007 23:59

The name "Greenland" comes from Scandinavian settlers. In the Norse sagas, it is said that Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland for murder. He, along with his extended family and thralls, set out in ships to find the land that was rumored to be to the northwest. After settling there, he named the land Grønland ("Greenland"), possibly in order to attract more people to settle there.[1] Greenland was also called Gruntland ("Ground-land") on early maps. Whether Green is an erroneous transcription of Grunt ("Ground"), which refers to shallow bays, or vice versa, is not known. It should also be noted, however, that the southern portion of Greenland (not covered by glacier) is indeed very green in the summer, and was likely even greener in Erik's time because of the Medieval Warm Period.

[1]  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17946/17946-h/17946-h.htm

Viking
- Homepage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Etymology


Annihilation of Desires

04.04.2007 10:02


"I'm not dependent enough to try to annihilate my own desires at the service of these manipulators as some seem to be"

dh
If you think carefully about it there are no desires which you are dependent on "them" for which can be met in an equitable and undamaging way. They make their living by selling you stuff you don't need and which cause all kinds of misery elsewhere. I suggest you limit yourself to satisfying desires which are free - they are the ones that aren't damaging, and I also believe they are the best! I reccomend love, friendship, laughter - you know the sort of thing.
xx
Sheila

Sheila McDaggert


You can't reverse Cause and Effect

04.04.2007 12:07

I'm all for reducing pollution which damages the environment. The problem is CO2 is actually a very important gas to all life on the planet. Even if you believe that the greenhouse effect is the main driver of climate, water vapor is about many times worse for trapping heat than CO2. In addition to this the greatest source of CO2 is the oceans. Assuming that greenhouse gasses are driving climate change you can work out that man made CO2 makes up about 0.28% of all greenhouse gasses.

This becomes irrelevant when you consider that the ice core record shows that temperature increases precede rises in CO2 by hundreds of years. If there is any conclusion you can draw from this it is that temperature drives CO2. To continue to claim that CO2 is causing warming periods is completely backwards. It’s like me being drunk today and saying the cause is that I will drink some beers in 800 years.

So while the environment really is being destroyed by DU, GM, dumping of VX byproduct into the sea, destruction of the rainforest to grow energy crops, decimation of the honey bee population, the establishment have us running around worrying about a gas which is actually beneficial to life on the planet.

Do any of you really trust Al Gore?

ue
mail e-mail: a_sunde9@hotmail.com


dh is a right wing 9/11 'truth' spammer

04.04.2007 13:47

Part of the developing conspiracist world view is climate change denial. It fits the conspiracist world view coming out of US right wing movements. Although tiny in number the conspiracists are obsessive about spamming websites with their bollocks. They seem to be given a free hand by Indymedia volunteers although on this issue they just endlessly repeat big oil funded misinformation.

We need to confront these...

right wing paranoid cults


dh is an anarchist

04.04.2007 13:58

Though clearly on the nutty wing, which he will be the first to admit...

I met him at the last 4th July protest at Menwith Hill, he is a legitimate member of the movement, just as you are.

The only confrontation that is needed is in the form of open discussion and debate.

face2face


The motivations of dh don't affect ice core samples.

04.04.2007 16:19

The same ice cores that the IPPC uses to establish the link between CO2 and temperature show CO2 increases lagging behind temperature increases by hundreds of years.

It’s also amusing that, in the same breath that you try to discredit dh for being a conspiracy theorist, you present your own popular conspiracy theory that those who question the Global Warming Priesthoods official orthodoxy, are funded by Big Oil.

CO2 driven global warming theory is not science. It’s a religion.

ue


Is Prison planet a legitimate part of the movement?

04.04.2007 16:28

I have no idea if "dh" considers himself an anarchist but re-posting from far right hate sites like prison planet means he is not part of any movement that I am. We need to confront climate change deniers and reveal the rightwing sources from which they draw their "information" and their world view.

Right wing paranoid cults


No, Alex Jones isn't an anti-capitalist

04.04.2007 16:59

Watch Terror Storm and see the way he abuses lefties on demos, no chance of seeing him with the rest of us protesting at Menwith Hill.

face2face


climate change denial

04.04.2007 21:33

Always makes me laugh - that 'climate change denier' charge.
Don't think I or other people and scientists have done much denying that the overall climate is warming, just question the now-accepted dogma of the why. Of course, denial is a good word with overtones to use, as it references pretty well 'holocaust denial' Evil rightwingers of course.
But then of course "re-posting from far right hate sites like prison planet" What makes AJ's websites 'hate sites'? The whole emphasis is on campaigning against big brother global corporate fascism - the creation of a "prison planet" for the majority of the population. Is that a hate-filled notion. And far right? I know that Jones comes from approximately the Constitutionalist patriot movement, which really has no equivalence in Britain, and which believes the American Constitution is a good thing, and abhors its total destruction under the current regime, as well as the programme of wars of invasion being carried out in the interests of global hegemony, and which also opposes the development of the surveillence and control grid being rapidly imposed to keep the citizens oppressed and eventually enslaved, and the development of corporate globalism and monopoly capitalism 95% of his stuff is ok and in no way suits the soubriquet of "far right hate"

Not quite sure who Face2Face is - there are an awful lot of nice people who attend the Menwith demos - haven't been to the last couple unfortunately but aim to be back this next Independence Day. Lindis and Annie are really good people. Anyway, to anyone who might take the word of a conspiracy 'nutter', a vital must in the social calendar. Hope to see you there f2f

What else? Oh yes, ue has made an excellent point there - to get back to the supposed subject of the thread. Wonder if concerned environmentalists might make a point of answering. It might help get this back on track

Now I noticed how a simple meeting announcement that I've allegedly spammed, seems to have started an argument there. I'll have to go and have a look.

Comradely greetings to all

dh
mail e-mail: wy911@goowy.com


Can ice core samples be right wing?

05.04.2007 15:22

To address the poster who said that climate change deniers and their right wing 'sources' must be confonted: Are the ice core smaples which are the source of this information right wing?

The fact that temperature rises preceed CO2 rises is NOT debated by the man made warming camp. They simply attempt to obfuscate the issue, poorly I might add. Although it's not easy to obfuscate to the point where you can reverse one of the most basic fundamentals of science.


The 'Big Oil' accusation doesn't work anymore as virtualy all industries are backing a global carbon tax especially Big Oil. They know they will get the tax from this so it's more profitable. So the man made warming camp are supporting the establishment view. Another view of the establishment is the labeling of sites like prisonplanet as 'Hate', so if you're for that then you are with the American Government also.

But rather than play the games of slander and commit the fallacy of muddying the waters I would encourage everyone to look at the climate debate with an evidence based approach.

ue


oh household annual income...

11.04.2007 13:25

I guess its just a re-wording problem that I have. I thought when it was said ‘average annual income of passengers’ it was individuals –but looking at the data it seems its household income for passengers on leisure. To me £48-50,000 isn’t that high, well its what I’d expect for people who go on package holidays.

And can I just say. Regardless of who started it –we don’t want the climate to get any hotter –having an argument about what started it really just distracts from the fact that we’ve got to stop it getting hotter, regardless if its ‘natural’ or not! -and well, what started it in the frist place might not be what has kept it going...

mx

Mary


Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech