At 6pm on Saturday 30 October, I’ll be standing on my doorstep banging a saucepan more often used for stews. Not because I’ve taken leave of my senses (yet) – it’s part of a big national action called ‘Clang for Climate’ that’s encouraging people in communities across the country to raise the alarm about the […]
The BBC’s new docudrama The Trick dramatises events around ‘Climategate’ – the hacking and subsequent false representation of thousands of emails between climate scientists, just before the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit. It’s an episode that can now be seen as a blueprint for a later – and even more devastating – disinformation operation. Writer Owen […]
COPnes26: 31 October – 14 November 2021 COPnes26 is a two-week series of planned events across Totnes, an opportunity for the town and wider community across our region to respond to the global climate crisis. Mirroring the international COP26 negotiations held in Glasgow during this same period, the town’s inclusive, conscious community will lead reflection […]
On Friday I took part in the launch of 26 Voices for Change, a new anthology of work by Cornwall-based writers responding to the climate and ecological emergency. Held in the splendid new performance space at The Cornish Bank in Falmouth as part of the Falmouth Book Festival, the event showcased an incredible diversity of […]
With just weeks and days to go until COP26 – the international global climate crisis summit – the environment is centre stage in the news. Hardly a day goes by without a fresh release of scientific data stating some bald and hugely concerning facts about the state of our natural world and ecosystem. Now (almost) […]
West Country Voices have been sent a copy of this letter from South Hams Cimate Action Network to MP for Totnes, Anthony Mangnall. It was sent on 15 September. To date there has been no response. Dear Anthony Action, not promises Thank you for setting out your reasons for saying no to Devon County Council’s […]
There have been a lot of letters in the Western Morning News about methane emissions from cattle sparked by a columnist claiming that there was a “spurious and completely unfounded presumption that methane from cows is a problem.” The columnist is a Dartmoor farmer and his response was, in my view, misleading. Methane is a […]
Watching Priti Patel tossing chunks of glistening legislation to the rapt audience at the Tory Party Conference is to be powerfully reminded of feeding time at the zoo. The same Pavlovian flutter of audience hands at the applause lines; the same salivating eagerness for yet more blood, yet more political protein; the same smacking of […]
As a lifelong linguist, I am only too aware of the power of language: its power to communicate or obfuscate, impress or offend, please or disappoint. Language is power. Years of study, experience and teaching language have blessed – or cursed – me with an acute sense of the value of language, and a feel […]
As is so often the case, the biggest barrier to the required step change for us to reduce our transport emissions is the media. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they are pushing electric cars as part of the solution to the climate and ecological crises. Electric cars are part of the problem. Globally […]
“It’s only one garage”, I was told when I mentioned that there was no HGV diesel at Lomond Gate earlier this week. But is it really not an issue when only some garages have no fuel? A thread: Lomond Gate is the last garage on the A82 going north that is really suitable for trucks. […]
“It’s crazy that our banks and pensions are investing in fossil fuels, when these are the very things that are jeopardizing the future that we are saving for.” Sir David Attenborough Campaigners from across the South West set up camp on the lawn outside Devon County Hall in Exeter for four days to demand that […]
Cape Canaveral, home of the Kennedy Space Centre, is in Florida. The Sunshine State has long been the favourite destination for hundreds of thousands of tourists, many of them British, in search of warmth, fabulous beaches, and the many excitements of Disneyworld. More recently, along with neighbouring Alabama and Louisiana, it has also become ground […]
There is a rich history of direct action targeting transport in the UK. Transport Action Network (TAN) evolved from the activists that took direct action to help stop the road building programme in the 90s. I am in the process of helping Extinction Rebellion set up Roads Rebellion to help tackle transport issues in the […]
“Climate change is widespread, rapid and intensifying” Surely no-one could have missed these headlines on the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on 9 August 2021? The UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the Working Group’s report was nothing less than “a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening and […]
So many of the things we hold dear in our communities and local environment are threatened by the accelerating climate emergency. Tom Scott writes of one spot in Falmouth that’s close to his heart. As Cornish beaches go, Gyllyngvase Beach in Falmouth is pretty modest – without the thundering surf and miles-long stretches of sand […]
Dear Editor-in-Chief, You have recently published two contrasting articles on electric cars. Without wanting to contribute to the for-and-against debate, I wish to offer a view on an aspect of these vehicles which seems to be overlooked in most reports about them. I well remember an item on electric cars – the vehicle of the […]
Climate activists held a sit-in protest at Taunton McDonald’s on Saturday, demanding that the fast-food chain moves towards a plant-based menu. Branded a McSit-in, they brought their own plant-based lunches and occupied areas of the restaurant for over two hours, insisting that the fast-food chain takes responsibility for the destruction they say it causes on our […]
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report published on 9 August 2021 was clear: “Climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying” The Guardian’s verdict on the IPCC report: “As a verdict on the climate crimes of humanity, the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report could not be clearer: guilty as hell. The repeatedly-ignored […]
Every day on the television news and in the newspapers we see huge parts of the world on fire and other parts submerged beneath exceptional flooding. The recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report makes it clear that this is undeniably the result of global warming caused by human activity. This report goes […]
As the owner of an electric car (my third!) it was with a mixture of emotions that I read your article on the pros and cons of EV ownership. Dismay at the negativity – deep dismay that every word was true – and sadness that it does not reflect my own positive experience. Our first […]
“We bought an electric car thinking we were doing the right thing… but it’s cost us a lot to set the whole thing up.” So said my friend Trisha, after she read my “Net zero” article in West Country Voices and thought our readers might be interested in her experience of buying her first electric […]
The online event on 15 July 2021 was chaired by Professor Gail Whiteman, Professor of Sustainability at the University of Exeter Business School and founder of Arctic Basecamp, whose mission is to ‘speak science to power’. The panellists were: Rt Hon George Eustice MP, the Conservative MP for Camborne and Redruth and Secretary of State […]
This article was originally submitted as a letter to the editor. I went to a remote session at the Tolpuddle festival on All Change for Food Production. What shocked me was that it appears that the government’s agricultural policy, post Brexit, is to import more food to meet demand while making it more difficult to […]
“This country led the world in innovation during the Industrial Revolution, and now we must lead the world to a cleaner, greener form of growth. Standing by is not an option. Reaching net zero by 2050 is an ambitious target but it is crucial that we achieve it to ensure we protect our planet for […]
Wildflower meadows have their day in the sun today, Saturday 3 July: National Meadows Day. National Meadows Day is a new thing, just a few years old, but it seems to have captured the public’s imagination, and rightly so. Because wildflower meadows encapsulate a beautiful coming-together of people and nature, creating something sublime which everyone […]
Leave our arts and crafts alone and free the press, say local activists. Extinction Rebellion activists in North Devon have been shocked and angered by police action in London ahead of last weekend’s demonstrations by many campaigning groups against the new government bill drawn up by the Home Secretary which, says young North Devon climate […]
It’s been a crazy few days here in Cornwall. The skies have been buzzing with police drones and weird-looking military aircraft, like monstrous black insects. Police with machine-guns have been hovering around the entrance to my local Tesco. And down at Carbis Bay, inside their ‘ring of steel’, world leaders concluded their deliberations on the […]
Cae Hir is one of the most beautiful gardens I have visited and if you ever get the chance to see it, I would absolutely recommend you go. It sits on the side of the valley of the little Bran river, near Lampeter (Llanbedr Pont Steffan) in west Wales.
