Dear friends,

Welcome to the Rising Clyde #10. Be sure to subscribe to our joint Coalition Calendar to stay up to date on our events, and as this is our last newsletter for this year, tune into this edition’s soundtrack to bring you into a festive mood.

Net-Zero 2050? The UK’s Climate “Ambition” Is A Death Sentence

Tomorrow, the UK Government wants to brand itself as a climate leader at their “Climate Ambition Summit”, when in reality, their target is unlikely to keep us below 2°C, never mind 1.5°C warming. We’re heading to 3 degree warming if we continue on the current path.

The UK’s claim of leadership rings especially hollow while it continues to finance fossil fuels, and uses green pledges to reward the corporations that caused the climate crisis, instead of genuinely addressing the climate crisis in a way that would tackle inequalities in the UK at the same time.

We don’t need ambition, we need action. The science is very clear – the climate emergency we are facing will have catastrophic impacts, far beyond the already devastating ecological crises affecting so many across the planet. These impacts will hit working-class communities, communities of colour, and people in the Global South the hardest. Winning slowly is the same as losing in this fight. We need concrete action now.

So, what to do tomorrow? Play along at the UK Government’s Climate Ambition Summit tomorrow, starting at 2pm with our bingo! Listen out for false solutions, greenwashing and lies and mark them off on your bingo card! Share your results on socials under #ClimateAmbitionBingo and let us know what your favourite empty phrase was!

Get involved!

But we don’t just shout from the sidelines, we platform those speaking truth to power: Last Wednesday, representatives from the international climate justice movement came together to hold governments and those in power to account and to call out the hollow lack of ambition in the Cop26 President’s Climate Ambition Summit.

Watch the recording of our international press conference here: 

While getting ready for our holiday break, make sure you tune into next week’s Culture Working Group Meeting on Tuesday, 15 December at 6pm. We are also having a first science meeting on Wednesday, 16 December at 12pm to talk about what role the scientific community can and should play in the Coalition – if you’re interested in how scientists can help us explain the urgent need for societal transformation, please come along!

Also, we have been active on the streets of Glasgow again – keep an eye out on our socials this weekend for something big!

News and Resources 

• A lot of noise has been made recently about Hydrogen being the new green energy to solve this crisis. But as our friends at Corporate Europe Observatory point out, the Hydrogen Hype is based on a major lobbying and rebranding exercise from the fossil fuel industry: “While hydrogen is presented as a climate panacea, concerted lobbying by the gas industry has ensured that for the next few crucial decades, Europe’s much-hyped ‘hydrogen economy’ will be powered by hydrogen made from polluting fossil fuels rather than from renewable electricity. As for the promised ‘green’ hydrogen, industry and the EU are planning to source half of it from Ukraine and North Africa, continuing the neocolonial relationship that has characterised EU energy policy up to today, extracting resources while leaving behind the political, social, and environmental impacts.” 

• In good news concerning bad people, Shell is falling apart over how fast their energy transition should go. Of course, even their best target was never enough, and we should not trust the companies who caused the crisis to fix it – but it’s still delightful to see the infighting.  

• In further good news, the youth are again showing how it’s done: six young folk from Portugal have sued 33 European states over climate change – and the European Court of Human Rights took it seriously, requiring the defendant states to respond. 

• Earlier this week, Denmark announced that it is phasing out all exploration of North Sea Oil and Gas… but not until 2050. Notice a pattern here? Still, this is arguably a lot more than Scotland has done…

• Earlier this year in South Africa, on October 22, anti-coal activist Fikile Ntshangase was assassinated at her home near young grandchildren. Ntshangase, 63, was shot five times by a gang of six men a few weeks after refusing a $20,000 bribe by the coal mine: “I refused to sign. I cannot sell out my people. And if need be, I will die for my people.” 

• Here’s your bi-weekly reminder that carbon offsetting is a load of crap big conservation organisations are scamming us with. 

• And if you haven’t had enough of UK government hypocrisy yet, we’ve got you: Supporting oil pipelines in Africa is not “climate leadership” no matter how you dress it up. 

• In breaking news that will surprise absolutely nobody: The world’s wealthiest 1% account for more than twice the combined carbon emissions of the poorest 50%, according to the UN. Let’s save the climate by helping the rich adopt a more modest lifestyle.

• And while we are all glad to see the last few weeks of Trump, Biden and Harris need to be held accountable: Over 100 orgs representing millions of people in the US have written a letter to Biden-Harris outlining what the US must do to make “returning to the Paris Agreement” anything more than a cheap publicity stunt.