Welcome to the beta (test) version of the Energy Royd social media website, where everyone is welcome to say what you think about climate change and what we, in the Upper Calder Valley, can do about it – and are doing about it.
Climate change is the outcome of the same system that caused the financial crisis: out-of-control corporations are profitting from lack of effective regulation. So, surely tackling climate change also means tackling “austerity” and public service cuts, and the whole system and mindset that allow massive companies to mess up and then expect us taxpayers to rescue them?
This is what the One Million Climate Jobs campaign is about.
The Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Group highlights how creating one million climate change jobs can help to solve the twin crises of the floundering economy and of climate change.
Their Climate Jobs Caravan will visit Leeds on May 15th, Huddersfield on May 20th and Manchester on May 25th. The Huddersfield events look particularly interesting:
For information about events at any of the locations, you can email climatejobscaravan752@gmail.com , call 07961 669650 or visit the climate jobs website.
You can sign the online petition asking the government to “give urgent and serious consideration to the recommendations of the One Million Climate Change Jobs Report”, or you can download a PDF hard copy for people to sign.
A bit of background – the polluters profit and expect us to pay
The Stern Report, which formed the basis for the UK’s 2008 Climate Change Act, says that climate change is happening because greenhouse gas-polluting companies avoid paying for the damage their pollution causes. If they had to pay, they’d make sure they stopped polluting.
The Stern Report says this is a “market failure”. It’s also a regulatory failure. Governments are supposed to make sure that companies act responsibly and avoid damaging their customers, staff, the general public and the environment.
The process is the same, whether it’s in the financial services sector, or the fossil-fuel energy industries and other greenhouse-gas polluting industries. Governments fail to regulate companies properly, and the public ends up paying for the damage the companies cause.
Big companies lobby so strongly and so effectively, that governments end up protecting their interests – rather than working out how to create environmental justice and reduce and adapt to climate change.
So while profits are privatised, risks are socialised – the public is expected to pay for the bad stuff, and repairing the damage. But some damage is already beyond repair.
From the website www.globalresearch.ca
What good is a website?
Energy Royd is a hyper-local website that aims to link global climate change and environmental justice issues with local campaigns and projects. The atmosphere and the rest of our environment don’t recognise geographical or political boundaries, so our thinking and actions can’t be limited by them.
Reducing and adapting to climate change is going to be difficult. We don’t really know what it will look like or how we’re going to achieve it – the route since the Rio Earth Summit that’s taken us to Kyoto, and the European and UK policies that have come out of Kyoto, have proved to be a kind of false start and we need to think again.
Research shows that people’s carbon footprints are more or less the same (for people who have comparable income levels), whether or not they think of themselves as green. So either the green ones are talking the talk but not walking the walk, or the problem is systemic, beyond the power of individuals to change.
Maybe living lightly on the earth is going to take big social, political and economic changes – the whole shebang needs to change and until we collectively make that happen, individual efforts will be frustrated?
Energy Royd is a place for thinking about the idea that climate change is a political problem that needs political solutions. It aims to be a safe space for public discussion where anyone can have their say. Accepting the idea that there are legitimate differences of opinion and interest, and that it’s best to listen to and explore these differences.
Like the 16th century French essayist Michel de Montaigne wrote, “I am seeking the truth not laying it down.”
I think we need climate change campaigns that take climate change policy out of the realm of experts and make it popular and democratic. What about you?
If you find factual inaccuracies or other failings in these webpages, please correct them in the comments section, or by email. There is also a page for Energy Royd admin to post clarifications and corrections.
EnergyRoyd by Jenny Shepherd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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