WAKE UP AND SMELL THE GREENWASH

Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change announced that by 2050 ‘a million species could
face extinction'! In the same year Tony Blair publicly
announced that cutting carbon dioxide emissions was
‘essential to ‘avert disaster'' yet recently leaked
documents reveal that the UK government was
simultaneously attempting ‘to remove targets that
would reduce carbon dioxide emissions during
high-level meetings to formulate Europe's climate
policy' (The Independent, 16.01.05). IT'S A SHAM, a
facade, an act, a rip-off, a con, a trick ... Tony Blair
is the Greenwash Guru, arguing that market
environmentalism and the Kyoto Protocol will save the
day. A Protocol, lets remember, which is not only a
flawed method of reducing CO² emissions but involves
turning the atmosphere into a giant commodity to be
bought and sold like barrels of oil by traders,
governments and corporations, further deepening the
world's already gaping imbalances of power and not
even effectively reducing emissions into the bargain! 

A more realistic picture of Tony goes something like
this ... he pedals a government that annually invests
₤40 million into research projects that are of
direct benefit to the fossil fuel industry, has
recently given the green light to a ₤5.5 billion
road building programme, the biggest for two decades
and his own Environment Agency has invested ‘₤64
million in oil firms [BP and Shell] that have been
condemned for contributing to flooding and climate
change' (The Independent, 07.01.03).

At the 2005 G8 summit we can unite in our opposition
to climate chaos and the capitalist system creating
it, our commitment to direct action and civil
disobedience as the most effective form of struggle.
Not only that, we can build a European Climate Justice
Network that can look beyond the G8 Summit and Blair's
‘leadership' of the EU and begin to challenge the
global capitalist system, which has led us to the
brink of climate chaos on a scale never before seen by
human eyes. Solutions to this problem will not come
from career path politicians or oil executives but
from the bottom up, from the grassroots, from us.

DATES FOR THE DIARY 
(Action plans to be revealed nearer the time)

March 15-16, 2005 International Energy/Environment
Ministers Roundtable, London
March 17-18, 2005 G8 Environment and Development
Ministers Meeting, Derbyshire
July 8, 2005, International Day of Action on the root
causes of Climate Chaos, Epicentre - Gleneagles,
Scotland

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR MORE DETAILS

For more information see - E-mail - g8climateaction@lists.riseup.net