The scientific consensus is unprecedented, and evidence keeps pouring in. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment synthesis report showed us that climate destabilisation is already happening–right now–and much faster than we anticipated.

So what should we expect from our ‘world leaders’ at the G8 next month? Perhaps some visionary steps forward, towards a clean renewable-energy future? Bold targets for real at-source cuts to take us to sustainable greenhouse gas emissions levels? Well, that’s what we should expect, and it’s what we continue to demand, but it’s not what we’re getting. (California excepted.)

Our world is warming… erm… (maybe)

That’s the clear, visionary message from the ‘leaders’ of the world:

In draft international document land (somewhere I’ve spent rather too many long days) those square brackets mean something is still uncertain, disputed, and open for debate. The first leaked draft was bad enough, with no timetables or targets for emissions cuts. Now we see the reality of Blair’s ‘leadership’ on climate change: no targets, no timeframes, “zero carbon nuclear,” clean coal, and he hasn’t even managed to secure a recognition that our world is warming. It seems we have a problem.

You can download the latest leaked draft (two pdf documents) on the Channel Four News website. I’ve also mirrored it here.

Leaked Draft Communique [mirror]
Leaked Draft Plan of Action [mirror]

California is officially going for it. Arnold ‘Governator’ Schwarzenegger earlier this week signed an executive order setting huge green house gas emissions reduction targets for the state: 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, just the kind of real target people who are serious about halting climate change have been demanding for years. I expect Bush is going to be livid! Nice one Arnie.

This the just kind of thing Blair needs to pull out if he’s going to get any respect for his so called ‘leadership’ on climate change at the g8. The leaked draft climate and energy communique quite simply didn’t cut it.

This landed in my inbox this morning. I won’t say where from. It should be of interest to anyone mobilising around the climate focus of the G8, or working on exposing the false ’solutions’ coming out of the Kyoto Protocol. It’s sick to see so much of the carbon trading / clean development mechanism rubbish now being echoed by the G8 at a time when we need real leadership and socially just solutions to climate change.

• read the leaked decisions online
• download pdf copy (442 kb)

It can get pretty stressful at times, especially when you realise the fight for Climate Justice means you’re up against some of the biggest, most powerful corporations on the planet. But it’s OK, see, Travelocity.co.uk have the answer. How kind of them to deliver such wisdom straight to my inbox…

It’s been long overdue. On the train back from San Francisco I finished the redesign of the Rising Tide website. Along side a standards-based redesign of the original site structure, using a fluid 3 column css-layout, I’ve built the site around Drupal, an open-source Content Management System that alows for collaborative publishing rather like Indymedia (actually, Drupal is used by a number of Indymedia sites.) Hopefully that should go some way to redeeming me for routinely failing to get London Rising Tide’s events up on the Rising Tide UK site in time!