These are from Danny’s book The no-nonsense guide to climate change (Oxford: New Internationalist, 2010).

1.  Build the movement.  “We need as many people as possible to get switched on, clued up and active”, says Danny.  Well, you’re reading this, and Cambridge WDM gathers in members’ homes and lays on public actions, and national WDM keeps us motivated and informed.

2.  Stop the worst stuff: get off the coal train, shut down the tar sands and end the biofuel boom.

3.  Get the alternatives rolling. “Are there opportunities to pressure or shame your local government to put more sustainable solutions in place?”

4.  Reclaim democracy and clean up politics.  “This is a great opportunity to make links with other non-climate campaigners.”  At the 30 January meeting, Danny held the attention of people from groups of all kinds.  The event itself was a co-production between Cambridge WDM and Cambridge Carbon Footprint.  We look forward to working together again.

5.  Fight the growth myth.  The growth being that of Gross Domestic Product.

6.  Switch off the carbon tap.  This is calling for tighter regulation and grassroots action to rein in polluting companies.

7.  Stick a spanner in consumer culture.  With art and music and creative writing and performance of all kinds!

8.  Link to other local campaigns. Yes, this does need saying more than once.

9.  Pick a fight.

10.  Support struggles on the climate frontline.  This has always been WDM’s way.

A bit different, those ten,  from lifestyle recommendations about taps and insulation and cycling.  But Danny’s book is like that.  As he says in the introduction, “Climate change isn’t just a technical issue to do with putting the wrong amount of certain gases into the air. It’s tangled up with politics, lifestyles, economics, power structures, culture and belief.  That is why it’s proving so difficult to solve, and also why it’s simultaneously disastrous, frustrating, fascinating, heart-breaking , and utterly relevant to everyone in the world.”

Were you there when Danny came and addressed us on 30 January?  We didn’t record the proceedings, and we wouldn’t have got very far — a lot of it was quiz.  But you’ll get the flavour from the book well enough — and a lot of science, too, made intelligible to non-scientists like me.  Buy it!

Puzzling the answers to Danny's quiz. Picture Clare Sansom

Danny Chivers, Friends' Meeting House, 30 Jan 2012 (Clare Sansom)

Author / activist / slam poet Danny Chivers promoted his book  The no-nonsense guide to climate change on Monday 30 January, at Friends’ Meeting House, Jesus Lane, in a workshop entitled ‘Some good news for a (climate) change’.

Danny was one of six people due to be tried in January 2011 for planning to invade Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal power station.  That case collapsed after revelations about undercover police officer Mark Kennedy.  The book, published by _New Internationalist_, is a pocket guide to the climate issue, using friendly, jargon-free language (along with a smattering of humour, poetry and unusual analogies) to explain the latest science, politics, solutions, technologies, barriers, activism, and where we go from here.

And, he explained, his notes for the talk were printed on backs of the prosecution papers that had been served on him in connection with the trial.

Here’s Sarah Reader’s slide presentation about the Durban climate talks, as given to our group meeting on 16 November.   And let’s link to Murray Worthy’s account of the spectacular failure that Durban actually delivered.

Members leafleted passers-by and gathered petition signatures against the channelling of climate funding via the World Bank.

World Bank loans to help poor countries cope with climate change are creating new debt for them. And around a third of the money disbursed in this way is subsidising corporate profits rather than meeting local needs. The World Bank’s acting like a loan shark. The UK needs to find other outlets for climate finance.

WDM’s campaign for climate justice is linked to a week of action to precede the United Nations climate talks in Durban, due to take place 28 November – 9 December.

Shark and campaigners outside Guildhall

Folk band CC Smugglers sign the petition between songs.

Pictures by Clare Baker

Parker's Piece, Sunday 10 July. Photo Clare Baker

On Sunday 10 July, we fielded a stall on Parker’s Piece as part of the city’s Big Weekend.  It was a great opportunity for the food campaign — we gave out leaflets to passers-by as something you could do about the price of food.

So, in case you weren’t there — here’s something you can do about the price of food!

Can you see how appalling the food prices are?

Outside Barclays

Flogging foods at ridiculous prices

On 28 April, Cambridge WDM and a bald-headed eagle protested outside Barclays in Cambridge. Food speculation by Barclays Capital (a near relative of the bank) has driven millions into poverty worldwide.

Sue Woodsford worked her usual magic at assembling a display and a couple of banners.  Some group members held banners, some pumped out leaflets, some even managed to engage with passers-by.  Star Radio had rung earlier that morning to say they meant to run news of the protest in the afternoon.  Anyone catch that?

WDM has more on the campaign.

Photos by Sue Woodsford and Fabiola Blum.

Kirsty Wright, WDM climate justice campaigner, addressed a small group in Cambridge at 19:30 on Weds 17 November. Kirsty has first-hand experience of both the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit and the 2010 People’s Conference on Climate Change, in Bolivia.

Photo of Illimani by Kirsty Wright

Kirsty writes in her blog:

“Yesterday, I went to visit the Khapi community at the foothills of the Illimani glacier that overlooks La Paz, dominating the skyline. Illimani has long been said by indigenous Aymara communities to be a guardian of the people. There’s certainly some wisdom in this. Not only is the glacier the source of water for the hundred of communities who live in the hills below it, as well as upwards of twenty percent of La Paz’s water supply (some estimate that it is closer to forty percent), but these agricultural communities are also the gardens of the La Paz, providing fruit and vegetables to the city dwellers below.

‘The snow used to come down to there’ said the village leader I was speaking with, pointing to the bottom of a thin slither of snow, as the sun set behind us, layering the glacier  with a warm orange glow. ‘When we were children we used to be able to walk up and touch the snow. Now you can’t get to the snow at all.’”

WDM’s Cancun Watch has news of another climate meeting — the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico.

Stop Climate Chaos members meet MP Julian Huppert

Cambridge WDM members joined other local groups at the Squire Law Library, Cambridge, on Saturday 6 November, to lobby MP Julian Huppert about climate change.   See Anne Miller’s report to The Big Connection.

Members of Cambridge WDM were at the national AGM and Activists’ Gathering in Sheffield on 19 June. The picture, by Clare Baker, shows policy officer Tim Jones telling the gathering about WDM’s campaign against food speculation. Cambridge members have been busy with that as well!

Julian Huppert (LibDem) & Tony Juniper (Green) with WDM banner

28 April: just 8 days before the election, Cambridge Parliamentary candidates Tony Juniper (Green) and Julian Huppert (LibDem — now MP for Cambridge) expressed support for a WDM campaign. Activists from the World Development Movement and the student group People & Planet protested outside the St Andrew’s Street branch of RBS subsidiary NatWest. They demanded that public money should stop financing companies involved in devastating activities, such as oil extraction from tar sands.

RBS has been involved in financing tar sands related companies to the tune of $7 billion, since its bail-out by the UK public. Extracting oil from tar sands in Canada has come under the spotlight as highly controversial because it violates Indigenous People’s rights and contributes more to climate change than conventional oil extraction.

The protest was one of many across the country around the bank’s AGM on 28 April.