The UK government’s climate action plan is unlawful, the high court has ruled, as there is not enough evidence that there are sufficient policies in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, will now be expected to draw up a revised plan within 12 months. This must ensure that the UK achieves its legally binding carbon budgets and its pledge to cut emissions by more than two-thirds by 2030, both of which the government is off track to meet.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 425ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was the UK government has been making ever-bolder pledges around targets for emissions reduction (60 percent reduction by 2050, no – 80! – no, “net zero” for a couple of decades. Promises are easy, actual policies harder and implementing those policies harder still
What I think we can learn from this. You can (and should try, obvs) to win in the courts. But the megamachine rolls on.
See also Kayfabe.
What happened next
Oh, presumably some new plan will be released at some point, and challenged in its turn.
Meanwhile, the environmental protection rules that we have are about to be fed into the woodchipper.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Two years ago, on this day, April 20th, 2023, the Scum , sorry “The Sun” “newspaper” published a hit job on XR co-founder Gail Bradbrook (whose ‘what next’ essay you can read here). The “journalists” sprang a version of the hypocrite zealot trap on her because – gasp – she drives a car and she buys food.
The context was that the Sun in 2007 had come within a whisker of endorsing strong climate action. Then head office had got cold feet. The split between the Murdochs on the climate issue among others, is famous, but until that is resolved, with the Dirty Digger being dug six foot under, the Scum will continue to be knuckle dragging on climate.
This is not to say that you have to endorse XR as a loyalty test.
What we learn is that activists are always vulnerable to this sort of hat job. It is the hypocrite zealot trap. If you are anything approaching a normal human being in terms of your travel, your eating, your ”lifestyle” you will be accused of being a hypocrite because by raising your voice to say ‘we all need to change’ you’re lecturing other people about how they should live their lives.,
Whereas, if you are consistent, if you’re a vegan who doesn’t get in internal combustion engine cars, etc, then you are a zealot, but you’re still a hypocrite. If you’ve ever, for example, used or been able to been saved by the NHS.
So this is a classic attempt to play the man, not the ball, or in this case, the woman, by people who, on some level, must know that their opponents are right and that they are wrong. They can’t cope with it so they revel in this sort of nonsense.
It also should be said that it’s kind of a cyber equivalent of sticking someone’s corpse on a pike or their dead body and a gibbet. It’s to send a message to other people who were thinking about maybe sticking their head above the parapet. This is what will happen to you.
What happened next
The state corporate attacks on climate activism continued, and escalated. By early 2025 their war of attrition had ‘succeeded.’
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
This is a (long and probably over-detailed) post about something that we do not pay enough attention to – the Question and Answer session after a presentation by one or more “experts”.
If you care about progress on issues (be it climate change, homelessness, education or – well – anything – I think it’s worth your time to read and chew on. But MRDA – I would say that, because I was both one of the “experts” and also the facilitator of the Q&A.
The basic points are these –
The “normal” way of doing Q&As is accepted without hardly anyone thinking much about them
This normal way is intensely alienating to some people, who vote with their feet and don’t come back.
There are some simple ways (some of which are described in the post) that you can disrupt the normal way and make life less alienating (even, gasp, welcoming) to more people.
The blog goes through what I did on Thursday 30th January 2025 at a “Curiosity Club” event in Glossop, a town in the north of England.
The event seemed to go pretty well. People were engaged, and engaged with each other. Of the nine questions, five came from women, representing the balance in the room (this does not always happen!)
I kept an audio of the Q&A (and indeed the whole event) and ran it through transcription software, then tidied it up. That will be posted. I shared this article with several people who were present on the night, some of whom asked questions. They were invited to make comments on the post. One good point was about the risks in the “talk to someone else” aspect.
“Success” for this post is that this post is read, shared, and sparks conversation among organisers, experts, facilitators and attendees on what we currently expect from Q&As, what we get, what we could do differently.
In a separate post (yet to be written) I will look more into these questions, the persistence of “ego-fodder” and so on.. For now, I simply go through the audio clips of relevance and write about
“So you have come not to a Listening, but to a Meeting, which means you meet people.
[MH – Cute line – i think i may have coined it.]
“So what I’d like to do now is turn to the person near you who you don’t know, and if you have to get up and walk a couple of things, then fine. And just nothing, nothing big, nothing big. Just say hello, because these people will become friends, colleagues, whatever, and blossom.
So you’ve got two minutes to introduce yourself to someone you don’t know.”
[MH – so, even if someone has to leave before the Q&A, they get a chance to talk to someone they don’t know.
What I could have done better – given introverts a chance to opt out! People should not be forced to engage with people, after all. And there are also issues about women being forced to engage with creepy men. I don’t know how to finesse that, tbh.]
“Okay, everyone, if you could take your seat. So you can listen to the old white men at the front of the room who will tell you what to think.”
[MH A little lampshading/self-deprecation never hurts. Also, Kevin is old. And as for me, well, it’s weird being the same age as old people…]
During Kevin’s Presentation
Kevin was about 55 minutes into his presentation. There had been a couple of people asking questions earlier, to which he responded. Then the questions started coming thicker and faster – people were clearly keen to engage with what they’d been told, and tease out the implications. We were moving – de facto, into the Q and A. I was sat in the audience, and stuck up my hand.
““Can I make an observation?”
“Yeah”
“It’s 830, This meeting was going to finish at nine, and what’s happening is people are desperate to have to ask questions, and some of them are. But the people who are asking the questions are more confident and more well-informed. So there is a structural thing going on which we are trying from your presentation and mine to undercut
So my proposal is that you finish, we have two minutes for people to talk to the person next to them and the people who haven’t spoken get a chance to answer ask their questions.
And if we don’t do that, then the structural inequality and unfairness that you and I both think is baked in continues to be baked in.”
[MH This kind of “backseat facilitation” is not good. It should never have come to this, and that is on me. I should have stayed at the front of the room, (I wanted to see the slides though!) and should have agreed a hard time limit, with perhaps a “clap clinic”.]
After Kevin’s presentation
[It was heavy – the prospects for our species’ look bleak af.]
“Is everyone feeling sunny and optimistic?”
[MH – important to acknowledge heavy feelings, but not wallow in them. Irony as deflection or coping strategy…. ]
“Hey, what I’d like you to do is another two minutes, please, with the person you spoke to before, or someone else. If you have a question that is five sentences long, [laughter] get help boiling it down to two. If you have like, half a question, you’re not quite sure if it’s good enough. Number one, it probably is. Get help turning into a two sentence question.
“We’ll come back in two minutes, and we will start with people of any gender, any age, who have not yet spoken.
“And yes, we have been keeping eyes on all your faces. Two minutes. Thank you.”
[MH this is key, this two minutes (and I gave people closer to three.) The laughter at the fie sentence comment tells me that people recognise the problem.
If you can only get one innovation past the gate-keepers, then imo this is the one… it gives people a chance to think, talk and it gives you a chance to select ppl ‘at random’, meaning women etc. In my experience the people who get irritated at this are the ones who are used to being recognised by the person at the front choosing who will ask questions – because of their gender, or because they are part of the same tedious Trotskyist or Bakuninist groupuscule, and they realise that this format will open up the space and deprive them of their quasi-monopoly on asking questions/preening/
The beginning of the Q and A
“Thanks everyone. Hi, we’re going to come back and start taking questions
“Two things. One is the Labour Club would love you to buy beer or chips, crisps or whatever.
[MH = venue need to make money! If they do well at the till because of your event, it’s that much easier to rebook’]
“Number two, we do not have a hard stop at nine o’clock, but I am conscious that some people here will have babysitters or fatigue or work in the morning or whatever.
“If you have to go at nine, don’t feel ashamed that you’re somehow, you know, a flake.”
[MH – people who have to leave early may fear they are being judged as insufficiently interested/committed. It’s important to help them not see it that way. There’s a 1991 book about Californian anti-nuclear protests that has a great section about how people who were held in pens developed an ad-hoc ritual so those who had – for work or family reasons – to take the offer of bail – were not perceived as lunchouts by those who wanted to stick it out for as long as possible. Yes, this is how my mind works most of the time.]
“Kevin. you can find online, and he’ll respond to your emails if you’ve got questions. You can find me online, and I won’t respond to your questions, except for cash.
“So let’s have a show of hands from the people who want to ask questions who have not already asked questions.
“We’ve got number one, number two, number three.”
[MH – According to a) personal experience b) common sense and c) at least one academic work, “If a woman asked the first question, women in the audience were more likely to ask subsequent questions.”
BUT explicitly asking for women to ask questions is in my opinion almost always a bad move, and a sign that the meeting has been poorly designed, or facilitated or both. It iis going to a) irritate some men [but who cares tbh] and – far more importantly – b) put so much extra pressure on women because their question then has to be ‘excellent’ or they are letting their gender down.]
“So before we go to the third question, let’s have another show of hands if people want to ask questions who haven’t already. We’ve only got one at the minute. Two, so one, two. Next.”
[MH – I try to keep ahead like this, don’t let the queue get to zero, because it gives you as question chooser fewer options, and because it signals to some that the conversation is over when it might well not be.]
Presenters and facilitators don’t mix – Marc abusing his power.
I had as one of the “experts” answered a question about what is to be done. Then, when I was going to the next person with the mike, I remembered something else I wanted to say…
“And sorry. to come back to your question about what is to be done
When you hold meetings, try and get people meeting each other, and give people who haven’t had a chance to speak to speak like we’re doing tonight. We forget how – sorry this is me abusing my authority. You can’t take the conch from me. – we forget how alienating it is to go into a room where you don’t know anyone, to be talked at, and then for the Q and A to be dominated by confident people. And it’s those people who come to one meeting and then don’t come back who are lost forever. And they tell other people that they had a bad experience at the meeting, and then those other people don’t come back. And then I’ve seen waves in the mid, late 80s, in the – I was involved in climate camp -, I’ve seen XR – I’ve seen these waves where they hold a big public meeting. There’s lots of people who you’ve never seen before. They are at one meeting or two meetings that are badly designed and badly organized and dominated by old white men who won’t let go of the microphone [laughter] , and those people don’t come back. So design your meetings better. “
Keep hold of the microphone
marc hudson 16:35
“pro tip for anyone who’s holding the conch in this sort of public setting; never give the microphone back to the person who’s got a second question.”
[MH – obviously you have to allow for a bit of back and forth between a questoner and the presenter to whom the question has been directe. But that can tip over into a dialogue – or worse – dick-swinging contest. And if the microphone is physically in the audience-member’s hand, it can get super awkward (To be clear, it was not going to be that on this occasion, but there is a general principle)]
End of Q&A
“But now I’m going to manipulate you all. So when I was a physiotherapist, I knew that when I was doing a treatment session rehab with someone, they would go home, and the things that they would remember was the most vivid part of the treatment session. And the final part, this is a well known psychological thing called the peak end effect.
“So if you are holding a public meeting and the last question is really depressing, yours was not, sadly, what people will remember when they go home was the final bit and being depressed.
“You have an option, as the organizer of meeting to plant someone to ask the last question, which is, like, more upbeat or whatever. That’s kind of manipulative.
“What I like to do in these meetings is, what you’re going to do now is you’re going to talk to someone who you’ve not talked to tonight and just ,,,,
“Yeah, I know, I know it’s really like icky,”
[MH – I saw someone – an older man fwiw – grimace and eyeroll. This was absolutely fair enough. It was late, and I had already “forced” people out of their comfort zone twice that evening. It was all becoming a bit like some sort of happy-clappy Sunday School meeting.]
“but talk to them and just share your feelings and thoughts about what happened, so that you leave this meeting having met other people.
“We’re going to go into that, but before we do, I want a round of applause for me, [laughter] for Kevin, for Jonathan, and for you guys who asked questions, and for you guys who sat here for over two and a half hours, two hours and listened intently and challenged us both, round of applause.”
[MH – Applause is something all can join in. It’s tactile and loud and gives a final punctuation. But also, Sunday school]
“And now and now, the coerced mingling, the enforced mingling.”
[MH Coercive is usually the wrong word. But again, lampshading.]
After the formal end of the meeting
Some people left, but others did start talking to someone they hadn’t spoken to, and in some cases (I witnessed this) exchange contact details. This warmed the cockles (what ARE cockles?) of my ancient shrivelled cynical heart.
Thank you to Jonathan for letting me “run” the event.
Thank you to Kevin, who stuck around for ages afterwards engaging with people
Thank you to all the people who tolerate it, who went with it.
Finally – what did you think? What could have been done differently/better?
If you were there, did you appreciate (as distinct from enjoy) the facilitation. Was it cloying? Unhelpful? Irrelevant? Good?
Further work
Dey de Pryck, Jennie, and Marlène Elias. “Promoting inclusive facilitation of participatory agricultural research for development.” Development in Practice 33.1 (2023): 122-127.
Jasuja, I., Vanderkolk, J., Weston, E., Arrowood, H. I., Vore, A., & Starr, M. C. (2024). Gender Differences in Question Asking at the 2022 American Society of Nephrology Annual Kidney Week Meeting. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, 19(2), 241-243.
Rakedzon, T., & Van Horne, C. (2024). “Curious Is as Curious Does”: Fostering Question-Asking in a Sino-Foreign Engineering School—A Case Study. Sustainability, 16(17), 7308.
Rezaee, M., Verde, A., Anchang, B., Mattonen, S. A., Garcia-Diaz, J., & Daldrup-Link, H. (2022). Disparate participation by gender of conference attendants in scientific discussions. Plos one, 17(1), e0262639.
Sandstrom, G. M., Carter, A., Croft, A., & Gibson, H. (2022). People draw on gender stereotypes to judge question-askers, but there is no such thing as a gender-stereotypic question.
On this day 44 years ago, (February 19, 1981) two newspapers (the Shepton Mallet Journal and the Central Somerset Gazette) reported on a meeting of the Ecology Party (now known as the Green Party). The topic? Carbon dioxide build-up and its implications.
IN THE time it takes to read this sentence, 3,000 more tons of carbon dioxide will have been released into the atmosphere.
This was just one of the astonishing statistics quoted by Mr. Fred Clarke. guest speaker at a meeting of Wells Constituency Ecology Party at the Good Earth Cafe, Wells..
He showed that pollution was more than a mere nuisance; it was a threat to the natural systems on which we depended for survival.
He demonstrated how most pollution was caused by our everyday actions rather than Torrey Canyon-like disasters. and suggested practical ways to avoid pollution. [continues].
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 340ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the previous year the UK government had decided not to keep close tabs on carbon dioxide build-up (there were some scientists urging closer engagement). But the question of carbon dioxide build-up was well understood in environmental circles.
What we learn is that the Ecology Party was doing this sort of thing a lot. They knew what was coming.What happened next was that the scientific certainty that there was Serious Trouble Ahead grew, and in 1988 Margaret Thatcher was finally, nine years after she had first been briefed on the topic and had dismissed it, forced to acknowledge its existence.
The context was…. Here we go again and again and again, day after day, not learning anything. And if that movie existed in a way that Bill Murray never learned anything, it would be a short movie, and no one would watch it. But the question is, how do we learn?
See also smugosphere, emotacycle.
What I think we can learn from this is that we don’t learn.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Sixteen years ago, on this day, January 31st, 2009,
From January 31 to February 3, 2009, over 150 community based climate action groups and more than 500 people came together in Canberra to talk, debate, strategise and take action on climate change at Australia’s Climate Action Summit.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that from late 2006 onwards, there had been a great deal of awareness/alarm about climate change and its impacts in Australia and various actions in various places. By late 2008 it was obvious that the Rudd Government was doing a tremendous amount of backsliding and caving in to vested interests.
And so the Climate Action Summit was held in a period where there was a fragile elite consensus that wasn’t really worth a bucket of warm spit, and citizens were trying to do it for themselves.
What I think we can learn from this is that citizens can’t do it for themselves. They have to somehow create irresistible pressure on elected representatives, on states, on bureaucracies. But this is much easier said than actually done.
What happened next
Climate change, oddly, continued to be an open sore, kind of permanently, but especially until the end of 2011 when Julia Gillard managed to get climate legislation through the parliament.
Various climate action summits and efforts at NVDA and efforts at public pressure have continued ever since, and here we are – fubarred.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Thank you for signing the open letter last July in support of the Whole Truth Five, jailed for taking proportionate, evidence-based action to stop new oil and gas licences.
We now write to you as the ‘Lord Walney 16’* – the sixteen people imprisoned for a combined 41 years for refusing to be bystanders to the devastation of life on earth. We were all sentenced between July and September last year, after Lord Walney, lobbyist for the arms and oil industry, called for those resisting genocide–whether from carbon emissions or Israeli bombs–to face the harshest response that the government, the police and the judicial system could punish us with.
You so generously signed that open letter, which called out the injustice of these insane sentences in the context of an already broken prison system. Now we’re calling on your generosity again. A critical moment has arisen: our appeals against these sentences will be heard at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on 29th and 30th January. This is a truly historic juncture, not just for the 16 of us, but for our movements and all those who place justice and democracy over corporate profit. The courts are sensitive to public pressure. And you are someone who can make the difference – the more visible support we have from cultural figures, the harder judges will find it to quietly deny us our rights, and thereby erode all of our rights.
Please join the solidarity rally outside court on either day and let us know you’re coming by emailing info@defendourjuries.org. There will be a podium in a safe place for a reading, a speech or a song across the two days – whatever you are moved to contribute – or simply come and show your solidarity.
If you can’t make it in person, please express your support for us on your social media channels by sharing the event link with the hashtag #FreeTheLordWalney16 and get in touch if you want to support remotely in other ways: info@defendourjuries.org
We gave up our freedom to resist the ultimate crimes against humanity and life on earth. Now we’re calling on your help – don’t let a slide into corporate authoritarianism come to pass unnoticed.
With love,
Anna Holland, 23, serving a 20 month sentence in HMP Send
Chris Bennett, 33, serving an 18 month sentence, released on tag
Cressida Gethin, 22, serving a 4 year sentence in HMP Send
Daniel Shaw, 38, serving a 4 year sentence in HMP Wayland
Gaie Delap, 78, serving a 20 month sentence in HMP Eastwood Park
Dr Larch Maxey, 52, serving a 3 year sentence in HMP Fosse Way
Louise Lancaster, 58, serving a 4 year sentence in HMP Send
Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, serving a 4 year sentence in HMP Send
Paul Bell, 24, serving a 22 month sentence, released on tag
Paul Sousek, 73, serving a 20 month sentence, released on tag
Phoebe Plummer, 23, serving a 2 year sentence in HMP Bronzefield
Roger Hallam, 58, serving a 5 year sentence in HMP Wayland
Theresa Higginson, 26, serving a 2 year sentence, released on tag
*Note: three of the 16 have not added their names here due to the risk of being recalled to prison for associating with their fellow activists
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 419ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that XR had been in the usual death spiral of diminishing returns. That happens to all overblown and overambitious social movement organisations who don’t understand that they’re a symptom rather than a cause. And so in order to grab a little bit more attention and try and stitch together a wider coalition or be part of a wider coalition, they made this clickbaity announcement that they were “quitting.” All they were quitting was the disruptive stuff, which was being taken on by Just Stop Oil anyway.
What we learn is, well, have a look at this article I wrote in the Conversation, then tell me I’m wrong.
What happened next? They didn’t get 100,000 people on a day or anywhere near it. And the main thing in my inbox from Extinction Rebellion is stuff I already knew and emails pleading for more money.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Thirty-six years ago, on this day, December 22nd, 1988, Chico Mendes was murdered
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 351ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Chico Mendes had been a bit of a folk hero in the mid 80s, leading the rubber tappers union in the defence of the Amazon. And he had pissed off the wrong people.
What we learn is that if you piss off the wrong people in many parts of the world, you will end up with a bullet in your head. In the West, they simply de-fund you and invisiblise you and deprive you of livelihood. Far more civilised here.
“In December 1990, Silva, his son Darci, and their employee Jerdeir Pereira were sentenced to 19 years in prison for their part in Mendes’ assassination. In February 1992, they won a retrial, claiming that the prosecution’s primary witness – Mendes’ wife Ilsamar – was biased. The conviction was upheld, and they remained in prison. In 1993, they escaped from jail, along with seven other prisoners, by sawing through the bars of their prison window. All were recaptured, including Darly Jr., who served the remainder of his sentence with the other killers before returning to Xapuri.”
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
BirthStrike is “Birthstrike is choosing to forgo having children to protect them from worsening social, economic and environmental conditions.” Here’s their answers to some questions..
a) What was the genesis (!) for the birth of Birth Strike? Was it a gradual realisation or a bolt from the blue?
The BirthStrike movement was founded in 2018 by Blythe Pepino, a British musician and activist, in response to the climate crisis and its goal was to raise awareness of the climate crisis and demand political action.
In 2020, BirthStrike for Climate disbanded and became a support group on Slack called “Grieving Parenthood in the Climate Crisis: Channeling Loss into Climate Justice.” They were not connected to antinatalism (we are), nor did they try to persuade people not to have children (we are).It was a brief movement that I have splintered off into a full-on Revolutionary strategy.
b) What sort of pushback have you had that you respect? (Life is too short for giving oxygen to idiots)
It’s not ethical to bring children into climate change, period. If there is a good argument for having children, especially under current conditions, I haven’t heard it.
c) What do you say to people who say “but my child might well be the one to come up with “The Solution?”
“Why didn’t you come up with a solution? What kind of loser forces children into existence to solve humanity’s problems instead of taking personal accountability for themself? You’re too narcissistic to adopt but too lazy to do anything with your own life, so you create another wage slave? Shame on you!”
d) What does “success” look like for BSM?
A mass movement where workers are intentionally withholding procreation to
e) How can people who want to support it get involved/support it?
Join the website mailing list or the FB group. Confront and argue with educated breeders about their narcissistic decision and poor parenting in general.
