Alice and I went along to the Big Six Bash organised by the Climate Justice Collective last Thursday.  We wanted to interrupt the UK Energy Summit taking place inside the Grove Hotel to envision an affordable and sustainable energy system where six energy companies do not dominate the provision of energy – making huge profits and creating climate chaos while millions of people live in fuel poverty or experience the effects of climate change in the developing world.

We were part of the Dirty Energy Bloc (dirty energy, dirty basslines, dirty business) meeting outside City Thameslink Station.  Despite the rain it was great to see old friends and before we knew it we were following a pedal-powered sound system on our way to the conference. The costumes were amazing – CND had come dressed as the grim reaper, lots of people in our bloc wore white boiler suits and when we arrived at the hotel we met members of the Robin Hood group dressed in tights as well as the hugest dinosaur from the fossil fuels bloc. My favourite outfit was a woman holding a giant leaf saying ‘Mass extinction is for Dinosaurs’.

When we arrived at the conference lots of people attempted to get inside the hotel but were stopped by police officers. Alice and I didn’t feel brave enough to rush the doors so we stayed back and chatted to the family friendly dinosaurs instead. We did manage to sticker the building window which means that we clocked up 3 points in the Climate Justice Collective game.

Later on in the day I watched a giant game of climate twister being played outside the conference – with people watching us from inside – and lots of activists wrote inspiring and heartening visions of an alternative future on the floor and walls outside the conference in chalk. I was standing talking to a friend when all of a sudden police officers drove towards us in vans and closed us in.  For the next three hours we listened to music, danced, sang and spoke about solutions before we were allowed out of the kettle and off to the pub.

Blog post by Siobhan

In the mean time, we’re happy to be supporting some exciting events and actions coming up in London. Here’s some of what’s coming up in the next few weeks – get in touch if you’re organising an event that should be here!

April 28th – The Big Ride – London Cycling Campaign
Assemble 11am Park Lane, rides sets off at 12 noon
The Big Ride on Saturday 28 April is a fun event with a serious message, calling on London’s mayoral candidates to make the capital’s streets as safe and inviting for cycling as they are in Holland (read more about it). You’ll be welcomed whether you’re on bike, foot, skates or rollerblades, and the colour scheme is Climate Rush’s favourite red and white!

April 30th – Bikes Alive Go Slow at King’s Cross
6-7pm, assemble outside King’s Cross Station
Get thee to a go-slow! Bikes Alive will be back at the lethal junction at Kings Cross on Monday 30 April, where we’ll peacefully enforce a go-slow for an hour from 6pm. 3 days before the London elections make your presence felt on London’s streets and make sure the elected mayor can’t ignore cycle safety any more. Bikes Alive will continue to take peaceful direct action until the mayor – whoever it is – reverses the TfL policies which prioritise vehicle throughput over the health, safety and sanity of Londoners as a whole.

May 3rd – The Big Six Energy Bash – Climate Justice Collective
Central London, 11am (sign up to the SMS service on the CJC website)
On May 3rd, CEOs from the Big Six energy companies are meeting behind closed doors with oil giants like Shell and government ministers to discuss the future of the UK’s energy at the UK Energy Summit. Climate Justice Collective is organising a mass direct action on the day, called ‘The Big Six Energy Bash’, targeting the Summit in opposition to corporate controlled energy and the way that the Big Six’s monopoly is allowing energy companies to profit from fuel poverty and climate chaos.

May 3rd – Londoners on Bikes – Vote with your Bike!
Flyering sessions – FREQUENTLY – check the Londoners on Bikes website for details
A quarter of Londoners says they want to choose the low-carbon bike as their method of transport of choice, but are too scared to face the roads. If you want to see cycling conditions improve in London, join Londoners on Bikes and vote for the candidate who will provide the best deal for a low-carbon, low-traffic city. The hardworking Londoners on Bikes are flyering almost every day in the lead up to the Mayoral elections so sign up here to lend them a hand.

May 5th – 350.org – Connect the Climate Dots
11am, outside St Paul’s Cathedral
Climate Impacts Day is a global day of action taking place on May 5, 2012. On that day, we will issue a wake-up call, and connect the dots between climate change and extreme weather. We will educate, protest, create, document, and volunteer along with thousands of people around the world. Occupy London is putting on a giant game of Twister – bring a picnic, dress as a Dot (Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz? Dot Cotton?), and get ready for a game of twister with a climate twist!

Despite the raining and pouring and the thunder and a little bit of hail, thirty brave rain-defying campaigners turned up at 6pm outside Defra to create London’s first true clean air zone. We decided to begin our protest at Defra because air pollution is a nationwide problem – up to 50,000 people a year die early in the UK as a result of poor air quality. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Caroline Spelman has responsibility for meeting the air quality limit values, set by the EU, in England and DEFRA co-ordinates assessment and air quality plans for the UK as a whole. We wanted to point out ahead of the London mayoral election how important it is to vote for clean air but the whole country needs to breathe too. Outside Defra we listened to inspiring speeches by Caroline Russell, Alan Andrews and our very own Anne Schulthess.

Caroline Russell, the Green candidate for Islington, condemned Boris Johnson’s use of dust suppressants to glue pollution to the road and put forwards some real solutions to clean up our air. Alan Andrews – the brave lawyer who has been challenging to UK government for breaching air pollution laws – gave an inspiring speech pointing out that the dirty air we are forced to breathe is unlawful, and Climate Rusher Anne Schulthess spoke about how air pollution is affecting our health and causing climate change before encouraging us all to begin our march to create a clean air zone.

Armed with feather dusters and dressed in pinnies and marigolds we set off from Defra and paraded through London’s dirty streets to Parliament Square with our banners saying, ‘Boris you take my breathe away’ and, ‘change of mayor cleaner air’. Police officers stopped us from going any further than Parliament Square because of health and safety concerns. We were really confused because we are concerned for the health and safety of all people who walk through any major London street considering that breathing air in London is the second biggest killer after smoking. So, we decided that Parliament Square would be a perfect place to declare London’s first true clean air zone, and we really hope that politicians around Parliament took notice of our desire to breathe clean air. Within our new clean air zone we chanted and ate delicious cup cakes before marching our soggy socks to the nearest pub to plan our next clean air action.

If you want a city you can breathe in, how should you vote on May 3rd? In no particular order, here are the candidates’ main air pollution policies:

Ken:
Ken Livingstone is pledging a 7% fare reduction on public transport – encouraging more people to leave their cars at home. Other clean air policies include: encouraging zero emission delivery vehicles in London; investing in a new fleet of induction charged electric buses and supporting the development of electric taxis; creating Clean Air Zones around schools (20pmh zones, reduced car travel to schools, enforcement against engine idling); smog alerts; and a plan for how London can meet European air quality standards. See more here.

Brian:
Brian Paddick aims to make London a zero carbon city by 2030 with all buses, taxis and most commercial vans going electric by 2020, and a Berlin-style clean air zone for central London. He also pledges car-free streets, aiming to pedestrianise parts of central
London – from Trafalgar Square to Oxford Street – with a ‘summer streets’ scheme, temporarily pedestrianising streets as they do in New York. Brian also promises to learn from the Dutch to improve cycling and safety in London – will he Love London, Go Dutch? See his full manifesto: www.brianpaddick.com/manifesto

Jenny:
Jenny Jones pledges to create a very low emissions zone in central London, increase investment in public transport, make fares more affordable and introduce 20mph speed limits to make walking and cycling safer. Her Air Pollution Manifesto, launched today, runs through a host of air pollution solutions, including the closure of City Airport, and a pay-as-you-drive scheme, accompanied by the necessary investment in public transport infrastructure so people are able to choose to leave the car at home. Jenny also has a track record of holding Boris to account over his inadequate air quality policies.

Boris:
Google ‘Boris Johnson Air Pollution’ and the first link is our Guardian article about his poor track record on sorting out London’s dirty air. Boris has no specific manifesto on air pollution, but his commitment to cycle safety runs to a weak promise to  ‘review 500 junctions’ in London. He makes no commitments to cap or reduce public transport fares (see his transport policy here: www.backboris2012.com/transport). He is focusing on suppressing pollution levels around air monitors rather than tackling emissions at their source, having scrapped the Western Extension Zone, 6-monthly taxi inspections and delayed the introduction of Stage 3 of the Low Emission Zone.

We hate to hate but it seems any candidate would be a better bet than Boris when it comes to air quality. In this article in the Guardian, Campaign for Clean Air in London director Simon Birkett states: “This election is rapidly shaping up into contest between Boris with his backward steps on air pollution and those like Brian and the Liberal Democrats who would act to address the biggest public health crisis for decades.”

A city built for cycling and a city full of fresh, breathable air go hand in hand, so check on Londoner’s on Bikes rundown of the candidates’ policies on cycling.

Think differently? Got a favourite clean air saviour? Please tell us in the comments!

Three members of eco-activst group Climate Rush stencilled a message to Boris Johnson on the pavement outside his London home at 7.30am this morning. The message, made of soot glued to the floor, read ‘this is not a solution’. The soot was collected from the sides of London’s busiest roads.

The action was a response to reports that Mayor Johnson has commissioned a fleet of adapted gritting lorries to spray adhesive to London’s most polluted roads, gluing particles of soot to the ground.[1]

Air pollution on London’s most congested roads regularly breaches EU legal limits on air quality[2] and are often twice the World Health Organisations safe limit.[3] 29,000 people die prematurely every year in the UK because of air pollution – including over 4000 Londoners – more than from road accidents, obesity or passive smoking.[4]

Boris Johnson and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are jointly responsible for meeting air quality rules in London.

A spokesperson for Climate Rush, said “Boris Johnson thinks gluing pollution to the roads is a good enough solution to the 4000 deaths it causes every year in London. We’ve glued soot to his street to show how ridiculous this is – the pollution is still there and is still being pumped out every day. We want to remind Boris that this health epidemic will be solved through reducing the number of vehicles on our roads, investing in safer cycling infrastructure, and lowering our prohibitive public transport fares – not with glue.”

The graffiti is part of Climate Rush’s campaign for cleaner air in London. They are organising a mass demonstration for better air quality, called Spring Clean, on Thursday 19th April.

ENDS

For photographs and interviews please email info@climaterush.co.uk

NOTES TO EDITOR

Climate Rush will be creating London’s first true clean air zone on the 19^th of April at 6pm, meeting outside DEFRA in Smith Square. More information can be found athttp://www.climaterush.co.uk/springclean

The tunnel wall was much more difficult to scrub on the lower parts of the letters because it’s closer to the exhaust pipes but it’s also closer to the lungs of children and babies in pushchairs. No wonder children are more susceptible to suffering preventable ill effects as a result of air pollution. You can read more about how air pollution is harming our health here.  Most car journeys in London are unnecessary, and cycling or walking or using public transport are easier, cheaper and far less stressful means of transport.

For the past 50 years we have been told that a car makes our lives easier when in reality the consequences of excessive carbon emissions from cars are causing climate change and driving makes our lives more difficult. Research shows that driving in a car is significantly more stressful than catching a bus. Studies by Dr David Lewis shows that traveling by bus is on average 33% less stressful than the same journey in a car. We think we all have enough to worry about and that it’s time that our health, our wellbeing and our planet is made a priority by declaring London’s first true traffic-free, clean air zone.

Join us on Thursday 19th of April at Springclean2012 for a car-free party and to remind the mayoral candidates to clean up our dirty air. We’ll meet at 6pm outside DEFRA in Smith Square where we will listen to inspiring speeches before walking or cycling to find an area of our dirty city and declaring a clean air zone.

You can read more about our subvertising Heathrow campaign here

At Climate Rush we believe that we need safer roads for pedestrians and cyclists in order to reduce our toxic poor air quality and to reduce our carbon emissions so we were keen to join Stop Murder of Cyclists on their second cycling die-in protest outside City Hall with Jenny Jones.

Putting on skeleton masks and positioning ourselves as dead on the pavement we took a stand against the traffic violence that led to the death of 16 cyclists in London last year. Stop Murder of Cyclists is a Southwark based campaigning group.  They are demanding that Southwark Council spend one third of their transport budget on cycling infrastructure,  for the roads the Mayor is responsible for in Southwark to have Dutch-style traffic-free lanes within 5 years and for a complete re-design of the 9 most dangerous junctions the mayor is responsible for in Southwark, including physical protections for cyclists. We couldn’t agree with them more.

On our way the the tube from City Hall we saw Ken Livingstone and Ed Miliband outside London Bridge tube station protesting against fare rises and we realised that we have seen Jenny Jones, Ken Livingstone, Ed Miliband and the deputy mayor – which leaves us wondering, where is Boris?

We wrote out tweets sent using the #farefail hashtag on post-it notes that explained how prohibitively high transport costs effect our lives and stuck them on the doors of the entrance to the Department of Transport offices. A very helpful security guard offered to take our thoughts to Justine Greening. He gave us an envelope which we filled with our post-its and he promised to put them in the DfT’s internal post – we really hope she has received them all.

At Climate Rush we think that an efficient, integrated and affordable public transport system is essential if we are going to get more people out of polluting cars and planes and using climate friendly trains and buses. It’s unacceptable that so many of us can’t afford to use public transport so we’re encouraging everyone to take part in the pubic consultation and push for lower fares. You can tell the Government to lower fares at www.farefail.org.