We welcome the appointment of Mete Coban MBE to lead Hackney's efforts to tackle the climate crisis and we are pleased that he has already acknowledged the climate emergency as a priority.

Hackney formally declared an emergency in 2019.  We…

Photo: Tim Lewis

The recent articles in the Observer and the…

Faced undisputedly with a climate and ecological emergency why isn’t there much wider support for the eponymous private members’ bill proposed by Caroline Lucas of the Green Party? That’s the question that Sustainable Hackney posed in December to Meg Hillier, Labour MP for Hackney south and Shoreditch. If the Climate an Ecological Emergency bill (CEE bill) has the support of Diane Abbott in Hackney North, why isn’t Meg Hillier supporting it too?  

Ms. Hillier has declined to…

Despite the twenty-five COP (Council of Parties) meetings organized since 1995 by the UNFCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) which is tasked with strengthening the global response to climate change; there is little or no sign they’ve had any impact at all on the soaring levels of green-house gasses.  

2020, despite a significant ramping up of renewables, is likely to be another year in which all the wrong sorts of records have been broken.  It’ll…

The Silvertown Tunnel must be stopped! In 2018 London’s mayor pledged that by 2030 the capital would have air pollution concentrations within the WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines for fine particulate matter. The Silvertown Tunnel will scupper this policy aspiration. Currently at £2 billion, twice the original budget; it involves the construction of a four-lane carriageway under the Thames beside the existing Blackwall Tunnel. No road building project has ever reduced traffic and…

In November last year Sustainable Hackney developed a community response to Hackney Council’s…

After the community submitted a response to Hackney Council’s climate emergency declaration back in November, we are following up to understand what actions the Council is planning to take to put their resolution into practice. To join the discussion, come to Sustainable Hackney’s next public consultation on the Climate Emergency at our next meeting on Wednesday 26…

The UN and the IPCC warnings get more strident each year but the response of the right-wing Polish Government host to their 'final call' is "Poland stands on coal" and appointment of two coal companies as sponsors.  The march grew between Portland Place and…

On March 28, at 6am I boarded a train bound for Wigan, filled with anticipation and excitement for the great un-known for what was set to be the first of many CTRL Shift emergency summits for change. Thanks to the Permaculture Association (the organisers), along with the most forward thinking solution based organisations in the country, I was very lucky enough to get a bursary ticket for the event. These…

A strong message that emerged from the Climate and Jobs Conference on March 10th was that we can’t afford any longer to treat climate change as solely and narrowly an environmental issue.

The image of the polar bear stranded on an ice sheet belies a deeper human reality. Our gaze should be directed instead at the millions whose…

Here, more or less is what I said at the Sustainable Hackney Climate Action last Saturday, 10 December, All I want for Christmas is Climate Action!

Merry Christmas,…

Free Press carried an excellent article on Occupy's occupation of the Mail's offices last year demanding accurate coverage of climate change and a switch to supporting renewable energy and other effective measures.  In just over a page Donnachadh McCarthy tells how the five right-wing billionaires who own most of our media have led the Tories "get rid of the green crap" campaign as well as continually misinforming the public on climate change.  He sets out the occupation's…

Try Fairtrade nuts at the People’s Climate March After Party in Dalston, Sunday 29^th November

Farmers from the Global South are already the most effected by global climate change.  This is despite the fact that they and other people from the majority of the world have contributed least to causing it.  Fairtrade…

“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them than he said to his squire, ‘…I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war...’

‘Take care, sir,’ cried Sancho Panza. ‘Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the…