Here’s what’s happening in July…

Welcome

It’s easy to feel swamped by all that’s going on in our world right now and this month’s newsletter certainly reflects that! But, as we remind each other on a regular basis, “we can’t do it all!” So tread gently with yourselves as you read the items below and join in with what you can or what you feel drawn to.

In this vein, and to keep you up-to-date, our core group of “do-ers” here at XR Leeds have decided to give the Leeds Waterfront Festival on 5 July a miss this year after all. It’s so important to recognise when it’s all getting too much and give yourselves a break when you can. This is how we build our resilience for the times ahead (see XR North Summer Gathering below).  

In case you’re wondering what has happened to our Activist Wellbeing Support section, we’ve taken a break from this while there is so much other stuff to organise, with our summer festivals outreach and at Climate Action Leeds (see more below). We hope to resume the listening circles and listening workshops in September, along with running another Active Hope Book Group Course – there’ll be more details in next month’s newsletter.

😀 And a warm welcome to our new members…. Joy, Milan, Lucy, Ylul, Richard and Frances 😀

Dates for your Diary in July

2-18 July (11am-2pm, Mon-Sat): Exhibitions of Change at Imagine Leeds, 9 Blenheim Terrace, Leeds LS2 9HZ. As part of the Climate Action Leeds Festival, we’re helping to host several exhibitions at the Climate Hub over the next couple of weeks, including Zero Hour’s Letters from the Global South, Adfree City’s Digital Dystopia, Doughnut Economics and displays by Leeds Craftivists among others.

9 July: Mass Lobby of Parliament for Climate and Nature: meet your MP at Westminster. Sign up here. There is more information in the CAN Bill update item below.

12 July: Kirkstall Festival, Kirkstall Abbey Park, Leeds LS5 3EH, 11am-5pm. Join us at our stall for this day of celebration in a beautiful setting.

13 July: Gledhow Valley Green Fair, Gledhow Valley Woods, Gledhow Valley Road, Leeds LS17 6LR, 11am-4pm. We’re sharing a stall with Friends of the Earth at this car-free event among the peace and quiet of the meadows, woods, beck and lake. The event will be a celebration of a truly unique green urban environment, an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the environmental challenges faced and the responses that are being made to address these.

14-20 July: Heat Strike Week, in partnership with the TUC, XR UK is planning a week of actions to highlight the problems associated with very high temperatures, particularly in work places. The campaign seeks to spotlight health implications for everyone but particularly make the case for setting a legal upper limit on safe working temperatures under Health & Safety Rules in the UK – currently there isn’t one! Keep a lookout on our Whatsapp chat group for more details and spread the word among your work colleagues.

15 July: Green Drinks Leeds, 5.30pm to 8.00pm at Imagine Leeds:the Climate Action Hub, 9 Blenheim Terrace, Leeds LS2 9HZ. A chance to meet up with members of other groups all working towards a greener, more sustainable Leeds. This month’s guest speaker is Sarah Autumn, who will be speaking about using art for activism and there’ll be another dastardly, environmentally-themed “pub” quiz organised by Greenpeace Leeds! Find out more here.

19-20 July: XR North Summer Gathering! Fell Edge, near Ilkley. This is a chance to pause, relax and reflect. A chance to have a laugh, have some big conversations and share food together. No outreach, no actions, no city streets, just a green space and good company! This is a family-friendly event and we’ll do our very best to accommodate everybody’s needs. Please REGISTER HERE as soon as possible, even if you are unsure about your attendance, so we have an idea of numbers. See you there!

Looking ahead…

14-17 August: the Northern Green Gathering Festival, Normanton, Wakefield. We’re helping to organise the Campaigns Area at this popular, family-friendly (inc. doggies!) festival. There’ll be a range of stalls, workshops, performances and listening circles. Find more information and book your tickets here. Interested in helping? Join our XR North Festivals Signal Group here.

25 August: Leeds Festival Salvaging, please get in touch if you’d like to help: xrleeds@protonmail.com  

Some Positive PR for XR Leeds!

In case you missed it, last week six of our lovely Leeds Rebels were featured in a double-page spread in the Yorkshire Evening Post. The idea was to show the people behind XR and to try to dispel many of the myths and misinformation about who we are and why we do this.

We thought it was excellently handled and worked really well, with the sensitive photos taken by Gerard Liston who, together with journalist Jennifer Cartwright, hatched the idea a few months ago. A big thank you to everyone involved. You can see the article above but you’ll need to enlarge it a lot to read it!

Follow up letters: we’re asking everyone to write to the YEP’s editor congratulating them for including this article, saying how refreshing it was to read and asking for more stories to highlight the climate and nature crisis. We hope that if they receive a lot of positive responses, it might push our cause up the editorial priority list! Head your email ‘Letter for publication’ and send it to: yep.newsdesk@ypn.co.uk

Drax News

Well done to Axe Drax last week, who crashed the offices of Grayling in Leeds and London demanding that they cut all ties with Drax, the biggest carbon emitter in the UK. Grayling are key lobbyists for Drax and responsible for aggressively persuading our government to hand over billions in subsidies. You can watch their Instagram post from the day here.

Stop Airport Expansion

A tiny group of people are driving a huge chunk of carbon emissions. Recent research shows that just 3% of people are responsible for a quarter of emissions from UK flights. Yet the government is still pushing ahead with airport expansion, making it easier for the most frequent flyers to pollute even more, while the rest of us pay the price.

MPs will get the chance to learn about how to cut aviation emissions at a Parliamentary meeting on 10 September. We need as many MPs there as possible and that’s where you come in. MPs are much more likely to pay attention when they hear directly from the people they represent. It only takes two minutes and the email is ready for you to send.

Climate Action Leeds

The funding for Climate Action Leeds and the premises at Imagine Leeds all come to an end in September, so we’re all busy working towards the next phase. Look out for more details on this and ways you can help in the weeks to come.

Dirty Water News

The People’s Commission on Water: water companies are lobbying hard to shut down any alternative to this broken, privatised system. 82% of us want water back in public hands and the People’s Commission, led by academics, sector experts and water users, has run an independent Review that looks at all ownership models, including public.

On 7 July, MPs will have the chance to hear about this better way to run the water industry, as Clive Lewis MP launches a democratic, accountable, people-first vision for our water system. Please ask your MP to attend the launch here.

Stop Sludge Petition: June also brought the explosive revelation of the water industry’s long-hidden sludge scandal – the dumping of millions of tonnes of sewage sludge, contaminated with toxic ‘forever chemicals’ onto farmland. Please sign & share this Greenpeace petition calling for an immediate ban on the spreading of toxic sewage sludge on agricultural land.

River Action UK: the campaign WON a landmark legal case in June against Shropshire Council! This victory doesn’t just stop the construction of a vast 200,000-bird chicken factory farm, it sets a national precedent. From now on, planning authorities must consider the pollution impact of new developments on rivers, including waste from anaerobic digestion and other treatment facilities.

Defending our Right to Protest

The Government is out of time to appeal against Liberty’s court win to protect the right to protest! Two years after first taking legal action, the case defending democracy is finally at an end. This means these anti-protest laws are now void. This is a major step forward for the right to protest. Justice now needs to be served for anybody wrongfully arrested or convicted under these laws that should never have existed in the first place. Liberty are calling on the Government to urgently review every case. Read more about it here.

We Stand with Palestine Action!

The Home Secretary, Yvetter Cooper’s announcement last week to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation sent shivers down the spine of many a peaceful protester who has taken action to defend our democratic rights. It is now more important than ever that we stand in solidarity against the authoritarian tide. Write to your MP using this quick tool from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and remind them that protest is not terrorism! For a brilliant analysis of the issues watch George Monbiot on Double Down News here.

Extreme weather hits UK cop yields

If you know someone who still doesn’t think climate damage affects the UK, ask them to read this article. Farmers have warned that global heating risks Britain’s supplies of home-grown food amid wild swings in weather conditions.  It comes as Britain’s largest retailers warned that food prices have been pushed up by hot weather hitting harvest yields. The British Retail Consortium trade body, representing more than 200 large UK retailers, has drawn a direct link between the climate crisis and prices for consumers.

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

The British government’s announcement that it will buy 12 nuclear capable F35A fighter jets is yet another disastrous decision that makes the world more dangerous and puts the British population on the nuclear frontline. Each nuclear-capable fighter jet costs between $80 to $100 million and will be stationed at RAF Marham, near Peterborough. This means Britain will get a whole new generation of nuclear weapons, launched from fighter jets, as well as replacing its deadly nuclear submarines. The decision was made without any parliamentary debate and is in breach of the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. As a signatory, Britain has agreed to take steps to disarm its nuclear weapons, not increase them.

Make Votes Matter

Make Votes Matter are running a Weekend of Action over 5-6 July, pushing proportional representation (PR) back into the spotlight ahead of the Elections Bill. They’ve got ambitious plans: rallies, street stalls, local events, media outreach – all aiming to reach 100,000 people in one weekend. Find out more here.

Petitions

COP30: ahead of COP30 in November in Brazil, President Lula appears to be caving into oil companies by opening up the Amazon basin for drilling and allowing the construction of a mega-highway that will cut through miles of precious rainforest. Please sign and share this petition urging Lula to remain true to his promises to put planet and people before profit.

Net Zero Banking: please urge US Banks not to abandon the Net Zero Banking Alliance! JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs have all abandoned the Net Zero Banking Alliance, a U.N.-backed climate initiative. Sign the petition today to tell these banks to stop fueling destruction and recommit to saving the planet! Curious to find out your bank’s green (or not) credentials? Check out this excellent site.

CAN Bill update – REAL Change Campaign by Zero Hour

There’s still time to join the coalition of climate and nature groups who are organising a mass lobby in Westminster for Climate & Nature on Wednesday 9 July, ahead of the next stage of the Climate and Nature (CAN) Bill due in Parliament on Friday 11 July. You can join using this link: Act Now, Change Forever – The Climate Coalition.

Better Buses for West Yorkshire

It’s now six years since the start of this campaign to win Better Buses for West Yorkshire. While we’ve won the argument, Mayor Tracy Brabin is at risk of repeating the mistakes of Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester, by not asking YOU what you want from a publicly controlled bus network. Please complete this quick survey to make sure Tracy Brabin hears us loud and clear.

Fix the Planning & Infrastructure Bill Now!

Wild Justice is taking the Government to court for their misleading claim that the proposed Planning & Infrastructure Bill would not reduce environmental protections. Read their full press release here.

Good News Stories

Stop Rosebank! Following the Supreme court ruling last year, the government has announced new rules that mean assessments to approve or reject new oil and gas projects will now have to take into account the CO2 produced from burning the fossil fuels in the field itself. Until now, the full amount of pollution from these climate-wrecking projects did not need to be considered in the decisions.

The new guidance includes an actually serious, credible approach to assessing the harm caused from burning the oil and gas in any new fields including Rosebank. Rosebank’s owner, Equinor, must reapply for permission if it wants to develop the field. Then, the government can finally make a new decision on Rosebank – one that includes more of the true climate cost. Ask your MP to sign the pledge to Stop Rosebank.

Encouraging news for our Oceans! Since the launch of Ocean with David Attenborough, the world has been awakened to bottom trawling’s devastation. At the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, the UK government announced plans to ban bottom trawling in 41 offshore marine protected areas.

This could protect 30,000 square kilometres of seabed – home to sharks, rays, corals and other marine life that desperately need safe, undisturbed spaces to recover and thrive. The deal is not done yet – there is now a public consultation open until 1st September; you can send your thoughts and an email to your MP here.

Otters in Leeds Liverpool Canal! Otters have been spotted in the Leeds-Liverpool canal. Just 50 years ago, the canal was biologically dead – now it’s full of fish. Indeed, 50 years ago, otters were only found in 6% of survey sites across England but by 2018, they were found in 96% of those sites.

And finally… this made us smile – read more here.