To inform our Supporters and to help guide future activities (for example, responses to relevant Planning Applications), we may develop Position Statements on various topics. Where our position is not already stated in our Starting Points and Aims, or in a previously agreed public statement, and no Position Statement is current, GlosCAN will maintain a neutral position.
Sponsorship of the arts and culture by fossil fuel companies
GlosCAN is opposed to sponsorship of the arts and culture by fossil fuel companies. This would include, by way of example, exhibitions at a national museum concerning climate change, or a major art gallery.
There is a danger that supporting these aims may give the fossil fuel companies a misleading reputation: that they are in some way especially linked to the arts, education and culture. This cannot be the case. It is not their principal activity or part of their business model. They are, because of their past, particularly concerned with supplying materials that are causing a great public danger.
The arts and culture are areas that attract the interest of a part of the population that others may emulate and copy. It should not be seen by the public at large that those who are to be emulated are supported by fossil fuel companies. This makes producing and using fossil fuels seem more acceptable.
Therefore GlosCAN is opposed to sponsorship of this kind and, as with other substances whose sponsorship has fallen under opprobrium, would like to see fossil fuels cease to receive unwarranted favourable publicity.
Legal action on climate change against government
Gloscan supports the legal action against government taken by the ‘Plan B’ group – https://www.facebook.com/ThereIsAPlanB/
which points out that :
– the current greenhouse gas reduction targets do not meet the commitments made in the Paris agreement nor the latest scientific evidence;
– the Government is obliged under the 2008 Climate Change Act to tighten targets if the science shows that this is needed.
(Ref: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41401656)
Also see the USA and the Netherlands similar legal actions:
https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit/
http://www.urgenda.nl/en/climate-case/
Waste Incineration
Gloscan is opposed to the construction of the waste incinerator being built at Javelin Park in Gloucestershire (and any other similar ones) because it will lock us into more greenhouse gas emissions than that which would result from better available alternatives. Such alternatives are:
– smaller scale plants – MBT (mechanical and biological treatment)
– the prevention, re-use and recycling of all wastes so that materials are circulated back into the production of goods (circular economy).
“The climate change benefits from preventing waste, reusing materials and recycling are much greater than those from any waste treatment, even if energy is recovered in that process (UNEP, 2010)”
(Ref: UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme) 2010: Waste and climate change: Global trends and strategy framework, quoted in Zero Carbon Britain: Rethinking the Future, pub. CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology), 2013, p. 78, para. 2 ‘What’s the solution? – The waste hierarchy’.)