Dear John,
After a couple of sleepless nights, a long week’s reflection and a great deal of discussion, we are now looking forward to 2020 and wish you Happy Holidays for the Winter Solstice, Chanukah and Christmas.
Some of us are getting together at The Duke of Wellington, 179 Portobello Road, W11 2ED, tomorrow evening (Monday, 23rd from 7.30pm) if you’d like to join us and below are details of our next Green Screen on January 21st.
Our first meeting of a key year for the Green Party is on January 6th, 7pm at the Coffee Plant, 180 Portobello Rd, W11 2EB when we'll resume planning our campaigns for May’s London Assembly and 2022’s local elections. Activists from Camden Green Party will be joining us to share their successful experiences and we very much hope you will be able to come along as well.
Although the General Election results were probably what we all most dreaded, there are reasons to be cheerful. Our party saw an increase of (around) 60%, which no other party came close to – the Conservatives’ vote share was only 1% higher than in the 2017 election. As you probably already know, there were more than 860,000 votes cast for Green candidates, over 300,000 more than in 2017.
We don't know what those figures might actually have been without tactical voting, and with proportional representation instead of the increasingly devalued First Past the Post system (although most guestimates are 17/18 seats) but the volume of discussion about that and most importantly the climate emergency have increased hugely.
Our next Green Screen is Burned: Are Trees the New Coal? A film by Alan Dater and Lisa Merton on January 21st, 7pm at The Tabernacle, Powis Square, W11 2AY
BURNED tells the little-known story of the accelerating destruction of our forests for fuel, and probes the policy loopholes, huge subsidies, and blatant green washing of the burgeoning biomass electric power industry.
BURNED is a feature-length documentary, which takes an unwavering look at the latest electric power industry solution to climate change. The film tells the story of how woody biomass has become the fossil-fuel industry’s renewable, green saviour, and of the people and parties who are both fighting against and promoting its adoption and use.
Through interviews with activists, experts, and citizens, along with verité-style footage shot across the U.S. and in the EU and UK, the film interweaves the science of climate change, the escalating energy-policy disputes, the dynamics of forest ecology, the biomass industry practices, the conflict between jobs and trees, and the actions of activists and citizens who are working to protect their own health, their communities, the forest, and the planet’s climate.
Woven together, the various stories present an intimate and visceral account of what is at this moment in time a critical, yet mostly unknown, national and international controversy.
Speaker: James Hewitt whose work – apart from being our Electoral Returning Officer – focuses on governance (sustainability and legality) concerning markets for wood-based products and commodities from deforested land, including some biofuels. He is also a shareholder in Drax plc – to ask questions during its AGMs.
Tickets are by donation (£5 to cover the cost of room hire, less if you can't afford it) via Eventbrite
It's also on our Facebook page
Take action: biofuelwatch
Looking forward to seeing you soon,
Vivien Lichtenstein
Chair / Coordinator
West Central London Green Party
07528 292808
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