If the UK receiving a month’s rain in a day wasn’t enough – or the unbelievable speed the Arctic’s melting – a new report released this week shows that climate change is already here: it’s already costing the world $1.2 trillion a year (the combined GDP of Norway, Denmark and the United Arab Emirates), and is set to get far worse. As the recent 6 Billion Ways film night showed, it’s because vested corporate interests are keeping us hooked on dirty fossil fuels while they rake in billions. The film night also showed how the very same energy system is failing billions across the world who continue to live in energy poverty. If we’re to fix our broken energy system, tackling climate change and energy poverty, then we need fair, ambitious action from world governments. But the last big chance we had – this summer’s UN Sustainable Development Conference, aka Rio+20, didn’t deliver. Friends of the Earth’s analysis shows how bad the deal was for people and the planet, and a follow-up blog from the World Coal Association (WCA) surprisingly agreed – or is that a sheepskin coat you’re wearing, Mr Wolf?

If it seems unbelievable, it probably is

My gut tells me anything the WCA sees as good must be bad, but reading the blog I found them calling for global action on energy poverty – echoing Friends of the Earth. Over a billion people are without access to electricity, with another billion unable to afford it or with no reliable connection. Almost 3 billion rely on polluting fuels like coal and wood for cooking and heating, with serious health impacts particularly among women and young children. So the WCA wants to tackle this?

The devil is in the detail: what WCA means when it talks about energy access is ramping up coal-fired power stations. The name’s a bit of a give away. Its members include some of the biggest, most polluting fossil fuel companies in the world like Rio Tinto, Xstrata, BHP Billiton and Glencore. Coal is their bread and butter, and if energy access can justify building more coal plants, well then great. Except it doesn’t deliver energy access – quite the opposite – and we desperately need to stop burning fossil fuels if we’re going to prevent catastrophic climate change.

King Coal can’t deliver for people or the planet

Unlike Friends of the Earth, WCA’s Chief Executive, Milton Catelin (ex-climate change advisor to Tony Blair!) welcomes the Rio+20 Outcome for keeping fossil fuels on the table and its “recognition that renewable energy sources are not the only path to achieving global energy access objectives.” He also calls for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s flag ship initiative, Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All), to recognise the importance of coal in delivering access. But what exactly are those claims based on?

It might sound logical that more power stations – coal or not – will lead to more people accessing electricity, but it doesn’t work like that in many countries in the global South. In India more than 400m people have no electricity access and the aggressive building of coal-fired power plants has not tackled this: the East of India, with the highest number of plants, also has the lowest levels of village electrification – the electricity is sent to the richer urban centres and heavy industry. And the myth that coal is cheap an abundant is now finally being allayed as volatile commodity prices show. Contrast that against the falling cost of renewables and the addiction to coal sounds criminal. Ironically, while energy access officially justified building a giant coal-fired power station in South Africa, the Medupi plant will actually reduce energy access as the loans to build it will be paid back through increases on already unaffordable electricity bills, leading to even more people being cut-off.

The danger of talking our talk

The WCA represents a growing trend of the fossil fuel industry to paint itself as champions of sustainable development. Coal company Peabody Energy talks of ‘energy access for all with green coal’; the shale gas industry touts itself as the low carbon solution we’re waiting for, despite the International Energy Agency showing that exploiting it will cook the planet.

The fossil fuel industry is tricking us with this language into accepting the same false solutions that got us into this mess in the first place. There’s a reason the world is facing multiple crises, and that’s because business as usual has been a disaster for this planet and the majority of people in it. We can’t let them do it again. We need new models that can deliver.

Walking the walk

For energy access, breaking from business as usual means moving away from traditional grids. While they’re important, they’ve failed to deliver for the world’s poor. We need to accept that of those without access to electricity in Sub Saharan Africa, 70% are off-grid in remote or rural areas. The grid will never reach, and renewable technologies like solar PV or micro-hydro are often the cheapest and most effective electricity sources. Local energy projects can create local employment and technical skills, while access to energy is itself a great catalyser for development, powering water pumps, small-scale irrigation or small businesses, as well as helping the realisation of basic rights like education and health care.

Putting communities at the heart of clean energy access has been a great success in places like Brazil, Nepal or Indonesia. In Indonesia, Ashden Award winner IBEKA (who featured in our film night) is helping communities set up and run their own micro-hydro plants, transforming the lives of local residents. Renewable energy cooperatives can put people and the planet first.

Walk the walk or we’ll stop your talk

So I do agree with the WCA on one thing: we need global action on energy poverty. But we have to make sure we adopt the right models and right policies, guiding investment towards real, not false solutions. Renewables over coal, decentralised over centralised, communities over large corporations. Big corporate fossil fuel interests will keep talking the language of sustainability and it’s down to all of us to call them out, to call a pig in lipstick a pig, and to demand that our politicians stop listening to dirty industry and start putting us and the planet first.

We’ll be putting a write-up on the website soon, but in the meantime, here are links to all the films and campaigning resources to put on your own Power Hungry film night anywhere in the country (or world!)

Opening trailers:

• Green Peace spoof of fox striking oil in the Arctic
• Green Peace spoof of Shell’s readiness for a spill
• Greedy Lying Bastards (trailer)

First half:

Our corporate controlled energy system and industry attempts to keep it that way

• Worse than Bad (campaign against Shell’s activities in Nigeria)
• Short interview with Wole Solyinka (from 27 minutes in)
• Tar Sands: To the Ends of the Earth – not out yet, sorry!
• Fracking Hell: The Untold Story

Second half:

Resisting the system and building a new one

• Friends of the Earth International Chair, Nnimmo Bassey, talking about recognising Ecocide
• Green Peace activists closing down Shell forecourts
• IBEKA’s community-owned micro-hydro electricity projects in Indonesia
• Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) wind turbine workshops

Information on speakers and shout-outs:

• Arts and activism organisation, Platform, who are looking at the social, environmental and economic impacts of the oil industry
• The Oil Road, which was referenced by speaker Emma Hughes
• Greenpeace’s Save the Arctic campaign
• UK Tar Sands Network
• Frack Off!
• Friends of the Earth International; ERA Nigeria
• Eradicating Ecocide
• Ashden Awards (who support projects like IBEKA’s)
• Friends of the Earth’s Clean British Energy campaign
• Community Energy Warwickshire (and Co-operatives UK’s guide to community energy co-ops and what it takes)
• Fuel Poverty Action
• Brixton Energy Cooperative
• Alliance for Jobs and Climate
• Friends of the Earth Hackney and Tower Hamlets local group
• Occupy LSX

Saturday 5 March 2011. The day 6 Billion Ways returned with yet more debate, discussion, art, film and performance. Rich Mix and four neighbouring venues were flooded by 1,700activists from across the UK, temporarily transformed into hubs of global justice as the world’s leading thinkers and campaigners knocked heads for a common solution.

The East End has always been the home of progressive social movements, witnessing Keir Hardie and the first steps of a fledgling Labour Party, exiled Jews orchestrating resistance, the defeat of Britain’s fascists, South American revolutionaries taking shelter but never giving up the fight. It’s this spirit that 6 Billion Ways looked to and drew from in facing the multiple crises that are before us: repression of democracy, exploitation of our natural resources and atmosphere, a financial crisis that deepens by the day. The list could go on.

Session after session, film after film, not just problems but also solutions were given the space and time to be discussed and debated.

Egyptian activist Gigi Ibrahim brought firsthand experience of what it was like in Tahrir square, Cairo, during the uprising, sharing not only the hope of a better future but the determination that was held by everyone present.

Bolivian ambassador to the UN, Pablo Solon, spoke to 250 people about the need for social participation in the climate debate and the dangerous direction international negotiations are currently taking. At last year’s climate talks in Cancún, Solon was the only person to speak out against the resulting agreement, refusing to ratify a document that would – in the eyes of his government – lead to genocide and ecocide. Remarkably, this was all done via video conferencing and a 20 ft projection.

Practical discussions around fighting the cuts brought grass roots campaigners Michael Chessum (National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts), Jim Cranshaw (Oxford Save our Services) and Anna Walker (UK Uncut) together to talk tactics and alternatives.

Other sessions on consumption, the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign against Israel, the food crisis and endless other subjects achieved similar aims of bringing the debate to the fore and examining solutions. But the real motivation driving the organisers of 6 Billion Ways forward – ultimately what made the event so relevant – was the need to connect these issues. Each is important in its own right, but when examined together, as symptoms of the same problem, it’s possible to see the bigger picture, to identify the drivers and to build a movement that can collectively direct its energy towards tackling them. The prevalence of corporations and their interests over those of citizens emerged from each session; the attitude of governments towards free trade and economic growth at all costs, no matter what the consequence; the ease with which accountability is ignored. Missing in each crisis is a notion of justice, be it social, economic, political or environmental, and it was in the name of justice – global justice – that 6 Billion Ways was convened.

The final rally captured perfectly the spirit that grew throughout the day and the pressing need for action, for movement building and for the fight on our hands as we demand justice. Omar Barghouti, founder of the BDS movement in Palestine, sent shivers down the spine as he delivered the memorable lines “I wish you Egypt so you can, like the Tunisians, the Egyptians, the Libyans, the Bahrainis, the Yemenis, and certainly the Palestinians, shout, “No! We do not want to select the least wrong answer. We want another choice altogether that is not on your damned list.” Given the choice between slavery and death, we unequivocally opt for freedom and dignified life–no slavery, and no death.”

But what is needed now – what has been recognised across the world – is how we build on what we have achieved, how we capture the energy so evident in that hall and channel it; where can it best be used and how can we make that happen? The TUC ‘March for an Alternative’ was a start, and one 6 Billion Ways united behind, but we need to keep building, relying on those that took part and those that support the common cause to keep fighting – not just in the name of our individual interests and causes but for global justice and a, as Omar put so well, “It is time for all the people of this world, particularly the most exploited and downtrodden, to reassert our common humanity and reclaim control over our common destiny.”