Alton Climate Action Network

#Environment-focused organisation, taking positive action to tackle the #climate & #ecological crises

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

ACAN conducted a Climate & Nature survey in Alton High Street.
The results: people know we are facing a precarious future and want a televised Emergency Briefing⤵️

We say: don't wait for gov to act🙏
Find a People's Emergency Briefing near you
👉https://t.co/eh551klSfV
#NEB #PEB

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

🌍People’s Emergency Briefing #PEBuk will be screened in Martin Read Hall, Alton College, GU34 2HU at 7:30am Fri 19 June
Get FREE tickets➡️https://t.co/Xw47gUSOGm
or find another screening➡️https://t.co/GGcHBD0NGp
@GreenHampshire @SmartLiving_HCC @Fight4NatureNow @EastHantsGreens

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

We're on a mission to help more people to cycle🚴🚴‍♂️🚴‍♀️rather than using their cars for short journeys as this will reduce fossil fuel usage & emissions⛽️AND reduce traffic 🚗🚗🚗 AND improve fitness 🫀😃
If you need to build/rebuild your confidence then join our led cycle rides⤵️

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

This doctor is in Lebanon 🇱🇧
So much for the ceasefire ‼️🤬
And where are the reports exposing yet another genocide⁉️
@Keir_Starmer @YvetteCooperMP
@BBCNews @ITVnews @Channel4News @SkyNews

[Ghassan Abu Sitta, Chair of Conflict Medicine AUB @GhassanAbuSitt1]

I had 20 patients in my Pediatric War Injuries Clinic today, for follow-up care.

Of the 20 children, Israel had killed one or both parents of 19 of them.

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

🇬🇧🇫🇷🇩🇪🇮🇹🇺🇸🇦🇺🇨🇦
It seems most western governments and MSM are trying to prevent protest, and even #normalise endless wars, genocide, ecocide, and even increasing climate change ... all in support of their oligarchic paymasters 🤬
What a dystopian world we live in currently 😔

[Daniel Mayakovski @DaniMayakovski]

"Soy de las Naciones Unidas y vine del Líbano hace 2 semanas, como nadie hizo nada en Gaza, Israel está haciendo lo mismo en Líbano, no han dejado ni un pueblo en pie. 3 compañeros mios fueron asesinados y a nuestro gobierno le importa una mierda".

Un trabajador de la ONU en Canadá, denuncia el genocidio de "Israel" en Líbano y Gaza mientras enfrenta a la policía canadiense que reprime a los manifestantes que protestan contra los sionistas en las calles.

[EuropeanPowell @EuropeanPowell]

The WHO confirmed PFOA, a "forever chemical" in English tap water is carcinogenic. That was the opening. At the time it felt like a scandal that might force action. It didn't. Drinking water notices in England rose 285% between 2020 and 2024, from 34 to 131, with PFAS featuring prominently. 2025 is already tracking higher than 2022 and 2023 combined.

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

Our friendly team of 💚 #LitterHeroes 💚 will be starting from the garages half-way down Wooteys Way, GU34 2JP for our next 🚮 #LitterPick #Walk🚶
📅10am Thurs 4 June
ℹ️https://t.co/DQix5GtwIG
Newbies always welcome😃

@GreenHampshire @CPRE_Hampshire @LitterFreeEarth @EastHantsDC

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

This explains a lot🤨
#FollowTheMoney

[Roshan Rinaldi @Roshan_Rinaldi]

Family wealth generated while holding office.

This. Is. INSANE.

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

@yanisvaroufakis

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

It always astonishes me how there is virtually ZERO public debate - or even public awareness - in Europe about the decisions that will most shape ordinary people's lives.

These days, the EU is drafting a new anti-China legal framework where - quite literally - the more affordable and competitive Chinese products are, the more illegal they'd become.

You'd think EU citizens would want to be informed about such things - as it couldn't be more consequential for their prosperity.

Yet I bet virtually no EU citizen is even aware of it, beyond a vague sense that there is some sort of trade dispute going on.

So what's going on exactly? It all centers around a new legal instrument the EU is drafting called the "overcapacity instrument" (https://t.co/mNpCMudYyS).

First of all, the very notion of "overcapacity" is pretty ridiculous to begin with, especially the way it's being defined by the EU, as it basically means being competitive enough to export.

By this definition of "overcapacity," pretty much every European industry that's ever run a trade surplus - German cars, French wine, Italian fashion - has been guilty of "overcapacity."

I'm not even exaggerating: if you read this study by the EU Parliament on "Industrial overcapacities, with a focus on China" (https://t.co/TcwEBoL8mD), they define "overcapacity" as building more capacity than your domestic market can absorb. So the moment you build capacity to export abroad, you're in "overcapacity."

Utterly ridiculous.

And what this "overcapacity instrument" is about is creating a permanent legal mechanism for the EU to block Chinese competition across whole sectors of the economy, if they happen to be in "overcapacity."

In effect, this means that if China is competitive globally in a given sector in such a way that it exports a lot, that's proof of overcapacity, and legally it'd mean that the entire sector can be restricted from the EU market.

Which means it really, factually, is a legal framework where the more affordable and competitive your products are, the more illegal they become.

Which is a CRAZY economic concept! 🤦‍♂️

Please note that it's different from the anti-subsidy legal instrument, which the EU has already put in place in 2023 (the "Foreign Subsidies Regulation": https://t.co/SvPKFyN0zo).

This "overcapacity instrument" would be above and beyond this: it wouldn't even matter if a particular sector was subsidized by the Chinese government or not, the mere fact of its competitiveness in exports would be grounds for restrictions in the EU.

It doesn't take a genius to understand how badly this could impact everyday people: this is European consumers being forced to pay more for worse products by law, so that uncompetitive European firms don't have to improve.

Politicians frame it as avoiding a "China shock 2.0" but really this is choosing an even steeper self-inflicted decline than is already the case, where EU citizens would subsidize mediocre EU companies that would have even less pressure to catch up. It's a hidden tax: subsidies for uncompetitive firms paid by consumers instead of governments, which in turn makes them less incentivized to become competitive.

The first "China shock" did de-industrialize Europe somewhat, but at least it made things cheaper for European consumers. If this becomes Europe's response to a second "China shock" not only it'd make everything more expensive but it'd do nothing for EU industry: you don't become competitive by banning the competition...

Look at China itself: the way it industrialized was NOT by banning Western firms but on the contrary by welcoming them strategically and learning from them. You learn to compete by... competing, duh!

What I find most shocking in all of this isn't even the policy itself - you can make arguments for and against protectionism, and reasonable people can disagree.

What's shocking is that virtually no European media outlet is explaining any of this to the public. This is unarguably one of the single most consequential economic decisions the EU will make this decade, affecting the price of everything, and it's being drafted in near-total silence.

No newspaper is running the headline "EU plans to make Chinese goods illegal if they're too affordable" - even though that's essentially what's happening.

But that's what you call a "democracy" with "freedom of expression" these days apparently...

[Tara Blume @tcblume]

Science gasps for breath. They are removing all the ocean monitors to understand changes in currents and climate, and the excuse is a master class in obfuscation & double speak . (1/2) https://t.co/vs782YbcI3

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Now that Gaza lies in ruins—shattered, like a beloved face after a long brutality—Israel moves with a terrible confidence to the next act: The act of leaving every soul there not merely wounded, but permanently disabled. Injured, sick, hungry, homeless, without work, without hope. This is not war’s collateral damage. This is design.

As my friend Gideon Levy writes—and he knows, he knows—this is the prelude to expulsion. Think of it: a society without teachers, without doctors, without social workers, without engineers, without clerks. That is not a society. That is a holding pen. A slow erasure. And when nothing functions—no school, no hospital, no office, no heart—then it becomes ‘easy,’ they tell themselves, to scatter the people to the four corners of the earth. Like seeds from a broken pod, except no soil will take them.

We must name this. Not with rage alone, though rage is honest. But with the cold, clear tears of recognition: they are making life impossible so that departure becomes the only ‘choice.’ And the world watches, adjusts its spectacles, and calls for restraint. Restraint! There is no restraint in a slow drowning.

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

@andrewfeinstein 💔

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

MSM obfuscate, but we're increasingly witnessing
"the fundamental suppression of rights that accompanies the rise of #fascism"⤵️

eg 100s 🇬🇧POLITICAL PRISONERS unfairly imprisoned without trial for #climate & #genocide activism
➡️https://t.co/NqCFmArrdF

They are NOT TERRORISTS‼️

[Andy Worthington @GuantanamoAndy]

My new Substack post about the 41st anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield, and how the authoritarian laws that followed have led, now, to prison sentences for climate activists and a direct action group opposing genocide designated as terrorists: https://t.co/EMZX3CTLGJ

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

"The reason we think dandelions are weeds is because of a 1950s marketing campaign"

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

The reason we think dandelions are weeds is because of a 1950s marketing campaign.

Dandelions, native to Europe and Asia, were brought to North America in the 1600s by European colonists who grew them deliberately.

Every part is edible. The leaves are a salad green, the flowers were made into wine, and the roots were roasted as a coffee substitute and used medicinally for liver and kidney conditions for thousands of years. They were a kitchen-garden staple well into the 1800s.

The shift happened after World War II, when 2,4-D (originally developed for chemical warfare research) was approved as a residential herbicide. Companies like Scotts built the modern lawn-care industry around the idea that a perfect green lawn meant zero broadleaf plants.

Dandelions, being bright yellow and resistant to mowing, became a visible enemy, and the campaign worked. By the 1970s, "dandelion-free" was synonymous with "well-kept."

They aren't native, but they aren't doing significant ecological harm either. The herbicides used to kill them, on the other hand, kill bees, contaminate groundwater, and have been linked to non-Hodgkin lymphoma in humans.

If you hate dandelions, it's most likely due to a marketing campaign that ran before you were born.

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

@DamianHinds, please support the #RailwaysBill on Wednesday

[Bring Back British Rail @bringbackBR]

📢 Last chance to take action!

The #RailwaysBill to establish Great British Railways get its 3rd Reading in the Commons this Weds 3 June 🚆

Please email your MP to ask them to back amendments ensuring passengers' rights are put before private profit 👇
https://t.co/pi7uTJyss7

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

@MishaRogov @Glenn_Diesen "Russophobia has not made Europe safer" 💯

"It has made Europe poorer”🤔
Actually, the warmongers, aka "the 1%" and the so-called "elites" on ALL sides are even MORE wealthy🤨
while those who fought their battles often lost everything🤬

#FollowTheMoney🫰

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

@lagerbrewer @ivan_8848 This⤵️helps to explain the UK-US empire
- inc deep state, military industrial complex, false flags, pyramid scheme that drives bankers, etc to search for more enemies (real & imaginary)
https://t.co/gwZYOiJY4C
#FollowTheMoney🫰

[Alton Climate Action Network @AltonClimate]

@lagerbrewer @ivan_8848 Many in "civilised west" have been brainwashed for decades - eg by biased education systems & by MSM.
It's not an exaggeration to say that the future of humanity urgently requires us ALL to ask who provokes & ensures that wars continue??
Truth about🇺🇦war⤵️
https://t.co/wcRgIPlWM8

[Philip Proudfoot @PhilipProudfoot]

So, I have a friend who works at the BBC.

Yesterday, they told me the Tony Blair Institute basically selected the entire panel for @bbcquestiontime — hence why there was no balance and it was essentially dangerous big tech propaganda. Loads of staff pissed off, but silenced.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Put a few rocks in your birdbath. Bees, butterflies, and other small pollinators drown in open water. They land to drink, get caught in the surface tension, and can't get out. A few stones breaking the surface gives them a dry landing pad to drink from.

[Rana Ayyub @RanaAyyub]

This is what an Emmy awards acceptance speech looks like. Kudos

[Alex Crawford @AlexCrawfordSky]

One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world - the ancient city of Tyre - designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its incredible historical sites. This is what it looks like today following multiple Israeli airstrikes.