Friends welcome action on climate loss and damage

'The year ended on a hopeful note as BYM cautiously welcomed new commitments on loss and damage at the COP28 environmental conference.'

Quakers campaigned for climate justice in a year that would be ‘the warmest on record’, scientists said with ‘near certainty’. By November, they said it was 1.43C above the pre-industrial average.

Hundreds of Friends joined Extinction Rebellion (XR)’s ‘The Big One’ in April, including 300 people at a Meeting for Worship at Westminster Meeting House, which spilled onto the street. Friends also organised climate vigils as part of Quaker Week in September.

‘Of particular concern was the government’s decision to issue 130 new licences for oil drilling in the North Sea, contradicting the Paris Climate Agreement’s targets, said Saffron Walden Friends.

Many Quakers also took part in silent protests outside Crown Courts, in recognition of what Defend Our Juries described as ‘a wave of repression in the courts’, with climate-protest defendants banned from explaining their motivations, or told not to use the words ‘climate change’ and ‘fuel poverty’  – with some sent to prison. Quakers backed Trudi Warner, who was threatened with prison for sitting outside the Old Bailey silently holding a placard. Other Friends supported the campaign to make ecocide an international crime.

The year ended on a hopeful note as BYM cautiously welcomed new commitments on loss and damage at the COP28 environmental conference. Funding must be in the billions, and be new and additional, it urged, as part of the Make Polluters Pay coalition, meaning more than the US$429 million pledged. There was other positive news when the Royal Opera House ended a sponsorship deal with BP.

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