Climate change protesters face community service after judge rejects justification defence

Climate change protesters who ambushed and hijacked a power station coal train failed to convince a jury today that their actions were justified by the "imminent threat" of devastation from global warming.

The 22 men and women, including a senior university lecturer, teachers and film-makers, were convicted - after less than two hours of deliberation - of obstructing the service carrying 42,000 tonnes of coal to Drax in North Yorkshire last June.

Their hopes of repeating the "Kingsnorth Six" judgment last September, when activists who defaced a power station chimney were acquitted by a Kent jury, were dashed by a judge, who refused to admit arguments that the hijack was "necessary and proportionate to prevent the greater crime of carbon pollution".

Although he eventually allowed an unexpectedly large amount of evidence about climate change to be heard, Judge James Spencer refused to let expert witnesses such as Nasa scientist, Prof James Hansen, address the seven women and five men on the jury at Leeds crown court. In a pre-trial ruling he said that to do so would allow the protesters "to hijack the trial process as surely as they hijacked the coal train".

He did however compliment the group, who conducted their own defence, on making an "eloquent, sincere, moving and engaging" case to the court. After the verdicts, he said that sentencing in early September would definitely not include jail terms, but was likely to be community service.

The 22, plus a further five protesters who earlier pleaded guilty and two who are ill but expected to submit guilty pleas in due course, will however face hefty financial penalties. The crown is applying for both its costs and £36,000 compensation for cleaning up coal shovelled on to the tracks during a 16-hour standoff with police.

After the verdict, one of the 22, Dr Louise Hemmerman, 31, said: "The judge declared from day one that climate change was irrelevant to the trial, despite the fact that it was the sole reason for doing what we did."

Another of the group, Jonathan Stevenson, 27, who works for a development charity, said: "This won't be the last case where climate protesters are in court for taking peaceful direct action, and while some judges may think climate change is irrelevant, they won't be able to hold back the tide forever."

Stevenson asked the judge after the verdicts if an order banning the defendants from power stations would apply more widely, to include roads. Judge Spencer replied with a smile: "I would steer clear of demonstrations, all of you, until this case is completely over. Try to find some other activities to do on your holidays."

Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whom the defendants had intended to call to the stand to speak about the science of climate change, said: "Civil resistance is not an easy path, but given abdication of responsibility by the government, it is an essential path."

Hansen was arrested last week for his part in a protest over mountaintop coalmining in West Virginia. He has previously said that direct action is necessary because the democratic process is not bringing about policy change fast enough.

The chief crown prosecutor for North Yorkshire, Rob Turnbull, said: "While the CPS [crown prosecution service] respects the rights of individuals to lawfully protest, it takes a serious view of criminal activity which targets those carrying out lawful activities." He defended Judge Spencer's pre-trial ruling on the grounds that no one was in such immediate danger from global warning that hijacking a coal train was "proportionate".

"The judge said that if the power station contributed to global warming, and all that entailed, it was for the government to attend to and not the protesters. He also said that no reasonable jury could conclude that the crime these defendants allegedly committed was either reasonable or proportionate when there were democratic processes available in this country for political change."

The 22 were acquitted of actually stopping the train, after evidence that no one knew which of them had donned fake railwaymen's uniforms and used red flags to bring it to a halt. The ambush stopped the train right on a bridge over the river Aire, whose girders gave protesters the means to clamber up and use 15 shovels to start unloading coal.

Passenger and freight services in the area were disrupted for two days, but Drax generated power normally throughout.

Those convicted were: Theo Bard, 24, Amy Clancy, 24, Brian Farelly, 32, Grainne Gannon, 26, Bryn Hoskins, 24, Jasmin Karalis, 25, Ellen Potts, 33, Bertie Russell, 24, Alison Stratford,26, Jonathan Stevenson, 27 and Felix Wight, all of London, Melanie Evans,25, Matthew Fawcette, 34, Robin Gillett, 23, Kristina Jones 22, Oliver Rodker, 40 and Thomas Spencer,23, all of Manchester, Paul Chatterton, 36, and Louise Hemmerman, 31, of Leeds, Melanie Evans, 25, of Stockport, Paul Morozzo, 42, of Hebden Bridge, Christopher Ward, 38, of Newport Pagnell and Elizabeth Whelan of Glasgow.

The five who pleaded guilty earlier were: Theo Brown, 22 and Clemmie James, 24, of London, Malcolm Carroll, 53, of Stafford, Thomas Johnstone, 25, of Liverpool and Paul Mellett, 29, of Colerne, Wiltshire. The two have indicated they will plead guilty when well are Caroline Williams, 25, of London and Sam Martingell, 24, of Leeds.

After success with China, US targets Russia in strategy to reach separate agreements with world's biggest polluters

Barack Obama will move to seal a deal with Russia for joint action on climate change during his summit in Moscow next week, the Guardian has learned. 

Obama arrives in Moscow on Monday at the start of a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana that will focus heavily on energy and climate change. From Moscow, Obama travels on to Italy for a meeting of the G8 and a gathering of the major polluting countries.

Administration officials are still working out the broad outlines of an agreement that would see the US offer its expertise and technical support to Russian efforts to make its industries more energy efficient. In return Moscow would sign on to international efforts to scale back the emissions that cause global warming at a crucial UN summit in Copenhagen in December.

The overture to Russia — the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after America and China — furthers the strategy adopted by the Obama administration to enter into separate deals for action on climate change with each of the world's biggest polluters. 

The administration sees such deals as crucial groundwork ahead of the Copenhagen meeting. They dismiss suggestions that the US is trying to undermine the UN process.

The separate negotiations policy began taking shape in May, as the US climate change envoy, Todd Stern, pursued a deal with China, the world's biggest polluter.

Next on the list is Russa. After that, it could well be Japan or Brazil. "You can definitely say we are looking for other partners," an administration official said.

In the case of China, as well as Russia, US officials have steered clear of trying to press for binding targets for emissions reductions.

Major environmental organisations support the Obama administration approach. David Doniger, the director of climate policy at the Natural Resources Defence Council, argues that Obama and other high-level members of his team have far greater flexibility to try to reach a deal in such bilateral talks than officials working through routine diplomatic channels.

"If you are trying to put together a baseball team you have to sign contracts with 30 players. You don't work them out in one big meeting," he said. "It's very difficult in the multilateral setting. It is just not the place where it is very easy to get countries to make new moves."

It is uncertain whether Obama will make a formal announcement of a new energy pact between the US and Russia. Instead, the president is expected to set out his ideas for a partnership with Russia on climate change and energy in a speech at the end of the summit. "They won't have the full road map for what they are going to do but want to launch a stepped up partnership," said Jake Schmidt, the international climate change director of the NRDC.

Another scenario envisaged is the establishment of a separate US-Russian working group on global warming to be overseen by Todd Stern, the State Department envoy on climate change.

The US and Russia have long-standing co-operation on energy, but the Obama administration would like to ratchet up that involvement.

There have also been recent signs of movement from Russia, which is beginning to engage with climate change far more seriously than before, said Andrew Kuchins of the Russia programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. In April, Moscow unveiled a new doctrine on climate change. "I think there is a much more realistic appraisal about the potential pros and cons of climate change. It is hard for them to ignore what is happening in the Arctic [which is warming rapidly]," said Kuchins.

In recent weeks, the White House, State Department and National Security Council have also been studying a report from the Centre for American Progress, an influential think tank, that called for looking at climate change as an economic issue, and for demonstrating clear benefits to Russia of action. "What is most crucial is engaging them on energy efficiency. We think that it is important to frame climate change as an economic issue and one where Russia stands to benefit by first undergoing significant energy efficiency [improvements]."

Russian industry is very inefficient, using three times more energy per unit of gross domestic product as the European Union and twice as much as the US, Light notes in the paper. He argues there would be great interest in Russia in collaborating with US experts on technologies to improve its use of energy.

The economic potential is huge. A World Bank report last year found that Russia, with reasonable investment, would be able to cut its energy consumption by about 50%or the equivalent of 60 biliion barrels a day of oil over the next three years.

The idea is one of 20 radical solutions to the threat of global warming to be proposed during presentations at a conference in Manchester this weekend

The British public could invest their savings in the UK's renewable energy revolution and reap the financial rewards of helping to save the planet, under ambitious plans to be discussed this weekend.

The Public Interest Research Centre, a thinktank based in Wales, says the government could sell "energy bonds" to pay for the required investment. The scheme would be similar to war bonds, which galvanised financial support in Britain during the second world war.

The idea is one of 20 radical solutions to the threat of global warming to be proposed during presentations this weekend in Manchester. The event, organised by the Guardian and the Manchester International festival, will publish a report on the ideas, which will be distributed ahead of key UN talks on a new climate treaty in Copenhagen in December.

Tim Helweg-Larsen, director of the Public Interest Research Centre, said: "To finance renewable energy on the scale required, Britain is going to need hundreds of billions of pounds. Energy bonds are a way to unlock large amounts of money from individuals and institutional investors."

He added: "Make no mistake, this is an incredibly expensive project, but it also has very good rates of return on investments. We should be creating the opportunity for the people of Britain to invest in their own future and a secure climate."

People and companies would buy the bonds over the internet or at Post Offices, he said, investing anything from £10 to millions. The money raised would be dedicated to investment in offshore wind turbines and other clean energy projects. Fixed returns, backed by the government, could be paid at regular intervals, or after a decade or so when the fund matured. The increase in money paid back would be linked to the likely increase in electricity prices.

The large amounts of public investment raised by such a scheme could provoke awkward questions about how it would be allocated in Britain's liberalised electricity market, where infrastructure such as wind turbines are largely built and operated by power companies. Helweg-Larsen said nationalisation would not be needed. An investment corporation could be set up to spend the money, either by building generation capacity directly, or by subcontracting the work to existing operators. War bonds worked in a similar way he said, with the money from the public used to pay private firms to make weapons and munitions.

Other climate-saving ideas to be discussed at the Manchester event include practical suggestions, such as alternative fuels from algae to hydrogen, as well as ways to convert the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide to methanol. Others will discuss more controversial ideas such as tighter controls on global population and rethinking conventional models of economic growth.

Stephen Salter, an engineer at Edinburgh University, who was responsible for the "Salter's Duck" wave energy device, will present his latest idea: a form of geoengineering that uses ships to seed clouds over the ocean, designed to block sunlight.

The ideas will be judged by a panel of experts led by Lord Tom Bingham, former lord chief justice, and including Dan Reicher, director of climate change and energy at Google.org, and author Chris Goodall.

From catcalls to lurid comments, should you shout back, or just ignore them? Any tips for those who will not give up their skirts?

Forget modesty: it's about catcalling. Unlike Gwladys, I quickly gave up on the idea of biking with a skirt on. A pity really, because the thought of commuting to work wearing light and fluttering fabrics is especially appealing during summer time. But from now on, I'm all about ugly lycra capri pants.

My admission of defeat isn't about wanting to keep my poise: looking silly isn't too much of a problem if I am in the midst of a strenuous physical exercise. What made me give up dresses was the never-ending catcalls hurled my way day in, day out. No matter that I was just commuting to work at 8.30am looking dishevelled, or biking through the park on a Sunday afternoon looking nice: if biking on my own, unwelcome remarks were de circonstance. I have heard it all: from builders demanding that I "flash my boobs, love" and older men asking if I had panties on, to teenagers making furtive kissing sounds supposed to suggest appreciation. I even once encountered a pedestrian who, having spotted me cycling from afar in a deserted street, stopped in the middle of a crossroad only to bend down with a huge grin, trying to catch a glimpse of my knickers.

At first, politely ignoring lurid comments while avoiding eye contact with the offenders seemed like a good solution. But such unwanted attention quickly became tiring, if not unsettling. After a few months of weekly (if not daily, during summer months) street harassment, I decided to resort to a more aggressive tactic and ditched my much-loved dutch bike, bought myself a hybrid, and started dressing head-to-toe in black lycra. And wouldn't you know? The catcalling ceased immediately, except for that recent time when I had the incredible audacity to go on a bike ride wearing shorts. But really, does it really have to come to that? Should women have to police their own clothes, rather than men watch their behaviour?

I would love to hear about how female cyclists deal with catcalling. Do you say something back, or do you just shrug and keep on going? Any tips for those who will not bow down and give up their skirts?

Shorter, milder winters caused by global warming to blame for steady decrease in size of St Kilda sheep, experts say

The mysterious shrinking sheep of St Kilda sounds like a job for super-sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

The case involves a rare herd of wild sheep on the remote Scottish island - known in Scottish Gaelic as Hirta - that are refusing to bow to conventional evolutionary pressure, which says big is best. Instead, they have steadily decreased in size since the 1980s.

Scientists have now stepped in to solve the conundrum, and fingered the culprit as the new Moriarty of mankind: global warming.

The experts say shorter and milder winters mean that lambs do not need to put as much weight on during their first few months of life. Smaller animals that would have perished in harsh winters a few decades ago can now survive to their first birthday. As a result, the average weight of the sheep has dropped by 81g each year.

The difference is too small to see with the naked eye, but it is important because it shows how animal populations can respond to climate change. Tim Coulson, a biologist at Imperial College London who worked on the study, said: "If animals can respond [to climate change] and can respond fairly rapidly, then evolution could play a role in helping them to adapt." The results appear in the journal Science.

Biologists have reported that several species of birds and fish are changing size and shape, which could be down to global warming. Coulson said it was difficult to say what the response of the St Kilda sheep could mean for other species.

Their island home, St Kilda, is just "vegetation and sheep" he said. In other cases, predators and competition for food from other animals complicate the picture and make it difficult to tease out the influence of changing climate.

The study looked at a herd of wild Soay sheep on Hirta that biologists have studied since 1985. Dogs are forbidden on the island, so the scientists acted as human sheepdogs to herd the animals, which are expert jumpers, towards areas where they could be weighed. "These aren't fluffy white sheep, these are small and brown and wild animals," Coulson said.

An Amnesty report says that at least 9m barrels have leaked into the land and rivers in the past 50 years

Serious allegations of human rights abuses caused by oil companies in the Niger Delta, the oil-producing region in southern Nigeria, have been published today.

A 141-page report by Amnesty International quotes sources suggesting that in the last 50 years at least 9m barrels worth of oil have leaked into land and rivers in the region.

Royal Dutch Shell is singled out by Amnesty as the most powerful operator in the region. The report will make uncomfortable reading for the energy group's new chief executive, Peter Voser, who starts work tomorrow.

The report gives evidence of oil spill cover-ups, gas flaring near villages and waste dumping leading to serious pollution of wetlands and the destruction of farming and fishing. The Niger Delta is notorious for violence and gangs are often used as security forces by oil firms to prevent terrorist attacks, hijackings and assaults on oil installations. The region has become unstable, with Nigeria's military launching fierce attacks on villages to flush out suspected terrorists, but this has led to the displacement of thousands of people.

The Amnesty report lays the blame for the region's intractable problems on the oil industry. "Decades of pollution and environmental damage, caused by the oil industry, have resulted in violations of the right to an adequate standard of living, including food and water, violations of the right to gain a living through work and violations of the right to health," it says.

"A lack of accountability and the inability of those affected to access justice or receive adequate reparations and remedies, has perpetuated the context of human rights violations and encouraged them to occur again and again. So long as impunity for abuses of the environment and human rights remains entrenched, so too will the poverty and conflict that has scarred the Niger Delta."

Shell, which trades in Nigeria through the Shell Petroleum Development Company – a consortium which also includes the Nigerian government, Total and Agip – disputes much of the Amnesty report. It argues: "About 85% of the pollution from our operations comes from attacks and sabotage that also puts our staff's lives and human rights at risk."

Amnesty says oil firms treat communities as a "risk" instead of as stakeholders.