Transition Black Isle is about helping Black Isle communities thrive in the face of Climate Change.  We run community markets, we support local food and drink producers, we help people grow more food, we encourage non-car travel, support energy saving and promote reduction of single use plastics  - and much more.  If we in the Black Isle work together to manage more of our own resources, we can thrive despite whatever climate change and the end of fossil fuels throws our way.

All of us will be affected, all of us can do something for our lives and our children's lives.  How can we help each other?

Campaign for ethical investment by Highland Council pension fund

TBI is supporting a joint campaign aimed at persuading Highland Council Pensions Committee to divest from around £160m of holdings in unethical investments, particularly in armaments and fossil fuels.  The campaign is led by groups supporting the Highland Charter for Responsible Investment (formulated after several years of research and campaigning by Highland Palestine on armaments investments); and a Friends of the Earth Scotland 'Fossil-Free Highlands' group focussed on investments in fossil fuels.

Council adopts non-committal 'amendment' in place of fossil fuels and armaments divestment motion

A meeting of Highland Council on 9 September adopted without a vote a non-committal 'amendment' put forward by Councillor Ben Thompson, chairman of the pensions Investment sub-committee, in opposition to a motion proposed by Scottish Green Party councillor Pippa Hadley, on behalf of the joint Fossil-Free Highlands / Highland Charter for Responsible Investment campaign, urging the Pensions Committee to divest from fossil fuels, armaments and other unethical investments.

More information, text of the amendment, and links

Two views on the run-up to COP26

Enough of the COP26 paralysis
Paul Mason in The Ecologist  12 April 2021

The biggest enemy, in the run up to COP26, is the atmosphere of vagueness and promise. We need to blow it away with facts and arguments.
.   .   .   .
While Boris Johnson cranks up the rhetoric - adding the word "green" to almost every conventional, carbon intensive policy initiative -  the actual amounts committed to climate change mitigation are puny: £12bn in the Spending Review for offshore wind; a further £12bn for a Green Investment Bank, with £15bn of "green gilt" debt issued. 

For comparison, Labour's 2019 manifesto committed the party to borrowing £250bn over ten years to invest in insulating 27 million homes, building 9,000 extra wind turbines and 22,000 football pitches worth of solar panels.

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What will it take to convince the world to take climate change seriously?
Catherine Brahic, Environment editor, The Economist  6 September 2021

What will it take to convince the world to take climate change seriously? There is no straight answer, and in any case it depends on who is meant by “the world”. For the sake of argument, let’s say: governments and businesses, in a measure great enough to reduce carbon emissions and meet the Paris agreement goals. With those assumptions it is fair to say that the question is still relevant. Human societies are pumping out ever-increasing volumes of greenhouse gases and there is a non-negligible chance that temperatures will rise by far more than was agreed at the 2015 UN Paris summit. 

A frequent follow-up is whether some kind of devastating extreme weather event would suddenly trigger a shift in momentum. History suggests not. Not so long ago, it was thought that hurricane Katrina would be precisely that event. Al Gore even put its image on the posters for “An Inconvenient Truth,” the documentary on climate change which he released in 2006. But the sad reality is that individual weather events, like many disasters (earthquakes, school shootings, police brutality), are soon forgotten by most, save those who experienced them directly. 

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