Articles by Jess Worth

1-30 April: Corporate AGM Season.

Jess Worth on Canada’s tar sands, among the most polluting projects in the world, the EU’s move to restrict imports of tar sands oil, and her campaigning on this issue

6th round of Canada-EU trade negotiations, Brussels: 16-21 January

The occupation of Oxford University is an example of the extraordinary rebellion against public spending cuts that’s growing in the UK today.

Yesterday’s student protest was a glorious act of rebellion - so why isn’t the National Union of Students supporting it?

500 activists blockaded a major oil refinery on Saturday, stopping the flow of oil to London. Watch this beautiful film of the Crude Awakening. 

The new-look New Internationalist is back from the printer so co-editor Jess Worth can finally unveil some of the changes we’ve made to the magazine…

Ecuador gives us something to celebrate as it finally sets up a fund to leave the oil in the ground.

Jess Worth looks at how activists in Britain are broadening the climate change debate.

West Papuan independence leader Benny Wenda asks for support as the situation in his occupied country worsens

BP was under fire at its AGM for its tar sands investments - Jess Worth was there

The international campaign to shut down the tar sands is shaping up to be an iconic battle, reports Jess Worth.

Ecuador’s President seems to have pulled the plug on the plan to keep oil underground - help change his mind!

As the Copenhagen climate talks went into meltdown, Jess Worth was there to witness the carnage first hand.

Hundreds marched out of climate talks on Wednesday to join Reclaim Power protest - but police responded with violence

Today’s protests rocked the summit: as the UN tries to silence opposition, our voices just get louder

Yesterday I took part in an action to expose the way Canada’s blocking the climate talks so they can keep extracting oil from the Tar Sands

Repression on the streets and deadlock in the talks: Copenhagen is not looking good.

Voices for climate justice are being ignored in Copenhagen, prompting walk-outs and mass protests

Jess Worth interviews one of the 968 protesters detained for hours by the police in inhumane conditions during a peaceful climate march through Copenhagen 

On Friday Jess Worth met Bolivia’s climate negotiator, and got her perspective on the Copenhagen talks

Yesterday’s climate march was amazing, but the detention and mistreatment of 900 of my fellow protesters is unbelievable.

Jess Worth turns up at the Copenhagen climate summit, tunes in, freaks out, then starts to get a grip. 

The Copenhagen climate talks have only just begun, but already there’s evidence that an unjust deal favouring industrialized countries is surreptitiously being struck.

Will the Copenhagen conference deliver effective action on climate change? Not a chance, argues Jess Worth. So what’s the alternative?

Who’s the biggest corporate villain in Copenhagen? You decide!

The Copenhagen climate talks are upon us, and the New Internationalist is there, reporting on the drama, issues and personalities behind the headlines.

What’s your verdict on Ecuador’s attempts to persuade the international community to pay to keep its oil in the ground?

Canadian First Nations internationalize their struggle against the most destructive project on earth

Protesters have just occupied my local power station. I find out who, why and how.

Last night, I had a half hour tete-a-tete with the head of BP UK. He said some extraordinary things…

With three wins in less than a week, UK climate campaigners are experiencing unfamiliar sensations

Climate activists are celebrating as plans to build a coal power station in the UK are scuppered.

Tales from the frontline of the Vestas wind-turbine factory occupation

Workers are occupying the UK’s only wind turbine factory, on the Isle of Wight. They need our support.

The Arctic is changing dramatically. Jess Worth finds out what it means for the people who live there.

Jess Worth talks about the NI magazine on the Arctic with Climate Radio.

Jess Worth meets two indigenous activists battling Big Oil’s dirty tricks.

What does the future hold? Jess Worth learns from five leading figures.

Could countries come to blows over the North’s resources? Professor Michael Byers explains.

Reports are filtering through of violence and death in the Peruvian Amazon as indigenous peoples resist the destruction of their homelands for resource extraction. What’s really going on?

Indigenous people aren’t just at the sharp end of climate change, they are pioneering the solutions. We should be listening to them.

The shocking impacts of our fossil fuel addiction on indigenous people are not always what you expect, writes Jess Worth.

The police brutality I witnessed at the G20 climate camp was shocking, but it won’t stop us, writes Jess Worth.

Mobilizations are nothing new - but they are now more relevant and necessary than ever.

‘Spectacular action’ hitting the heart of London’s financial district is planned for the day the G20 leaders touch down.

Cheers for the Ecuadorian Government, which has extended its deadline for saving the Yasuni rainforest, but boos to their new plan, which will turn it into a giant carbon offset.

Stopping climate change will involve reversing some fundamental injustices, argues Jess Worth.

You can play your part in the global movement for climate justice by getting involved in local and national campaigns wherever you are. Here are a few tips for taking effective climate action.

Climate change is causing human suffering all over the world and it’s the poorest of the poor who are going to be worst hit.

Is today’s blockade of Stansted airport runway by protestors what the Climate Minister was hoping for when he called for a ‘mass movement’?

Photos and a report on everything that’s happened during the Yasuni campaign launch this week.

Campaigners take to the canvas to show solidarity

Since we published the ‘Viva Yasuní: Life vs Big Oil’ magazine two
months ago, the NI has done something we haven’t done for a very long
time. We have thrown ourselves head-first into running a campaign.

A quick despatch from this year’s camp for climate action. We’re in a beautiful meadow in Kent, with just a few green fields between us and Kingsnorth power station’s belching chimneys. Energy giant E.ON wants to build the first new coal-fired power station in 30 years to replace it. We’re here to stop them, and on Saturday we plan to shut the power station down en masse.

‘You did WHAT?’ The words rang down the telephone line after I told my Mum what I’d been caught doing last weekend.

Will the world ever muster the momentum to ban nuclear weapons? Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has decided to have a jolly good stab at it.

So Shell’s finally been given its marching orders by the Nigerian Government, after many bloody years of pollution, repression and conflict with local communities.

With nuclear weapons multiplying again, now is the time to seize the moment and ban them, argues Jess Worth.

Two Czech activists have been on hunger strike since May 13, in protest at their government’s intention to host part of the US’s ‘Son of Star Wars’ missile defence system. One of the two, Jan Bednář, was taken to hospital yesterday with liver failure. Despite being in critical condition, he says he cannot stop his strike.

What were you doing a decade ago? I was dressed as an international banker, dragging a gang of sackcloth-wearing slaves through the streets of Birmingham, occasionally stopping to whip them and demand my money back. Not for fun, you understand (though it was, rather – apart from the fact that my bowler hat itched and my moustache was melting in the sunshine.) We were doing it because the G8 leaders were meeting there, and we were part of the Jubilee 2000 campaign to cancel ‘third world’ debt.

As I write this, a huge, beautiful old sycamore tree is being unceremoniously chain-sawed to the ground in Oxford city centre. Why? To make way for a monstrous gleaming new shopping centre so that, according to the Council, ‘our retail and city centre economy can be viable into the future.’

Should we be persuaded by the clean green claims of big business? Jess Worth thinks not.

400 years of controversy and confrontation.

What will it take to roll back corporate power? Jess Worth considers the options.

I’m just putting the finishing touches onto the next issue of the NI – ‘Corporate Responsibility Unmasked’. It investigates the current craze for multinationals to project images of themselves as caring, sharing, green and clean. Unsurprisingly, I’ve come to the conclusion that when you peel away the spray-on conscience, big business is just as power-hungry and profit-obsessed as ever.

Britain’s Camp for Climate Action inspires the world.

When I spent time earlier this year in a desolate refugee camp in Kenya, I was given one clear message by many of the Darfurian refugees I met there: ‘Tell the international community to end the bloodshed in Darfur!’ Today is the fourth international Day for Darfur. So I felt that the very least I could do was to join a couple of thousand others outside the Sudanese Embassy in London, to march to Downing Street and demand action. Exactly what that action should be, however, proved controversial…

Facts, timeline and map

How to take action.

Jess Worth encounters a community that’s demanding answers.

Funny Weather by Kate Evans

The World Social Forum is a good place to be if you want to get a handle on the biggest issues that grassroots activists are working on, that communities and movements are resisting, and that we all need to take notice of. This year, the four that really stood out for me are (in no particular order, and making no attempt to be exhaustive, please add your own!):

It seemed strange that amongst the hundreds of organisations’ stalls ringing the inner circle of the World Social Forum stadium in Nairobi there were only two that served food. At eye-watering prices. All the other officially-registered, slightly more reasonably-priced food vendors, who’d paid to be there, had been firmly placed outside the gates in the so-called ‘food court’ which I didn’t even find til the second day, given the total lack of anything resembling signs.

As we arrived this morning at the stadium where the World Social Forum is taking place, the traffic had come to a standstill. Which is pretty normal for Nairobi. But as we got out of the car to walk the final distance it became clear that this was no ordinary gridlock. A noisy group from the Nairobi slums had decided to step up their campaign to force the WSF organisers into opening the event to any poor Kenyans who wanted to participate. They were marching up the road, singing, dancing and chanting ‘Everything free! Everything free!’ They had been up all night planning, and had set off before dawn in order to get here by 9am.

‘All hail McDonald’s! Marvel at its miraculous transformation of rainforests into obese children!’ thundered the ‘Rev E. Littlehelps’ as, watched by a crowd of amused and bemused shoppers, he dropped to his knees to worship the golden arches. ‘Oy mate, what are you doing?’ shouted an inquisitive teenager, trying to work out exactly how best to take the piss out of the Rev and his faithful followers, the iPostles.

Ethical consumerism may be all the rage, but it won’t save the planet, argues Jess Worth.

You can eliminate AIDS in Africa using an American Express credit card according to Product (RED)’s Tamsin Smith and Sheila Roche. Not everyone is convinced.

I have just returned from Megawatt Valley, where I joined a small, disciplined and determined tribe of freedom fighters, led by children into battle against the mighty Drax The Destroyer. No, honestly.