Western Europe

Hi, my name's Norman Philip and I come from the town of Grangemouth in Scotland which is right next to BP Grangemouth one of the biggest oil refineries in Europe. Climate change has a number of dimensions but the dimension I'm concerned about is the people that have to live next to the fenceline. The people who have daily disturbance by noise and transport of the oil industry. And they don't see the benefits necessarily that the global corporations like BP are benefiting from at the community's expense. I think as oil becomes more and more scarce, the communities from where I come from will suffer more. Because the industry that's been built up to service the oil industry has a number of contaminated sites which the big companies will move away from and it'll be the community that will left to clear up these sites. BP in Grangemouth has already sold off their petroleum to a smaller company. And my fear is that in the next generation there will be no oil production in the town that I come from and we'll be left with an industrial wasteland.

Hi I am Les. I live nearby the Grangemouth refinery so I live close to the petro-chemical industry. I've been an environmentalist for a few years now. And although I can say that yes I am genuinely concerned about the climate change issue, I'm even more concerned by the way that environmental groups and non -governmental organisations have become focused on it to such an extent that they don't really talk about anything else. I've noticed that if there's ever a problem it immediately becomes associated with climate change. As a sign of climate change. For instance if there's a flooding, that's put down to climate change resulting in extra rain. It's not attributed to bad flood management practices. I find it's difficult to have any decent debate on general environmental problems like habitat destruction, because there's so much focus put on climate change issues. Saying that “we've got to get climate change under control otherwise habitat conservation is a useless exercise
Filed under:

My name's Fiona, Scottish as you can tell by my accent. I live next to a petro-chemical industries. I have depression. If anyone knows anything about mental health, it affects one in four Scottish people sometime in their lives. It affects all your senses. It's very uncomfortable to live with such things. I'd just like you to take a few minutes to think of what it's like for people like myself who are on the ground level. Who have to live their lives 24/7 in such conditions. We have to eat, breathe, sleep, live, have our children, look after our grandmothers in this kind of situation. We've got constant pollution in our lungs at all times. Our children are playing in these areas. They're sleeping in all this rubbish that comes out of the plants. It really is very uncomfortable and to be honest a little bit unfair. You can all walk away to your nice areas and we're stuck with it on our very doorsteps, literally our doorsteps. The pollution is smelly, very uncomfortable. You've got to have dark curtains at night time because you can't block out the light from light pollution. You've got smells. And there's nothing you can do. You can put as much air freshener as you want into your sitting room but you just can not get rid of the smell. You're stuck with it. So I'd just like you to take a few moments to yourselves, whether it be now or sometime in the future when you're thinking about your carbon trade and all your great ideas. Just think of the people on the ground who have to eat, sleep and breathe pollution of three different types. Thank you for your time.

Hi. I'm Diane Patrick who lives in Grangemouth, a volunteer member of the Kersiebank project. The BP lights up my bedroom. I really don't have to put lights on. It's given my small boy asthma.