‘Spring into Action’ targets Nottingham’s climate criminals

A day of action against Not­ting­ham’s cli­mate crim­i­nals has been called for Tues­day 10th April. It forms part of ‘Spring into Action,’ a week of cli­mate change focused events tak­ing place in venues across the city show­cas­ing prac­ti­cal solu­tions to cli­mate change.

A day of action against Not­ting­ham’s cli­mate crim­i­nals has been called for Tues­day 10th April. It forms part of ‘Spring into Action,’ a week of cli­mate change focused events tak­ing place in venues across the city show­cas­ing prac­ti­cal solu­tions to cli­mate change.

On Tues­day, expe­ri­enced cli­mate change cam­paign­ers and peo­ple inspired by attend­ing this week’s ‘Spring into Action’ events will be protest­ing at the site of Not­ting­ham’s major cli­mate crim­i­nals.

James Slater, organ­is­er ‘Spring into Action’, says ‘Tak­ing action on cli­mate change is about more than just mak­ing changes in your own life. It is about con­fronting the major play­ers in green­house gas pro­duc­tion. Its about resist­ing those who are cur­rent­ly prof­it­ing from the pol­lu­tion of our atmos­phere and the destruc­tion of life on earth.’

Major cli­mate crim­i­nals based in Not­ting­ham that could find them­selves tar­get­ed include:

East Mid­lands Air­port, which has plans to increase its num­ber of pas­sen­gers by three times by 2030, and its freight han­dling by even more than this (1). 2006 was already its busiest year on record (2). The gov­ern­ments cur­rent expan­sion pro­gramme for air­ports could wipe out all the good work it is putting in else­where to reduce car­bon emis­sions (3).

The M1, which is cur­rent­ly being widened to four lanes in both direc­tions along large sec­tions of its route. Expand­ing our road net­work is incom­pat­i­ble with try­ing to reduce car­bon emis­sions. Emis­sions from road trans­port are actu­al­ly increas­ing and cur­rent­ly con­sti­tute 18% of all UK green­house gas emis­sions (4).

Rat­cliffe on Soar Pow­er Sta­tion. In a time where we should be be reduc­ing our car­bon diox­ide emis­sions, we are get­ting more and more of our elec­tric­i­ty from coal, the dirt­i­est form of pow­er. Coal-fired pow­er sta­tions are the biggest C02 emit­ter per unit of elec­tric­i­ty pro­duced. Rat­cliffe on Soar is the sec­ond largest coal­fired pow­er­sta­tion in Britain (5).

East­croft Incin­er­a­tor, which burns most of Not­ting­ham’s waste, includ­ing recy­clable mate­ri­als. A recent local cam­paign suc­cess­ful­ly stopped the incin­er­a­tor from expand­ing, although the own­ers of the incin­er­a­tor have now lodged an appeal. Waste pol­i­cy has impor­tant impacts on cli­mate change, from, at one end, emis­sions sav­ings from waste pre­ven­tion and recy­cling, to pro­duc­tion of CO2 dur­ing incin­er­a­tion. In a recy­cling rate league table released by the Gov­ern­ment, Not­ting­ham City Coun­cil came an embar­rass­ing 339th out of 393 local author­i­ties, with a com­bined recy­cling and com­post­ing rate of just 18.6 per cent for 2004-05 (6).

For more infor­ma­tion on how to get involved come along to the cen­tral venue (JB Spray, Rus­sel St, Rad­ford), watch out for anoth­er announce­ment on Indy­media or call info phone 07765 217118 on Mon­day

Notes:
1) see http://www.eastmidlandsairport.com/cms/54/master-plan-2006.html
2) see http://www.eastmidlandsairport.com/cms/219/2006-airports-busiest-year-ever.html
3) see http://www.planestupid.com/index.php?location=reasons
4) see http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_environment/transport_report.pdf+transport+emissions
5) http://www.climatecalm.org/drupal/index.php?q=node/17
6) see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2007/01/359240.html

http://www.eastsideclimateaction.org.uk