Biofuels protest in Aberdeen

Aberdeen Cam­paign Against Cli­mate Change held a protest inside the audi­to­ri­um of the All Ener­gy con­fer­ence in Aberdeen on Wednes­day 23rd May. They unfurled anti-bio­fu­els ban­ners and inter­rupt­ed a speech by US Ambas­sador to the UK, Robert Tut­tle, in which he was prais­ing the efforts of the US to fight cli­mate change and was claim­ing that bio­fu­els are part of the solu­tion.

Aberdeen Cam­paign Against Cli­mate Change held a protest inside the audi­to­ri­um of the All Ener­gy con­fer­ence in Aberdeen on Wednes­day 23rd May. They unfurled anti-bio­fu­els ban­ners and inter­rupt­ed a speech by US Ambas­sador to the UK, Robert Tut­tle, in which he was prais­ing the efforts of the US to fight cli­mate change and was claim­ing that bio­fu­els are part of the solu­tion.

The pro­tes­tors left peace­ful­ly when asked and con­tin­ued their protest out­side the show venue, Aberdeen Exhi­bi­tion and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.

The All Ener­gy con­fer­ence also pro­mot­ed wind, solar and marine ener­gy sources as part of the solu­tion to cli­mate change. The protest was held to make sure that peo­ple dis­tin­guish between these clean, tru­ly renew­able sources of ener­gy on the one hand and bio­fu­els from large-scale mono­cul­tures on the oth­er.

The Aberdeen edi­tion of the Press and Jour­nal report­ed the protest well (see pic­ture at
http://3276.e‑printphoto.co.uk/ajl/index.cfm?z=z&y=y&p_id=5176411&c_id=8
401&action=view).

Back­ground:
The US gov­ern­ment have been sab­o­tag­ing progress at inter­na­tion­al cli­mate con­fer­ences for years and their emis­sions con­tin­ue to rise steeply. Large-scale bio­fu­els do not mit­i­gate glob­al warm­ing but make it hap­pen even faster, as rain­forests and oth­er ecosys­tems are rapid­ly being destroyed to make way for vast mono­cul­tures to grow crops for cars in rich nations. Bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion has already been respon­si­ble for glob­al food price ris­es which have been the tar­get of recent riots in Mex­i­co. Peo­ple in the glob­al South are suf­fer­ing a dou­ble wham­my, first­ly as they are suf­fer­ing most from severe weath­er events caused by exces­sive green house gas emis­sions from rich coun­tries and now by hav­ing their liveli­hoods destroyed by mas­sive bio­fu­els mono­cul­tures which are imposed by rich coun­tries try­ing to solve their ener­gy prob­lems. Peo­ple are being forcibly removed from their bio­di­verse farms and are suf­fer­ing health prob­lems from agri­cul­tur­al chem­i­cals. Both inten­sive agri­cul­ture and defor­esta­tion are major con­trib­u­tors to glob­al warm­ing and bio­fu­els threat­en to great­ly increase those emis­sions.

For more info on bio­fu­els see www.biofuelwatch.org.uk.

aberdeen_climatechange@yahoo.co.uk
http://climatechangecampaign.blogspot.com