Biofools: pumps disabled/clowns nicked, Edinburgh; banner drop, Glasgow; demos in Brighton/Bristol/London; Belgian blockade

April 15, 2008
From today, all petrol fore­courts will be required by law to sell only fuel which is blend­ed with 2.5% agro­fu­el. The answer to cli­mate chaos you ask? Hard­ly. Cor­po­ra­tions like Tesco are already jump­ing on the new “green” band­wag­on, speak­ing lit­tle of the greater emis­sions, dis­place­ment, pover­ty and hunger that will be left in its path.

Peo­ple from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide and Espa­cio Bris­tol-Colom­bia were joined by oth­ers to inform the pub­lic about this issue at Tesco in East­ville this after­noon. There was some inter­est in the issue from a num­ber of passers­by who were sur­prised that such a big change had been vir­tu­al­ly unspo­ken about, but there’s lit­tle that con­sumers can do to avoid buy­ing the prod­uct. The only answer to the ener­gy cri­sis is a big shift in the way in which we live, trav­el and eat.

http://www.risingtide.org.uk

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Bio­fu­els pro­test­ers dis­able fuel pumps

Agro-fuels pro­test­ers dis­abled the fuel pumps of two BP fill­ing sta­tions ear­ly this morn­ing in oppo­si­tion to manda­to­ry blend­ing of bio­fu­els into petrol and diesel. Pro­test­ers argue that bio­fu­els will wors­en cli­mate change, and cause food short­ages.
Pro­test­ers have tak­en this action in Edin­burgh as part of a nation­al day of action against bio­fu­els — April Bio­fools day — coin­cid­ing with the Renew­able Trans­port Fuel Oblig­a­tion’s (RTFO) com­ing into force, mak­ing it a legal require­ment to mix 2.5% bio­fu­els into all petrol and diesel.

BP was tar­get­ed since it is a major investor in bio­fu­els.

Bio­fu­els are more appro­pri­ate­ly called agro­fu­els, as far from being con­nect­ed to nat­ur­al, sus­tain­able life they are made from crops grown on unsus­tain­able mono­cul­ture plan­ta­tions.

Far from being a green solu­tion to green­house gas emis­sions, agro­fu­els dri­ve cli­mate change. Increased use of agro­fu­els has been pro­mot­ed by gov­ern­ments as a pos­si­ble way of decreas­ing green­house gas emis­sions from trans­port. How­ev­er, there is evi­dence that the process of pro­duc­ing agro­fu­els huge­ly increas­es green­house gas emis­sions when defor­esta­tion, peat­land destruc­tion and nitro­gen fer­tilis­er-use are tak­en into account.

The pro­duc­tion of agro­fu­els is caus­ing large-scale defor­esta­tion which is like­ly to lead to a tip­ping point of irre­versible rapid destruc­tion of forests, which could mean the release of as much as 120 bil­lion tonnes of CO2. Sim­i­lar­ly, the expan­sion of palm oil pro­duc­tion for agro­fu­els is lead­ing to an accel­er­a­tion of peat drain­ing, which is like­ly over­all to mean the release of 40 mil­lion tonnes of CO2. In addi­tion, increased large-scale agri­cul­ture means increased use of fer­tilz­ers which mean the release of large amounts of nitrous oxide, a green­house gas near­ly 300 times more potent than car­bon diox­ide.

Agro­fu­els are also a major threat to food sup­plies and food sov­er­eign­ty. Increased demand for agro­fu­el crops is putting pres­sure on food prices, push­ing more and more peo­ple below the bread­line.

Agro­fu­el crops are being grown on mono­cul­ture plan­ta­tions. The land for these is often vio­lent­ly seized by gov­ern­ments and cor­po­ra­tions from the peo­ple who live and work on it. Peo­ple dis­placed are forced to either go to join the grow­ing num­bers of peo­ple liv­ing in pover­ty on urban periph­eries or, as hap­pened in the 1970s, set­tle in a pre­vi­ous­ly unin­hab­it­ed area of rain­for­est, caus­ing fur­ther eco­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion to add to that already caused by the plan­ta­tions them­selves.

Agro­fu­els are being pur­sued by West­ern gov­ern­ments because they offer a non-Mid­dle East­ern fuel source. This is unre­lat­ed to the need to com­bat cli­mate change, and is instead based on main­tain­ing neo-impe­ri­al­ist pow­er.

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Loth­i­an and Bor­ders Police Harass a Peace­ful Protest

Five mem­bers of the Edin­burgh Clown Army (1) were detained for ques­tion­ing this after­noon at a peace­ful and enter­tain­ing bio­fu­els protest in Bruntsfield(2). They have since been arrest­ed and charged with a breach of the peace, despite main­tain­ing a friend­ly atmos­phere.

Eye-wit­ness­es state that the bio­fu­els demon­stra­tion was peace­ful, friend­ly and par­ty-like atmos­phere.

Wit­ness­es also state that the Clowns were friend­ly and enter­tain­ing, cre­at­ing a com­i­cal and amus­ing ambiance for the protest.

Wit­ness­es say that the Clowns gave no grounds for the police to charge them with a breach of the peace.

Police moved in in large num­bers, sur­round­ing the Clowns, filmed them, and took them one by one into the back of a police van.

They were tak­en to St Leonards Police Sta­tion for ques­tion­ing, at which point they were charged with a breach of the peace.

The protest was part of the bio­fu­els day of action, and took place at the BP garage in the Brunts­field area of Edin­burgh.

Peo­ple who attend­ed the demon­stra­tion are shocked and angered by the treat­ment the Clowns have received from the police.

This lat­est move from the police is part of an ongo­ing cam­paign of harass­ing peace­ful demon­stra­tors over the last six months. Three envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers were detained for ques­tion­ing at 7.30 in the morn­ing last month, includ­ing one of the Clowns who were tar­get­ed by the police on Tues­day.

They are due in court tomor­row, and the friends and rel­a­tives of those arrest­ed will be turn­ing up to sup­port them.

Friends and rel­a­tives of those Clowns who were arrest­ed urge the media to pro­vide the pic­tures and videos that will help prove that they have been wrong­ful­ly arrest­ed.

Notes:

(1) A com­i­cal and enter­tain­ing activist group that use humour and ridicule to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clandestine_Insurgent_Rebel_Clown_Army
(2) The protest was called by Bio­fu­els Watch to raise aware­ness about the neg­a­tive impacts this fuel source has: call­ing for a an EU mora­to­ri­um on agro­fu­els from large-scale mono­cul­tures. Agroen­er­gy mono­cul­tures are linked to accel­er­at­ed cli­mate change, defor­esta­tion, the impov­er­ish­ment and dis­pos­ses­sion of local com­mu­ni­ties, bio-diver­si­ty loss­es, human rights abus­es, water and soil degra­da­tion, loss of food sov­er­eign­ty and food secu­ri­ty. www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/

Press Con­tact: Alex Cabb
Tele­phone: 07858723742

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Bio­fu­el ban­ner­drop in Glas­gow

Pro­test­ers against bio­fu­els dropped a ban­ner at Char­ing Cross today, to draw atten­tion to the use of food to make petrol.

Bio­fu­els are respon­si­ble for con­tribut­ing to CO2 emis­sions, clear­ing rain­for­est and dis­plac­ing sub­sis­tence farm­ers, and lead to high­er food prices, caus­ing riots in Haiti and many oth­er parts of the world.

Turn­ing food into fuel for cars is burn­ing food which the world needs to feed its pop­u­la­tion, yet today a new law came into force that petrol must con­tain 2.5% bio­fu­el, with this per­cent­age ris­ing over years. Hun­gry peo­ple are being sac­ri­ficed on the altar of the holy auto­mo­bile.

www.biofuelwatch.org.uk

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Brighton Bio­fools Day Protest

A group of bio­fu­el activists made a colour­ful ban­ner and fly­er tour of Brighton city cen­tre and Sus­sex Uni­ver­si­ty on Tues­day rais­ing aware­ness around a new law which came into affect as of yes­ter­day. The RTFO or “Renew­able Trans­port Fuel Oblig­a­tion” has man­dat­ed 2.5% bio­fu­els at British fuel pumps from April 15th, and there­by huge­ly increased UK con­sump­tion of bio­fu­els.

Demon­stra­tion against the RTFO, April 15th

Amongst such head­lines over the last fort­night as “Food short­ages threat­en to become the biggest cri­sis of the 21st cen­tu­ry” the U.K. gov­ern­ment has nev­er­the­less con­ced­ed to EU plans to man­date mas­sive amounts of bio­fu­els into petrol and diesel across Europe. Envi­ron­men­tal­ists have warned for years that these EU tar­gets will wreak hav­oc on the cli­mate and food sup­plies, and eco-sys­tems and peo­ple in the glob­al South. These con­cerns are now echoed by senior sci­en­tists and pol­i­cy mak­ers. EU tar­gets are set to increase to 10% by 2020.

Ali­son Free­man chair of the Envi­ron­men­tal Soci­ety at Sus­sex Uni­ver­si­ty stat­ed, “Our pri­ma­ry con­cern is to break the illu­sion the gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate sec­tor is prop­a­gat­ing of these fuels as “renew­able”, “green” and “bio” which delib­er­ate­ly obfus­cates the issue for the gen­er­al pub­lic. Our mes­sage is sim­ple: bio­fu­els kill. The cur­rent system’s unyield­ing hunger to burn nature and human­i­tar­i­an recours­es in the engine of the cap­i­tal­ist machine will pull us all over the edge! We must stop West­ern economies inter­nal­is­ing these fuels before it is too late”.

The Brighton bio­fu­el protest was part of nation­al reac­tion, with groups protest­ing across the coun­try includ­ing Aberdeen, Bris­tol, Chel­tenham, Edin­burgh, Leeds, Man­ches­ter, Not­ting­ham, Nor­which and hun­dreds out­side Down­ing Street in Lon­don. On the 6th of August a mass nation­al action against agro­fu­els will take place as part of this year Cli­mate Camp- see http://climatecamp.org.uk/agrofuels.php to get up date infor­ma­tion.

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Protests to UK Prime Min­is­ter — Scrap Bio­fu­el Tar­gets / Scrap RTFO

Hun­dreds of peo­ple in Lon­don and groups across the UK held protests against the intro­duc­tion of manda­to­ry bio­fu­el blend­ing on April Bio­fools Day. A protest was held lat­er out­side Down­ing Street, with speak­ers from Colom­bia, Cam­paign against Cli­mate Change, Friends of the Earth, Glob­al For­est Coali­tion, GM Freeze and Bio­fu­el­watch con­demn­ing the government’s deci­sion to go ahead with their bio­fu­el pol­i­cy against over­whelm­ing evi­dence of cat­a­stroph­ic impacts on cli­mate, com­mu­ni­ties, bio­di­ver­si­ty and food secu­ri­ty.

Phil Thorn­hill of Cam­paign against Cli­mate Change and Andrew Boswell of Bio­fu­el­watch, in a joint state­ment, said “The RTFO or “Renew­able Trans­port Fuel Oblig­a­tion” will man­date 2.5% bio­fu­els at British fuel pumps from April 15th, and there­by huge­ly increase UK con­sump­tion of bio­fu­els. The gov­ern­ment is demon­strat­ing a per­verse obsti­na­cy in plough­ing ahead with this despite the over­whelm­ing sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that far from help­ing in the strug­gle to con­trol cli­mate change, bio­fu­els will accel­er­ate cli­mate change, and are a major cause of an emerg­ing glob­al food cri­sis that is cre­at­ing star­va­tion and food riots in sev­er­al coun­tries.”

Play the Bio­fu­el song on Glob­al Food Cri­sis at: http://www.biofuelsong.com/music

A lunchtime protest was held out­side the Depart­ment for Trans­port, Tues­day April 15th, April Bio­fools Day. Oth­er protests were held out­side the con­stituen­cy offices of Ruth Kel­ly, Sec­re­tary of State for Trans­port, and Hilary Benn, Sec­re­tary of State for the Envi­ron­ment, and at BP and Tesco fuel sta­tions. BP and Tesco are two of the com­pa­nies with sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment in bio­fu­els from large-scale mono­cul­tures, and which have been strong­ly lob­by­ing for manda­to­ry bio­fu­el blend­ing.

“The UK has cho­sen to ignore a vast moun­tain of evi­dence that bio­fu­els are con­tribut­ing to hunger, cli­mate change, defor­esta­tion and human rights abus­es,” said Dr. Rachel Smolk­er, main author of “The Real Cost of Agro­fu­els.” She con­tin­ued, “Per­haps they are count­ing on new tech­nolo­gies using cel­lu­lose from wood and grass­es, but these won’t side­step the prob­lems either. What­ev­er feed­stocks are used will result in fur­ther expan­sion of indus­tri­al mono­cul­tures, pos­si­bly includ­ing Genet­i­cal­ly Engi­neered trees. The bot­tom line is that there is a lim­it­ed amount of land avail­able, a large pop­u­la­tion to feed and a des­per­ate need to pre­serve remain­ing bio­di­verse ecosys­tems. Instead of focus­ing on improv­ing effi­cien­cy and reduc­ing con­sump­tion, the UK is man­dat­ing fur­ther destruc­tion.”

Almuth Ern­st­ing from Bio­fu­el­watch adds: “Protests against the agro­fu­el indus­try and this government’s bio­fu­el poli­cies will not end today. The gov­ern­ment is talk­ing about vague ‘sus­tain­abil­i­ty stan­dards’, whilst agro­fu­els are caus­ing ever greater harm to the cli­mate, to forests and oth­er ecosys­tems, to com­mu­ni­ties in the glob­al South, to bio­di­ver­si­ty world­wide, and to food sov­er­eign­ty and food secu­ri­ty. We need a mora­to­ri­um on all agro­fu­el incen­tives and tar­gets to pre­vent those cat­a­stroph­ic impacts.”

On 8th April, 29 UK and inter­na­tion­al groups wrote to the UK gov­ern­ment, call­ing for an agro­fu­el mora­to­ri­um and demand­ing a sus­pen­sion of the Renew­able Trans­port Fuel Oblig­a­tion, and oppo­si­tion to new EU bio­fu­el tar­gets – both the pro­posed 10% bio­fu­el tar­get in the Renew­able Ener­gy Direc­tive, and the inclu­sion of bio­fu­els in the draft new Fuel Qual­i­ty Direc­tive. Around 200 organ­i­sa­tions from North and South have signed a call for an EU mora­to­ri­um on agro­fu­els from large-scale mono­cul­tures, and there are sep­a­rate calls for a US agro­fu­el mora­to­ri­um and for an African agro­fu­el mora­to­ri­um, as well as grow­ing num­ber of dec­la­ra­tions from the South­ern groups that are deeply con­cerned about the impacts which bio­fu­el poli­cies in Europe, includ­ing in the UK, are hav­ing on their com­mu­ni­ties, food sov­er­eign­ty and envi­ron­ment.

Notes:

1. For a copy of the joint NGO let­ter to the UK gov­ern­ment, see: http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/files/rtfo_letter.pdf

2. For copies of the mora­to­ri­um calls and the oth­er dec­la­ra­tions, see
http://www.econexus.info/biofuels.html
http://www.grain.org/agrofuels/?moratoriumen
http://ga3.org/campaign/agrofuelsmoratorium
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/declarations.php

3. Some oth­er protests

Bolton (video):
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1213934526/bctid1504464364

Edin­burgh:
http://scotland.indymedia.org/newswire/display/5536/index.php
http://rinf.com/alt-news/activism/police-harass-a-peaceful-protest/2969/
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/edinburgh/Protest-clowns-arrested-after-Capital.3985990.jp
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396710.html

Brighton:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396734.html

Bris­tol:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396663.html

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Bio­fools day: Cargill fac­to­ry blocked in Ghent (Bel­gium)

17.04.2008
This morn­ing thir­ty activist of “agro­cri­sis” blocked the gates of the Cargill fac­to­ry in Ghent (Bel­gium). Sev­er­al activist are chained to the main gate block­ing entrance to trucks.

Accord­ing to An Maeyens, agro­cri­sis spokesper­son, this actions means a one day block from tran­sit. but above all a sup­port to the strug­gle of thou­sands of small scale farm­ers, who are depraved of land and income and forced to migrate to slums near big cities, liv­ing in pover­ty, all because of the activ­i­ties of big com­pa­nies such as Cargill in their coun­try,

UPDATE: cargill in the port of Ghent is com­plete­ly blocked, police agreed not to inter­vene.

first pic­tures on

ovl.indymedia.org

More info & pho­tos at http://www.aseed.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=552&Itemid=1

Video:

We’ve put the vide­o­re­port in FIVE lan­guages on two sites. The choice is yours. This is a must see…

Poli­tube:

Fran­cais: http://www.politube.org/show/647
Ned­er­lands: http://www.politube.org/show/645
Eng­lish: http://www.politube.org/show/642
Espag­nol: http://www.politube.org/show/648
Deutsch: http://www.politube.org/show/663

Youtube:

Fran­cais: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vyMMfjFQOeY
Ned­er­lands: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yFyA2H-8S5s
Eng­lish: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XYq8J2N2JaA
Espag­nol: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0bfDBb10IiI
Deutsch: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qt4eC3x0Q5o