Direct actions by people from the Camp for Climate Action

Cli­mate activists at Lon­gan­net call for clo­sure date
6.08.2008
One-night mini Scot­tish camp out­side UK’s dirt­i­est pow­er sta­tion. SNP Gov­ern­ment urged to set ear­ly clo­sure date for plant and guar­an­tee green jobs for coal work­ers in the grow­ing renew­ables rev­o­lu­tion.

No New Coal bannerCli­mate activists at Lon­gan­net call for clo­sure date
6.08.2008
One-night mini Scot­tish camp out­side UK’s dirt­i­est pow­er sta­tion. SNP Gov­ern­ment urged to set ear­ly clo­sure date for plant and guar­an­tee green jobs for coal work­ers in the grow­ing renew­ables rev­o­lu­tion.

A group of cli­mate pro­tes­tors were at Lon­gan­net pow­er sta­tion in Fife this morn­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Camp for Cli­mate Action near to Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion in Eng­land.

Lon­gan­net coal plant, which pro­duces a quar­ter of Scot­land’s elec­tric­i­ty, pro­duces around 10 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide every year — rough­ly equiv­a­lent to the annu­al emis­sions of 2.5 mil­lion cars.

Eight sci­ences stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh pre­sent­ed Scot­tish Pow­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives with the recent respect­ed ‘Zero Car­bon Britain’ report from CAT.

Daniel Abra­hams, a physics stu­dent, told Scot­tish Pow­er, who run the plant:
‘Any talk of ‘clean coal’ or car­bon cap­ture is a total dis­trac­tion. We need to rad­i­cal­ly reduce emis­sions in less than a decade and we just don’t have the time to wait for unproven tech­nol­o­gy when we already have renew­able solu­tions ready to roll. Lon­gan­net must close by 2015.’

Sarah Hol­l­i­day, a chem­istry stu­dent from the Isle of Tiree said:
‘The SNP must urgent­ly fund a tran­si­tion deal for all those in the coal indus­try. All those employed in the car­bon sec­tor must be guar­an­teed green jobs in the renew­ables rev­o­lu­tion.’

Notes to edi­tors:

1. Lon­gan­net ranked as the UK’s dirt­i­est pow­er sta­tion in a 2007 WWF report:
http://assets.panda.org/downloads/european_dirty_thirty_may_2007.pdf

2. The Scot­tish Cli­mate Bill will bind Min­is­ters to a tar­get of an 80% in green­house gas­es by 2050. An 80% cut in car­bon diox­ide would mean total emis­sions for the whole nation of 10–13 mil­lion tonnes a year. Lon­gan­net pro­duces 10 mil­lion tonnes now.

3. Alex Salmond recent­ly described coal as a ‘fuel of the future’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7487184.stm

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Cli­mate Activists Shut Down South’s Biggest Bio­fu­el Base, Thur­rock
Vopak biofuel action 2Vopak biofuel action 4
Vopak biofuel action 5

7.08.2008
This morn­ing cli­mate activists from around the coun­try have shut down the South’s biggest agro­fu­el depot.

The cam­paign­ers, who say that agro­fu­els will cause run­away cli­mate change if left unchecked, have dropped a 35 foot ban­ner from the top of one of the site’s biggest oil con­tain­ers and are block­ing fuel lor­ries from leav­ing or enter­ing the base.

Dean Rivers, who is cur­rent­ly chained to the roof of the oil depot said: “com­pa­nies like Green­er­gy and Tescos who use Thur­rock are prof­i­teer­ing out of the rush to bio­fu­els caus­ing food price ris­es, hunger for mil­lions, ecosys­tem destruc­tion and accel­er­at­ed Cli­mate Change. These are crimes against human­i­ty and the earth from which we may nev­er recov­er.” The protest is cur­rent­ly stop­ping one truck from leav­ing the Thur­rock site every 90 sec­onds.

George Mon­biot, who is at the Cli­mate Camp said “far from being a solu­tion to Cli­mate Change, agro­fu­els are so dam­ag­ing they make petro­le­um look green. They threat­en both to accel­er­ate Cli­mate Change and to trig­ger a glob­al human­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ter. I’m delight­ed that this depot has been block­ad­ed and I hope it sends a strong sig­nal that agro­fu­els are a part of the prob­lem not of the solu­tion.”

Last month, it was revealed that the US had buried a report from the World Bank which shows that agro­fu­els are respon­si­ble for 75% of recent food price ris­es. Despite this, both Europe and the USA con­tin­ue to invest bil­lions into the fuels, which under UK and EU law con­tin­ue to make up 2.5% of the UK fuel mix at the pump.

Julia Brown­low, who is block­ing lor­ries from enter­ing or leav­ing the site said “Agro­fu­els are destroy­ing the very ecosys­tems which can sta­bilise the cli­mate — with the col­lapse of the Ama­zon pos­si­bly just a few years away I am left with no choice but to take action.”

The protest will con­tin­ue for the rest of the day.

NOTES TO EDITORS

Agro­fu­els are bio­fu­els derived from plant mate­r­i­al grown in exten­sive mono­cul­tures.

what hap­pened & bio­fu­els explained — audio/x‑wav 7.0M
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Anoth­er cli­mate camp action — Stu­dents Killed at Roy­al Bank of Scot­land’s HQ.
RBS die-in 2RBS die-in 17.08.2008
Fif­teen dead bod­ies are cur­rent­ly lying in a pool of oil block­ing the entrance to RBS Lon­don HQ at Liv­er­pool Street [1]. Stu­dents are stag­ing a ‘die-in’ block­ade to high­light the dev­as­tat­ing effects of cli­mate change. The pro­test­ers are demand­ing RBS stop fund­ing destruc­tive fos­sil fuel projects which will cre­ate cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe. The action is tak­ing place as part of the cli­mate camp and is co-ordi­nat­ed by the stu­dent action net­work PANDA [1].

A report released today by a coali­tion of envi­ron­men­tal NGOs [2] reveals that RBS is esti­mat­ed to have been involved in pro­vid­ing loans of over $20 bil­lion to coal-relat­ed com­pa­nies in the last two years – includ­ing the ener­gy com­pa­ny E.ON.

Head of Cli­mate Change Cam­paigns at Peo­ple & Plan­et, Bron­wen Thomas said

“Thou­sands of cli­mate change activists are cur­rent­ly gath­ered at the Cli­mate Camp in Kingsnorth to oppose E.ON’s plans to build the first coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in the coun­try for 33 years. Coal is the dirt­i­est fuel there is. Open­ing coal fired pow­er sta­tions is mad­ness — We should be stop­ping cli­mate change not mak­ing it worse”

PANDA stu­dent activist Alex Wood, 22, is cur­rent­ly chained to oth­er activists in front of RBS. He explained his rea­sons: “I’m risk­ing arrest today because RBS must take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the emis­sions caused by their invest­ments. Cli­mate change caus­es the death of 150, 000 peo­ple per year – each one of the fif­teen bod­ies lying out­side RBS rep­re­sents 10, 000 deaths. To stop this num­ber increas­ing RBS must act now.”

RBS, who refer to them­selves as ‘the oil and gas bank’ has also loaned mon­ey to com­pa­nies like Arch Coal, who are involved in the con­tro­ver­sial tech­nique of coal min­ing called Moun­tain Top Removal. This destroys the tops of entire moun­tains and pro­duces large quan­ti­ties of tox­ic sludge.

PHOTOS ON REQUEST: pandapress@hushmail.com

NOTES:

[1] RBS Lon­don HQ address is 250 Bish­ops­gate, Lon­don, EC2M 4NR

[2] PANDA is Peo­ple & Plan­et’s Asso­ci­at­ed Net­work for Direct Action. For more details see:
http://peopleandplanet.org/ditchdirtydevelopment

[3] The coali­tion of groups con­sists of Friends of the Earth Scot­land, Peo­ple & Plan­et, Plat­form, Bank­Track, Stop Cli­mate Chaos and Scot­tish Edu­ca­tion and Action for Devel­op­ment.

[4] For more info on the Cli­mate Camp vis­it www.climatecamp.org.uk

[5] For more info on the Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s financ­ing of fos­sil fuel extrac­tion see: www.peopleandplanet.org/ditchdirtydevelopment

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Plane Stu­pid leaves Camp for Cli­mate Action for protest at Gatwick
7.08.2008
Nine pro­tes­tors from the anti-avi­a­tion group ‘Plane Stu­pid’ have left the Kingsnorth Cli­mate Camp to mount a protest against short-haul flights from the near­by Gatwick Air­port. The nine cli­mate activists had been plan­ning to protest against the government’s plans to expand Kingsnorth coal fire pow­er sta­tion. How­ev­er con­tin­u­al police intim­i­da­tion and vio­lence forced them to leave the camp, choos­ing instead to protest against the pop­u­lar­i­ty of short-haul flights, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the Edin­burgh Fes­ti­val, from Gatwick air­port.

The nine activists arrived at the air­port at 7.50am. They then split into three groups. The first group scaled the wall next to the esca­la­tor above the train sta­tion, occu­py­ing the roof struc­ture and drop­ping a ban­ner: ‘SHORT-HAUL FLIGHT? LET THE TRAIN TAKE THE STRAIN.’ The sec­ond group mount­ed the mez­za­nine above the arrivals lounge, hand­cuffed them­selves to a rail­ing and dropped a ban­ner: ‘STOP SHORT-HAUL’. The third group, dressed as ‘infor­ma­tion points’, with t‑shirts ask­ing, ‘can I hin­der?, leaflet­ed the sur­prised crowd with infor­ma­tion about the eco­log­i­cal cost of avi­a­tion and the irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty of those who fly short-haul.

Lot­ti Rut­ter, one of those hand­cuffed to the rail­ing, said:

‘It’s ter­ri­fy­ing – we’re approach­ing a cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe yet the Depart­ment for Trans­port do absolute­ly noth­ing to pro­vide us with a low car­bon trans­port pol­i­cy – there are a total of 139 flights from Lon­don to Edin­burgh as opposed to just 22 trains. We’re here today to protest against short-haul flights. We’re well aware that a lot of peo­ple will be choos­ing to go to the Edin­burgh Fes­ti­val and we’re here to ask them to make the right deci­sion – to take the train. In a time of cli­mate cri­sis any­thing else is more than irre­spon­si­ble: it’s Plane Stu­pid.’

Gatwick flies 26 times dai­ly to Edin­burgh. The same route is cov­ered by a four hour train ride from Lon­don King’s Cross. How­ev­er there are only 22 trains per day. The route from Lon­don to Edin­burgh (by air) is also cov­ered by Heathrow (66 flights), Stanst­ed (31 flights), Luton (12 flights) and Lon­don City Air­port (4 flights).

The activists are present­ly at Gatwick con­tin­u­ing their protest, after which those not arrest­ed will return to the Cli­mate Camp to con­tin­ue their envi­ron­men­tal action.

http://www.planestupid.com

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World’s small­est cam­paign­ers scale Kingsnorth smoke­stack
Lego Kingsnorth occupation7.08.2008
E.ON’s repli­ca of the Kingsnorth coal-fired pow­er sta­tion has been occu­pied by one inch tall cli­mate change cam­paign­ers. The dra­ma unfold­ed at the Legoland park in Wind­sor – spon­sored by E.ON – where the Lego Kingsnorth is giv­en pride of place next to Big Ben and Canary Wharf.

The Lego cam­paign­ers struck as hun­dreds of peo­ple gath­er at this year’s Cli­mate Camp to protest the planned new coal plant at Kingsnorth in Kent.

The six cam­paign­ers appeared at the top of the con­struc­tion at around 11am this morn­ing, before unveil­ing a ban­ner say­ing STOP CLIMATE CHANGE down the length of the tow­er. Lego police are in atten­dance at the foot of the tow­er, along with a Lego police heli­copter.

E.ON proud­ly announced the con­struc­tion of Britain’s newest coal-fired sta­tion at Legoland in 2006. The Ger­man util­i­ty giant is Britain’s sin­gle biggest green­house gas pol­luter. The com­pa­ny is aim­ing to have Kingsnorth 2 built by 2012. Despite claims that the new plant will be more effi­cient, it is esti­mat­ed that it will emit 8.4 mil­lion tonnes of cli­mate chang­ing pol­lu­tants every year, com­pared to the 8.7 mil­lion tonnes the exist­ing plant releas­es annu­al­ly, and nowhere near the 80% reduc­tions need­ed to com­bat glob­al warm­ing.

Nei­ther the cam­paign­ers nor the police would com­ment, because they’re made of Lego and there­fore can’t talk.

legoactivist@googlemail.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/legoactivist

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Cli­mate Camp activists super­glue them­selves to RBS
8.08.2008
This morn­ing at 8.30 AM, activists from the Camp for Cli­mate Action super­glued them­selves to the front doors of the Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s Oil and Gas Divi­sion in Bish­ops­gate, Cen­tral Lon­don wield­ing a ban­ner read­ing “RBS: Cash­ing In On Coal”.

The fol­low­ing is tak­en from the Cam­p’s press release:

“Loca­tion: 199 Broadgate Court, Bish­op’s Gate, near Liv­er­pool Street sta­tion.

Roy­al Bank Of Scot­land Tar­get­ed By Cli­mate Camp Activists For The Sec­ond Day Run­ning

Activists from the Camp for Cli­mate Action have super­glued them­selves to the front doors of the Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s Oil and Gas Divi­sion in Cen­tral Lon­don [1]. Wield­ing a ban­ner read­ing “RBS: Cash­ing In On Coal”, the cam­paign­ers are stag­ing this protest to high­light the links between the finan­cial sec­tor, the fos­sil fuel indus­try, and dis­as­trous cli­mate change.

This action fol­lows the protest at RBS’s head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, when 15 stu­dents staged a “die-in” block­ade [2] to demand that the bank stop fund­ing fos­sil fuel projects includ­ing the pro­posed new coal pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth. Today’s action, which takes place as part of the cli­mate camp and involves mem­bers of the cli­mate action net­work Ris­ing Tide [3], will show the bank that this cam­paign pres­sure is not going to go away.

In 2007, projects financed by RBS were respon­si­ble for more emis­sions that the whole of Scot­land. Along with oth­er banks, RBS par­tic­i­pat­ed in financ­ing E.ON – the own­ers of Kingsnorth coal-fired pow­er sta­tion — $70 bil­lion over the course of 2007 [4]. RBS has financed com­pa­nies like Arch Coal, who are engag­ing in con­tro­ver­sial moun­tain top removal min­ing in the US [5], and are also financ­ing com­pa­nies like Dyn­e­gy [6] who are look­ing to roll out new coal pow­er sta­tions across Amer­i­ca.

Sarah Horne, who is at the Cli­mate Camp in Kent, said:
“The Cli­mate Camp has always been about far more than just stop­ping a new pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth. The fact that the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land has been tar­get­ed twice in as many days high­lights the inti­mate involve­ment of well-known high street banks in the destruc­tion of our cli­mate, thanks to the bil­lions of pounds they invest in fos­sil fuel projects each year. We need to shift to a dif­fer­ent kind of econ­o­my – one that doesn’t rely on end­less eco­nom­ic growth at all costs, and respects the nat­ur­al lim­its of the plan­et.”

Sam Har­ri­son, who is cur­rent­ly super­glued to the entrance of RBS’s oil and gas divi­sion, said “The fact that RBS have a spe­cial office ded­i­cat­ed entire­ly to fund­ing oil and gas projects shows exact­ly where their pri­or­i­ties lie. We need to rad­i­cal­ly reduce our use of fos­sil fuels to have any chance of avoid­ing dis­as­trous cli­mate change, so it is com­plete­ly per­verse for RBS to keep pour­ing so much mon­ey into oil, gas and coal. We’re here to make them to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their actions.”

PHOTOS ON REQUEST: press@climatecamp.org.uk.

For updates and inter­views about the action con­tact Sam Har­ri­son on 07939 142072. For infor­ma­tion about the Camp for Cli­mate Action, call 07531396232 or see www.climatecamp.org.uk.

NOTES:

[1] RBS London’s Oil and Gas Divi­sion address is at 199 Broadgate Court, Bish­op’s Gate, near Liv­er­pool Street sta­tion.

[2] The stu­dents posed as oil-cov­ered dead bod­ies to block the entrance to RBS’s HQ. For more details on yesterday’s RBS action, con­tact Richard Roaf on 07801140192

[3] For more infor­ma­tion about Ris­ing Tide see www.risingtide.org.uk

[4] Project Finance, Issue No. 287, Feb­ru­ary 2008

[5] Bank Track, Mind The Gap, 2007, pp 124–5

[6] www.banktrack.org”

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Naked protest at BERR
Naked BERR climate action 1
Naked BERR climate action 2
Pho­tographs of pro­test­ers super­glued to the sign of the Depart­ment for Busi­ness Enter­prise and Reg­u­la­to­ry Reform, 1 Vic­to­ria Street, Lon­don. August 8, 2008.

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Cli­mate campers tar­get min­ing cor­po­ra­tion
BHP action 1BHP action 211.08.2008
An affin­i­ty group from Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action, inspired by this year’s cli­mate camp, occu­pied the lob­by of BHP Bil­li­ton today, super­glu­ing them­selves to the doors and win­dows and climb­ing onto part of the archi­tec­ture. After sev­er­al hours, they man­aged to nego­ti­ate leav­ing with­out any arrests.

BHP are the world’s biggest min­ing cor­po­ra­tion. Based in Aus­tralia, they are respon­si­ble for min­ing hun­dreds of tonnes of coal, as well as for human rights abus­es world­wide. One exam­ple is their involve­ment in Cer­re­jón, the world’s biggest open­cast mine, in Colom­bia, which has dis­placed 14’000 peo­ple.

With all this in mind we decid­ed to dis­rupt busi­ness as usu­al at BHP’s head offices in Lon­don. We scat­tered coal in the lob­by, glued to the revolv­ing doors and near­by win­dows, while a sec­ond door near­by was D‑locked. Mean­while a team of mis­chie­vous fer­rets slipped upstairs in suits to see what else could be done, while oth­ers held a ban­ner out­side say­ing ‘BHP: Under­min­ing the future’ (a play on their vac­u­ous cor­po­rate slo­gan) and leaflet­ed the intrigued passers-by.

When the ‘fer­rets’ were dragged back down to the lob­by, they joined the rest of us. One of them also glued to the revolv­ing door, while the oth­er held a ‘Coal Heart­ed Killers’ ban­ner and even­tu­al­ly man­aged to scram­ble up onto a bit of the struc­ture.

A cou­ple of cops even­tu­al­ly showed up, but there was a tan­gi­ble reluc­tance on the part of BHP to esca­late the sit­u­a­tion; they seemed to want to do any­thing nec­es­sary to get us to qui­et­ly go away! It was main­ly because of this (and because they did­n’t have any easy way of get­ting the climber down) that we were able to nego­ti­ate get­ting every­one away with­out arrest, after the glued on folk had been unglued by the police using a spe­cial chem­i­cal solu­tion.

We adjourned to a near­by pub where we sat in mild shock at hav­ing done what we planned to do with­out the expect­ed has­sle of arrests..

We can hearti­ly rec­om­mend pay­ing them a vis­it! The mas­sive plate glass win­dows pro­vide a good view for passers-by, media etc.

BHP Bil­li­ton Plc
Neathouse Place
Vic­to­ria
Lon­don SW1V 1BH

There are also plen­ty of oth­er sim­i­lar­ly evil out­fits around cen­tral Lon­don — do your own research!

http://tvca.atspace.com/
http://leaveitintheground.org.uk/
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/

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Cli­mate Cam­paign­ers Tar­get Mil­i­tary Base
Mildenhall climate action 111.08.2008
At USAF Milden­hall today, activists linked to the cli­mate camp made a sur­prise appear­ance. Dressed as mil­i­tary air­craft and traf­fic jam both with CO2 tech­ni­cians. They attempt­ed to enter­tain whilst defi­ant­ly edu­cat­ing the troops and passers by. They said they where there to raise aware­ness of the large CO2 emis­sions cre­at­ed by Mil­i­tary air­craft.

A sin­gle KC135 plane uses 44 gal­lons of fuel per minute, emit­ting approx­i­mate­ly the same amount of CO2 as 2000 cars. The planes are used for air-to-air refu­elling and can car­ry 30,000 gal­lons of fuel – enough to dri­ve a car over 30 times around the earth.

One of the activists, Mell Har­ri­son said ‘We are here to show that mil­i­tary air­craft are not only com­mit­ting war crimes, but cli­mate crimes also. You very rarely hear about the vast amounts of CO2 emit­ted by the mil­i­tary and at a time when all should be account­able for their car­bon foot­print now is the time to put our efforts and resources into tack­ling cli­mate change not fight­ing wars over oil resources. ’

Richard Jack­son dressed as KC-135 58–0036 said, ‘Nweeeeeeeeearhh­h­h­h­hh phut phut phut phut’

Whilst dressed as an ‘allur­ing’ car sales girl, Pete Lux said, “Even if you do not believe that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are counter pro­duc­tive as we do, there is still the large amount of unnec­es­sary fly­ing. Often the planes will do ‘touch and goes’ where they land and then take off sev­er­al times. This is a need­less emis­sion of car­bon diox­ide, in fact dur­ing the 2 hours of our pres­ence here we have had the same two air­craft tak­ing off and land­ing con­tin­u­al­ly. ”

Milden­hall is one of the major logis­tic bases for US Air Force and plays a major role in sup­port­ing com­bat air­craft in both Afghanistan and Iraq. US planes car­ry out about 40 ‘close air sup­port’ mis­sions every day in Iraq and a sim­i­lar num­ber in Afghanistan. Each KC-135 flies on aver­age, for 435 hours each year. There are 15 KC ‑135s at this US base alone. This results in over 160 mil­lion Kg of CO2 per year.

Whilst at the US air base some­body with the group was told by a female Suf­folk police offi­cer that if she did not tell them who they were, how long they would be there and num­bers expect­ed, she, as the ‘nice police’ , would have to call in ‘ the ones with shields and dogs’. So looks like the police tac­tics of the last few days con­tin­ue……
We did not see any pup­pies though.

As Cli­mate Camp fin­ish­es, the group say that the cam­paign against cli­mate crim­i­nals will con­tin­ue all year round.

The KC-135 uses 2650 gal­lons per hour = 44.16666667 gal­lons per minute
Car­ries 90700 kg of avi­a­tion fuel = 126000 litres = 27800 gal­lons.
Aver­age new car cre­ates 140g CO2 per km = 12.6 kg CO2 per hour = 0.21 Kg CO2 per minute.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/kc-135e.htm
http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=110
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas

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Cli­mate camp activists tar­get envi­ron­men­tal­ly ‘irre­spon­si­ble’ meat indus­try
Climate camp activists target environmentally ‘irresponsible’ meat industryClimate camp activists target environmentally ‘irresponsible’ meat industryThis morn­ing, 11th August 2008, six Cli­mate Camp activists climbed the roof of Smith­field meat mar­ket to high­light the links between cli­mate change and meat con­sump­tion. The activists dropped a ban­ner bear­ing the mes­sage “Fight cli­mate change — Go Veg­an”.

The activists also quot­ed the 2007 UN Food and Agri­cul­ture report that found that 18% of glob­al green­house emis­sions are caused by ani­mal farm­ing – more than the entire trans­port sec­tor world­wide. The pro­tes­tors argue that all major polit­i­cal par­ties have failed to address this seri­ous prob­lem and as a con­se­quence the pub­lic have not been encour­aged to adopt an envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble diet.

The group is call­ing for more peo­ple to choose a veg­an diet, which excludes all ani­mal prod­ucts includ­ing meat, eggs and dairy, in order to mas­sive­ly reduce cli­mate alter­ing emis­sions. “An ani­mal-based diet is no longer sus­tain­able with cli­mate change threat­en­ing the plan­et, its ecosys­tems, and the peo­ple who depend on them,” said Clare Whit­ney, one of the activists.

The fos­sil fuel input to pro­duce a day’s food for a veg­an is just under 10,000 calo­ries, com­pared to 34,000 calo­ries for a meat eater – the equiv­a­lent of near­ly 1.5 tonnes more car­bon diox­ide per per­son per year. As such, the cli­mate camp pro­tes­tors main­tain, chang­ing the way we eat is one of the most pow­er­ful ways for indi­vid­u­als to reduce their car­bon foot­print.

Smith­field mar­ket is one of the largest whole­sale trad­ing places for meat prod­ucts in the UK. Eighty-five thou­sand tonnes of pro­duce pass through it each year includ­ing meat, poul­try and cheese.

Phil Mur­ray, 22, not­ed: “the meat indus­try is up there with short-haul flights as one of the most envi­ron­men­tal­ly irre­spon­si­ble sec­tors.”

The action took place as part of the Camp for Cli­mate Action, a week-long protest against the build­ing of a new coal-fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in Kent, which, if built, will emit between 6 and 8 mil­lion tons of CO2 every year.

(This is actu­al­ly just our press release but since the back light on our lap­top just van­ished we’re going to have to leave it as that…)

Cli­mate Camp Veg­an Action Group
angelo.b@talk21.com