26th Feb Climate Rushes — north and south

North­ern Cli­mate Rush — Rush on UK Coal!

Fresh from their Man­ches­ter Air­port incur­sion, North­ern Cli­mate Rush is back, and we are pay­ing a vis­it to the UK’s largest coal com­pa­ny! We will be trav­el­ling by minibus to the head­quar­ters of UK Coal in Don­cast­er. Meet in front of the Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Stu­dent Union build­ing at 1pm on Thurs­day Feb 26. Dress in Edwar­dian fash­ion (if you so desire) and bring food to share, ban­ners, and musi­cal instru­ments.

WHAT IS NORTHERN CLIMATE RUSH?

It’s a group of intre­pid activists who, tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from the suf­fragettes, use civ­il dis­obe­di­ence to bring about a tran­si­tion to a low-car­bon econ­o­my. We believe that, giv­en gov­ern­men­t’s total fail­ure to take mean­ing­ful action on cli­mate change, a cam­paign of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence is nec­es­sary, and in fact it is the only respon­si­ble way for­ward, giv­en that the fate of all future gen­er­a­tions rests on the deci­sions that are made now and in the next cou­ple of years.

Our sis­ter group of Cli­mate Rush­ers in the South will be pay­ing a vis­it to a coal indus­try awards cer­e­mo­ny in Lon­don on the same day.

WHY UK COAL?

Coal com­pa­nies such as UK Coal are active­ly stand­ing in the way of the nec­es­sary tran­si­tion to a low-car­bon econ­o­my based on renew­ables. They invest in new coal mines, and by lob­by gov­ern­ment against the changes need­ed for a tran­si­tion to alter­na­tives.

HOW CAN WE LIVE WITHOUT COAL?

Var­i­ous recent sci­en­tif­ic reports* have shown how the UK could tran­si­tion from fos­sil fuels, to a low-car­bon econ­o­my. We would have to switch to renew­able pow­er sources (main­ly wind and wave) and reduce our ener­gy con­sump­tion by fly­ing much less, by reduc­ing the use of pri­vate cars by cre­at­ing a vast­ly improved pub­lic trans­port sys­tem, by ensur­ing that with­in the next few years all UK homes and build­ings are prop­er­ly insu­lat­ed, and by requir­ing all appli­ances to have the high­est stan­dard of ener­gy effi­cien­cy.

WHAT ABOUT JOBS?

Dur­ing the min­ers’ strikes of the 70’s and 80’s most coal mines in the UK were deep pit mines, which required hun­dreds of min­ers to work them. But now most of the coal that can be deep-mined has already been dug up, and new UK coal mines are open-cast — huge dig­gers are used to rip the top off a hill, and then coal is sift­ed from the rub­ble. It is tremen­dous­ly destruc­tive to local ecolo­gies, and also employs far few­er work­ers.

By con­trast the cre­ation of new wind and wave-pow­er infra­struc­ture, a pro­gram of build­ing insu­la­tion instal­la­tion, and lay­ing on more trains, trams and bus­es, would all cre­ate new, sus­tain­able jobs. We are call­ing for gov­ern­ment to pro­vide train­ing pro­grams so that work­ers from fos­sil fuel indus­tries which need to be phased out can move direct­ly into posi­tions in the new, sus­tain­able indus­tries.

It’s now or nev­er time for the cli­mate, join us!

All gen­ders wel­come.

* See for exam­ple:
— Nico­las Stern, “Stern Review of the Eco­nom­ics of Cli­mate Change”, http://www.occ.gov.uk/activities/stern.htm

- Tyn­dall Cen­tre for Cli­mate Change Research, “Decar­bon­is­ing the UK”, http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/media/news/tyndall_decarbonising_the_uk.pdf

northernclimaterush@googlemail.com
http://www.northernclimaterush.wordpress.com

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UK Coal will be pre­sent­ing cel­e­bra­to­ry awards to the most dam­ag­ing com­pa­nies in the coal indus­try on Feb­ru­ary 26th Feb­ru­ary at the Land­mark Hotel on Maryle­bone Road, Lon­don. Cli­mate Rush will be in atten­dance to offer alter­na­tive awards based on the eco­log­i­cal dam­age that the coal indus­try is inflict­ing on the envi­ron­ment.

We invite you to join us in your best cock­tail fin­ery (fab­u­lous hats a rec­om­men­da­tion, and sooty styling a sug­ges­tion) to show UK Coal pre­cise­ly what “indus­try play­ers can expect to chal­lenge them in 2009.”

NO NEW COAL AWARDS

THURSDAY 26TH FEBRUARY

THE LANDMARK HOTEL
Dress for­mal­ly for cock­tails in the Win­ter Gar­den at 6.30 prompt.

WHAT CLIMATE RUSH SAYS TO THE UK COAL AWARDS

No new coal to avoid run­away cli­mate change
Coal is the dirt­i­est fos­sil fuel, and by far the dirt­i­est way to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty. We must leave coal in the ground and not build any new coal fired pow­er sta­tions if we want to avoid run­away cli­mate change. CCS is an unproven tech­nol­o­gy that may nev­er be a viable option. Cli­mate change is hap­pen­ing now and we must act now to stop it.

We can’t have infi­nite growth on a finite plan­et
At this out­dat­ed and fos­silized awards cer­e­mo­ny UK Coal is cel­e­brat­ing the worst excess­es of our fail­ing eco­nom­ic sys­tem. Just like over­paid bankers these heads of cor­po­ra­tions are receiv­ing plau­dits for plun­der­ing the plan­et.

A tran­si­tion to a low car­bon soci­ety with sus­tain­able jobs
We must coun­ter­act any jobs loss­es from the coal indus­try with a major re-skilling pro­gram in sus­tain­able trades. Many more jobs will be cre­at­ed by a huge retro­fitting pro­gram of old hous­ing stock and in the new renew­able ener­gies sec­tor than in new coal. The Ger­man clean ener­gy rev­o­lu­tion has seen the cre­ation of 250,000 new jobs.

http://climaterush.co.uk/