The Coal caravan has arrived in West Yorkshire! AND daily blog

29.04.2009
The coal car­a­van is now in West York­shire and has vis­it­ed Fair­burn Ings which is threat­ened with open cast­ing and Fer­rby­bridge pow­er sta­tion which will burn the coal.

The Coal Car­a­van reach­es Fer­ry­bridge

Coal caravan banner at Shipley open-cast siteCoal caravan somewhere under the rainbow29.04.2009
The coal car­a­van is now in West York­shire and has vis­it­ed Fair­burn Ings which is threat­ened with open cast­ing and Fer­rby­bridge pow­er sta­tion which will burn the coal.

The Coal Car­a­van reach­es Fer­ry­bridge

The Coal car­a­van has arrived in West York­shire! After a day of cycling 54 miles in the rain the car­a­van has set up in Pon­te­fract.

Today activists and locals walked from Pon­te­fract to Fair­burn Ings, a site which will be dev­as­tat­ed by open cast coal min­ing if HJ banks and the Led­stone Estate are giv­en the go ahead to remove coal. On the way we passed the mon­stros­i­ty which is Fer­ry­bridge pow­er sta­tion and were able to see exact­ly where the coal from the Fair­burn Ings area will be burned. The coal tak­en from this area will only pow­er the three local pow­er sta­tions for 11 days, yet it is pre­dict­ed to take 50 years for the area to recov­er. The affects on glob­al warm­ing will be felt indef­i­nite­ly if we don’t move away from a coal based pow­er source, to renew­able tech­nol­o­gy fast.

Last night the Car­a­van had an evening of dis­cus­sion around the his­to­ry of coal and the future of coal. The event was booked to take place at Pon­te­fract New Col­lege, but the police leant on the col­lege and then told the pub­lic the event had been can­celled. Thank­ful­ly we were still able to go ahead with the event in the Town Hall instead! The police have been over­ly present at some aspects of the car­a­van, but this has sim­ply increased the public’s curios­i­ty with our events and shown how much the police waste their time.

This evening the Car­a­van will show the Age of Stu­pid in Pon­te­fract Library.

Tomor­row we cycle North, towards events in Durham and the North East. If you are inter­est­ed in the car­a­van there is still time to come along. We have a full timetable over the bank hol­i­day week­end with the local com­mu­ni­ty and extra hands would be wel­come. Please check out our web­site for details of accom­mo­da­tion and ring the car­a­van on 07729575582 to let us know you are com­ing.

caravan@climatecamp.org.uk
http://www.coalcaravan.org.uk

Dai­ly blog dur­ing jour­ney — http://coalcaravan.wordpress.com/