South Lanarkshire Locals And Climate Campers Confront Council

10.8.2009
Scot­land’s first Camp for Cli­mate Action cul­mi­nat­ed today by direct­ly con­fronting South Lanark­shire Coun­cil whose mem­bers have approved new open cast coal extrac­tion despite mas­sive local oppo­si­tion. They were protest­ing about the seri­ous health impacts of this kind of ‘min­ing on the cheap’ and con­cerns about coal’s con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change.

A group held a cer­e­mo­ny out­side the offices to give out awards such as ‘worst con­flict of inter­est’ to peo­ple wear­ing masks of the indi­vid­u­als they accuse of putting Scot­tish Coal before the inter­ests of their con­stituents. These include local Coun­cil­lor Daniel Meik­le, the Earl of Home, Karen Gillon MSP and Jim Hood MP.

Mar­ty Sheal from Dou­glas said, “The coun­cil have con­sis­tent­ly put the prof­it of Scot­tish Coal and the com­pa­nies they work with before the health of the peo­ple of Dou­glas­dale. Some coun­cil­lors have appar­ent con­flicts of inter­est, which some peo­ple believe may have been behind these deci­sions.”

The Camp for Cli­mate Action Scot­land has also released a dossier of the health impacts of open cast­ing enti­tled Adverse Effects of Open­cast Min­ing which paints an alarm­ing pic­ture of a whole host of effects from can­cers, to asth­ma and depres­sion caused not just by the coal dust, but by noise and increas­es in heavy goods traf­fic. Burn­ing coal has also been respon­si­ble for most of the car­bon diox­ide in the atmos­phere that is push­ing us towards run­away cli­mate change, In cli­mate terms it is also the dirt­i­est fuel by far.

Anna Craig of The Camp for Cli­mate Action Scot­land added, “Coal means mis­ery and death, not just for the thou­sands of peo­ple seri­ous­ly affect­ed by min­ing in South Lanark­shire but also in oth­er dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties around the world who are being hit first and hard­est by cli­mate change – the death toll is already at 300,000 peo­ple every year.”

Cam­paign­ers are par­tic­u­lar­ly angry at local Coun­cil­lor Daniel Meik­le, and are con­cerned about con­flicts of inter­est pre­sent­ed by his fam­i­ly busi­ness, Meik­le Con­struc­tion, and his posi­tion in the coun­cil, which, for many years includ­ed being chair of the plan­ning com­mit­tee. Cllr Meik­le rep­re­sents the area where Scot­tish Coal and Lord Home­’s plans to cre­ate a new open­cast mine are being frus­trat­ed by a coali­tion of local peo­ple and the Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp.

Ear­li­er today there was an unsuc­cess­ful attempt by media activists to con­front him with ques­tion being asked by the local com­mu­ni­ty with three peo­ple being detained.

http://www.climatecampscotland.org.uk

Update

Coun­cil­lor Daniel Meik­le of South Lanark­shire has arrived at the protest by anti-open cast cam­paign­ers where he abused and threat­ened the pro­test­ers. Police have now escort­ed him inside the Coun­cil Offices. In a sep­a­rate devel­op­ment a load of coal has been dumped out­side the front of the offices to high­light the strength of local oppo­si­tion to a pro­posed new open cast mine at Main­shill near Dou­glas.

Camp for Cli­mate Action Scot­land

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News from Cli­mate Camp Scot­land

Thir­ty or so Scot­tish Cli­mate Camp activists and res­i­dents of Dou­glas vis­it­ed South Lanark­shire Coun­cil offices in Hamil­ton at 11am today to fur­ther high­light health risks asso­ci­at­ed with open cast min­ing and cli­mate change in gen­er­al. ‘Think glob­al­ly, act local­ly’ one of them said. They held ban­ners say­ing ‘coal kills’ and ‘com­mu­ni­ty health not Lord Home­’s wealth’. Police, how­ev­er, pre­vent­ed them from enter­ing the build­ing.

Envi­ron­men­tal­ists staged street the­atre in sev­er­al parts of Hamil­ton ‘award­ing’ coal crim­i­nals for their involve­ment in let­ting Main­sh­hill Wood (South Lanark­shire) open cast mine go ahead. These shamed indi­vid­u­als were: Mr Dan­ny Meik­le Cllr, Ms Karen Gillon MSP, Mr Jim Hood MP and Mr David Alexan­der Cospatrick Dou­glas-Home.

Kirstie Stram­ler, Ph.D. atmos­pher­ic sci­en­tist and researcher called for an inde­pen­dent study to inves­ti­gate the health effects of open cast min­ing on local res­i­dents. Ms Stram­ler has just writ­ten a pre­lim­i­nary report ‘Adverse effects of open cast coal min­ing. Health Stats.’ Pub­licly avail­able NHS sta­tis­tics indi­cate a high­er rate of Chron­ic Obstruc­tive Pul­monary Dis­ease (COPD) amongst peo­ple of Dou­glas vil­lage com­pared to the UK aver­age or the coastal town of Prest­wick, upwind from the mines.

Three inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists were detained by the police in a sep­a­rate inci­dent near Mr Meik­le’s home. This coun­cil­lor tried to enter his office build­ing unno­ticed and was heard say­ing ‘Stay away from my f****** house’ to the pro­test­ers.

Cli­mate Camp in Main­shill Woods near Dou­glas is the first event of this kind in Scot­land fea­tur­ing a 320W solar pan­el, com­post­ing toi­lets and grey water sys­tems. Activists received a warm wel­come from local res­i­dents who hope to stop the extrac­tion of 1.7 mil­lion tonnes of coal. Burn­ing of fos­sil fuels adds more green­house gas­es to the atmos­phere.