Irish climate camp & actions round-up

Peat pow­er worse than coal for CO2 emis­sions

Cli­mate Camp is up and run­ning at Shan­non­bridge, Co.Offaly — start­ed Sat­ur­day 15th August and goes on till Sun­day 23rd August.

It’s about what we can do in the face of chang­ing cli­mate that will affect us all. Peat bogs are a liv­ing car­bon sink — greater even than forestry. Burn­ing peat releas­es more CO2 into the atmos­phere than burn­ing coal. The peat-fired pow­er­sta­tion beside the camp should have been shut down long ago — since our gov­ern­ment and Bord na Mona still fail to see the urgency of reduc­ing emis­sions, cli­mate camp will be stag­ing a major protest on Sat­ur­day 22nd August — this will be a day of action and fun, includ­ing street the­atre, art, etc, which will hope­ful­ly bring media atten­tion to this impor­tant issue.

Mean­while, the camp has lots of great work­shops every day this week about sus­tain­able liv­ing, peat bogs, forestry, cycling, renew­able ener­gy, etc, etc. Come along to my Trees and You work­shop on Wednes­day ! I will be talk­ing about trees as car­bon sinks, as vital ele­ments of bio­di­ver­si­ty, as added val­ue to farms and gar­dens, wood­land gar­dens, agro­forestry, CELT native tree nurs­ery, CELT Week­end in the Woods (19 / 20 Sep­tem­ber) (anoth­er event not to be missed !) .….….….….….……

So get your­self along to CLIMATE CAMP and be a part of it !

http://www.climatecamp.ie

Camp trail­er

Newslet­ter, includ­ing next organ­is­ing gath­er­ing
—–

Cli­mate Campers take Direct Action on Bog Restora­tion
August 23, 2009

Hun­dreds par­tic­i­pat­ed in Cli­mate Camp at Shan­non­bridge, which was held under the shad­ow of the peat burn­ing pow­er­sta­tion.
The Cli­mate Camp organ­ised three events to cre­ate bet­ter aware­ness around the indus­tri­al use of peat in pow­er­sta­tions.

Fian­na Fáil’s Gar­ret Tubridy unknow­ing­ly con­tributed to the eco-con­scious Cli­mate Camp at Shan­non­bridge. Recent local elec­tion posters were reused as part of the men’s toi­let facil­i­ties. Users did not have to look at his face. Gavin Harte gave a talk on com­mu­ni­cat­ing the media mes­sage with plen­ty of work­shops on drum­ming, Ross­port, per­ma­cul­ture, the end­less dream­catch­ers and there were more ban­ners being made than you could shake a stick at. It was great for kids and par­ents alike.

Lentil Dis­or­der pro­vid­ed the veg­gie food for the hun­gry mass­es with an oats cri­sis on the Sat­ur­day morn­ing. Choco­late flap­jacks sat­ed the appetites of ear­ly ris­ers.

Locals were bemused watch­ing the parade which left the camp short­ly after mid­day. The bar­men from both locals — Killeen’s and Luk­er’s pubs — waved at some of their new cus­tomers. Anoth­er local said noth­ing like this had ever hap­pened in Shan­non­bridge before. Paraders from the camp had dressed up as zom­bies and the dark forces of dan­ger­ous car­bon emis­sions with a sym­bol­ic chim­ney stack. Bif­fo of course led the zom­bies through the vil­lage! Campers had made ban­ners, plac­ards, dream catch­ers and an eclec­tic sound sys­tem boomed, ‘Black Bet­ty, Bam Alam’ and Mar­ley.

Kayak­ers got onto the lit­tle island in the mid­dle of the Shan­non hold­ing aloft a ban­ner ‘Sponge Bog Stops Floods’, as the parade reached the bridge timed nice­ly with cyclists return­ing from anoth­er direct action from the bog.

A few dif­fer­ent direct actions were planned and no one told me nuthin’.

There are three peat pow­er­sta­tions in Ire­land, Lanes­boro and Eden­der­ry, where agile activists dropped ban­ners from, and Shan­non­bridge where there was a parade and some scuf­fles broke out when the parade could­n’t go up to the pow­er­sta­tion.

Look at ClimateCamp.ie for more infor­ma­tion about the issues.

—–

Cli­mate Campers take Direct Action on Bog Restora­tion

No time to waste — pre­serv­ing Irish peat­lands is essen­tial

Cli­mate campers of all ages at Shan­non­bridge took a direct action this morn­ing August 18th, on a near­by bog by fill­ing in trench­es that are used to drain the bog for cut­ting. The peace­ful demon­stra­tions last­ed 2 hours with police curi­ous­ly onlook­ing at the hard work­ing activists.

This morn­ing at 11.30am six­ty odd Cli­mate Campers of all ages strolled 2km from the camp beside the Shan­non­bridge Peat Burn­ing Pow­er Plant towards one of the Bord na Móna man-made brown deserts out­side of the town. Equipped with some sacks, shov­els, pil­low cas­es, wheel­bar­rows, ban­ners and good cheer, they start­ed fill­ing in the trench­es made to drain the bogs with milled peat which was des­tined for burn­ing at the pow­er plant. The direct action con­tin­ued for about 2 hours fill­ing in a sig­nif­i­cant part of the trench. Local police watched as the cli­mate campers, includ­ing many chil­dren, dili­gent­ly set about their task and some engaged the police in con­ver­sa­tion explain­ing to them the rea­sons for their actions.

This is the first step that’s need­ed to restore our bogs” said Mol­ly Walsh, spokesper­son for Cli­mate Camp Ire­land. “Peo­ple don’t realise that when bogs are drained and dried, they release ample amounts of car­bon diox­ide, even before the peat is burnt. Degrad­ed peat­lands release 0.97 mil­lion tonnes of C02 annu­al­ly in Ire­land.” she added.

Colour­ful ban­ners and plac­ards were unveiled on the bog say­ing “Cli­mate Change Costs Lives” and “The bog is our rain­for­est”. One ban­ner was mount­ed on a piece of peat-cut­ting machin­ery which said “Don’t Burn our Bogs”. Some of the activists board­ed a bog train, while oth­ers pushed them along, sym­bol­is­ing that human­i­ty is on the wag­on towards cli­mate chaos unless we halt these cli­mate chaos caus­ing activ­i­ties imme­di­ate­ly.

Come join us at the camp for more actions and work­shops! Cli­mate Camp Ire­land con­tin­ues at Shan­non­bridge until August 22nd with the main day of action. We call on every­one to come join us on a day of peace­ful civ­il dis­obe­di­ence to stop peat burn­ing at the Shan­non­bridge Pow­er Sta­tion.

—–

Cli­mate Camp shuts down two peat burn­ing pow­er sta­tions
22nd August 2009

The Cli­mate Camp cul­mi­nat­ed in Shan­non­bridge with a day of action. The unsus­tain­abil­i­ty of the peat burn­ing was suc­cess­ful­ly high­light­ed with actions at all three peat burn­ing pow­er plants. Activists suceed­ed in shut­ting down the two plants at Shan­non­bridge and Lanes­bor­ough. The Shan­non­bridge plant has been shut all week since the camp start­ed, and the Lanes­bor­ough plant was shut down by activists today.

This morn­ing a group of Cli­mate Camp activists car­ried out a peace­ful direct action at Lanes­bor­ough peat burn­ing pow­er plant. Some activists locked them­selves to the gates while anoth­er group entered the plant and car­ried out a ban­ner drop on one of the build­ings which read “Give Peat a Chance.” The pow­er plan­t’s chim­ney stack stopped bel­low­ing its car­bon emis­sions for most of the work­ing day. Two activists were arrest­ed.

Ger­ald Glynn, a spokesper­son for Cli­mate Camp said, “We took this peace­ful direct action to high­light the urgency of cli­mate jus­tice issues. Our bogs are our rain­forests and we need to pro­tect them. We can’t wait for our gov­ern­ments to act. Let’s give peat a chance now.”

At mid­day anoth­er group of Cli­mate Campers tar­get­ted a third pow­er plant in Eden­der­ry, owned by Bord na Mona. Five women dropped a ban­ner from the pow­er sta­tion’s con­vey­or belt which read “Cli­mate Jus­tice Now”. The work­ers at the plant came out and took an inter­est in the action. “Bord na Mon­a’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty talk is noth­ing but that, talk, they are still extract­ing and burn­ing the dirt­i­est fos­sil fuel. We are send­ing out a strong mes­sage of sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties in the Glob­al South suf­fer­ing from the impacts of cli­mate change.” said Jer­rieann Sul­li­van, a spokesper­son for the group.

A live­ly colour­ful parade began at 12pm in Shan­non­bridge and made its way through the town, across the riv­er and back towards the pow­er plant. Many cre­ative ban­ners were car­ried by Cli­mate Campers of all ages with slo­gans such as “Cli­mate Change Costs Lives” and “Bogs are our rain­forests”. Peo­ple were dressed up as zom­bies and bog mon­sters as they parad­ed, chant­ed, danced and sang through the town while locals looked on with amused inter­est. Anoth­er group merged with the parade after tak­ing more direct action fill­ing in trench­es which drain the bogs to start restor­ing our peat­lands. A Cli­mate Camp riv­er crew also unveiled a ban­ner say­ing “Sponge bog stops floods” to many cheers from the main parade.

“300,000 peo­ple are dying annu­al­ly world­wide as a result of cli­mate change, not to men­tion loss­es in wildlife and bio­di­ver­si­ty.” said Nan­cy Ser­ra­no, spokesper­son for Cli­mate Camp. “Peo­ple in the mid­lands deserve bet­ter com­mu­ni­ty-ori­ent­ed sus­tain­able jobs. We need to think long-term and we need to start now.” she added.

ENDS

www.climatecamp.ieFor inter­view or fur­ther infor­ma­tion con­tact the cli­mate camp media phone 085 7851241
or for spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion on the action in Lanes­bor­ough — 085 1386675

http://www.flickr.com/photos/climatecampireland

—–

Dai­ly peace­ful block­ade of Shan­non­bridge pow­er sta­tion