All coal ship movements cancelled at Newcastle Harbour (Australia) blockade

28 March 2010
A mass com­mu­ni­ty protest at the biggest coal port in the world has suc­ceed­ed in pre­vent­ing coal ship move­ments all day today. Hun­dreds of peace­ful pro­test­ers have occu­pied the har­bour since 10am this morn­ing. As the block­ade clos­es, organ­is­ers are hail­ing it a suc­cess.

Nao­mi Hodg­son, spokesper­son for organ­is­ers Ris­ing Tide New­cas­tle, said: “Today was sched­uled to be a busy day in the world’s busiest coal port. Ordi­nar­i­ly, there would have been at least four or five coal ships move in or out of New­cas­tle Har­bour today, but instead there were none.

“This an amaz­ing demon­stra­tion of the pow­er of peace­ful mass action by the com­mu­ni­ty. Hun­dreds of peo­ple unit­ed to protest the rapid expan­sion of the Aus­tralian export coal indus­try – this coun­try’s num­ber one cause of cli­mate change.”

“We suc­ceed­ed in not only shut­ting down the har­bour, but in show­ing the polit­i­cal lead­ers in this coun­try exact­ly what true lead­er­ship on cli­mate change looks like. If Aus­tralia is seri­ous about cli­mate change, we will put an urgent stop to the expan­sion of coal, and begin replac­ing this dev­as­tat­ing indus­try with safe and renew­able alter­na­tives.”

“Coal exports are the num­ber one cause of cli­mate change in Aus­tralia. The coal we export from NSW and Queens­land already accounts for more green­house pol­lu­tion that all onshore sources com­bined,” con­clud­ed Ms Hodg­son.

Why block­ade the world’s biggest coal port?

Now, more than ever, we need to be turn­ing up the heat on the coal indus­try, and their friends in gov­ern­ment. The export coal indus­try is Aus­trali­a’s sin­gle biggest, and fastest grow­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the glob­al cli­mate cri­sis.

New­cas­tle, already the world’s biggest coal port, is open­ing a major new coal export ter­mi­nal over the course of this year, bring­ing the export capac­i­ty of the Hunter Val­ley coal chain to an incred­i­ble 178 mil­lion tonnes of coal per annum. That’s the cli­mate change equiv­a­lent of 30 Bayswa­ter Pow­er Sta­tions. With­in ten years, the coal cor­po­ra­tions plan on export­ing more than 300 mil­lion tonnes of coal per annum — a tripling of cur­rent export capac­i­ty.

Tripling coal exports means tripling coal min­ing. As New­cas­tle coal exports boom, more pre­cious bush­land will be razed, more water­ways pol­lut­ed, more com­mu­ni­ties ripped apart as the transna­tion­al coal com­pa­nies carve their way west­wards into the Liv­er­pool Plains. The prof­its will be export­ed, but the dev­as­ta­tion will stay here in the Hunter. The cat­a­stroph­ic effects of cli­mate change will hurt all around the world.

This mad­ness has to stop. The cli­mate cri­sis is deep­en­ing, and time is fast run­ning out. Politi­cians are fail­ing to take action against the ram­pant coal com­pa­nies, so we have to do it our­selves.

Hun­dreds of peo­ple will be doing just that in New­cas­tle on 28th March, and we’d love you to join us. We’ll be tak­ing to the har­bour in a big way, occu­py­ing the world’s biggest coal port with a mass of peo­ple, and demand­ing:

* an imme­di­ate ban on the expan­sion of the coal indus­try in Aus­tralia,
* a swift phase out of coal, replac­ing all coal indus­try jobs with jobs in renew­able ener­gy and oth­er sus­tain­able indus­tries.

Cli­mate pro­test­ers delay coal ship dock­ing

Cli­mate activists are attempt­ing to pre­vent the dock­ing of the first coal ship at New­castle’s third coal export ter­mi­nal.

The Pana­ma-reg­is­tered bulk car­ri­er Sun­ny Suc­cess is enter­ing New­cas­tle har­bour to receive the first ship­ment of coal from the ter­mi­nal.

An activist from Ris­ing Tide is hang­ing from a rope in front of the berth and is block­ing the ship’s access to it.

“The Aus­tralian coal rush is fuelling glob­al cli­mate change and pre­vent­ing us from tran­si­tion­ing to sus­tain­able indus­tries,” said Steve Phillips, spokesper­son for Ris­ing Tide New­cas­tle.

“So far, nei­ther the State nor the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ments have demon­strat­ed that they are seri­ous about cut­ting our biggest sin­gle con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change. Instead, coal ports in NSW and Queens­land are under­go­ing mas­sive expan­sions, with exten­sive open cut coal min­ing projects in both states.

“This indus­try is destroy­ing land­scapes, destroy­ing com­mu­ni­ties, and is direct­ly threat­en­ing every­one’s future through major impacts on the glob­al cli­mate. Around the world, species are going extinct, peo­ple are being dis­placed, cli­mat­ic dis­as­ters are becom­ing more fero­cious because of the cli­mate change we have already caused. It is time to get to the root of the prob­lem, and start phas­ing out the coal indus­try.”

“The Aus­tralian export coal indus­try is already this coun­try’s num­ber one cause of cli­mate change, and it is also the fastest grow­ing. New­cas­tle cur­rent­ly exports 100 mil­lion tonnes of coal per annum. Already approved expan­sion projects will dou­ble this fig­ure with­in a few years,” said Steve Phillips.

Approved in March 2007 by the NSW Labor gov­ern­ment, New­castle’s third coal ter­mi­nal will increase the port’s capac­i­ty by 66 mil­lion tonnes per annum, or the equiv­a­lent of 160 mil­lion tonnes of green­house pol­lu­tion. That is rough­ly equiv­a­lent to dou­bling NSW domes­tic green­house pol­lu­tion from all sources.

For more images go to http://drop.io/risingtide
http://www.risingtide.org.au/

Read the report and gawp at the pho­tos of the last impres­sive action at the port, a rail block­ade to inspire us all