Author: earthfirst

The Edin­burgh Agro­fu­el Action group are plan­ning a protest for April Bio­fools Day on the 15th April from 12 mid­day-2pm. It will be at a BP petrol sta­tion (as BP are high investors in bio­fu­els). It will be cre­ative and fun, attract­ing media atten­tion as well as engag­ing with the pub­lic about the issues.
It’s part of a wider day of action, with local protests hap­pen­ing around the UK. April 15th is the day the Renew­able Trans­port Fuel Oblig­a­tion (RTFO) comes into force, mean­ing all fore­courts will be legal­ly oblig­ed to sell only fuel which is blend­ed with 2.5% bio­fu­el. Tar­gets increase to 5% by 2010 and 10% by 2020.

Please get in touch if you want to be involved: agro­fu­elac­tioned­in­burgh (at) googlemail.com (also email this address is you want to go on the mail­ing list).

What’s wrong with agro­fu­els? (bio­fu­els)

Defor­esta­tion, peat­land destruc­tion and nitro­gen fer­tilis­er use mean that agro­fu­els are actu­al­ly worse for the cli­mate than fos­sil fuel. For exam­ple, a study by Paul Crutzen (nobel prize-win­ner) shows that rape­seed biodiesel is 70% worse for cli­mate change than ordi­nary fos­sil diesel (even though it’s grown in the UK so involves no defor­esta­tion or peat­land destruc­tion) due to nitro­gen fer­tilis­er use, as this emits nitrous oxide, a 300x more dam­ag­ing green­house gas than CO2.

Peo­ple are being evict­ed from their lands to make way for agro­fu­el plan­ta­tions, often vio­lent­ly with deaths and human rights abus­es tak­ing place. In Argenti­na 90,000 fam­i­lies and in Paraguay 150,000 fam­i­lies have been evict­ed due to soya expan­sion. These are just 2 exam­ples but this is hap­pen­ing on a wide scale in South-east Asia, India, Tan­za­nia, Ethiopia, Colom­bia and the list goes on.

Food prices are soar­ing as a result of agro­fu­els. Accord­ing to Jean Ziegler (until recent­ly the UN spe­cial rap­por­teur on the right to food) there are 12 mil­lion more peo­ple going hun­gry now than a year ago due to ris­ing food prices, some­thing which agro­fu­els are a big con­tributer to. Instead we need to dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduce fos­sil fuel use, live clos­er to work and fam­i­ly, reduc­ing the need to trav­el, while reduc­ing speed lim­its and increas­ing effi­cien­cy of cars.

For more info vis­it: http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/

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The Solu­tion that is even worse than the prob­lem it is meant to solve

On 15th April, the manda­to­ry bio­fu­el blend­ing (RTFO) comes in, mean­ing that 2.5% of fuel sold at the pump must con­tain agro­fu­el. The Gov­ern­ment is pro­mot­ing this as yet anoth­er false tech­ni­cal fix for cli­mate change, despite it’s Chief Sci­en­tist’s doubts about their sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

We, Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide, will be at Tesco, East­ville from 16.30 — 1900 on the 15th to high­light the dis­as­trous impact that the pro­mo­tion of agro­fu­els (bio­fu­els) will have on food prices world­wide, and on defor­esta­tion in South Amer­i­ca and Indone­sia. We invite groups and indi­vid­u­als who share our con­cern to join us.

Tesco, who already sell bio­fu­el at the pump have a vest­ed inter­est in the tech­nol­o­gy’s’ pro­mo­tion as they own a 25% share of Greenen­er­gy, a bio­fu­el com­pa­ny.

A Bris­tol Ris­ing Tider says “Not only does Bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion caus­es greater glob­al warm­ing emis­sions than the equiv­a­lent for fos­sil fuels but for every acre of land used for fuel this is an acre less avail­able for food. We demand that Tesco divest from this com­pa­ny and admit that agro­fu­els are not the solu­tion.

Burn­ing huge quan­ti­ties of food in cars is a sure way of mak­ing peo­ple go hun­gry. Food prices are ris­ing due to bio­fu­els, caus­ing the poor to suf­fer more mal­nu­tri­tion. This has been called a “crime against human­i­ty” by the UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler

Fur­ther­more, the Unit­ed Nations has warned that 60 mil­lion peo­ple may soon become “bio­fu­el refugees” – peo­ple forced off their land to make way for huge areas of bio­fu­el crops due to the bio­fu­el boom.

Indige­nous organ­i­sa­tions of Colom­bia and Ecuador say “We are reject­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of the palm oil project on our col­lec­tive ter­ri­to­ries. Apart from the way in which this has been imposed on us, with mas­sacres, threats, dis­place­ment of com­mu­ni­ties, bribery of some lead­ers there are grave envi­ron­men­tal, social, eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al impacts.”

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the seri­ous prob­lems result­ing from the mass pro­duc­tion of bio­fu­els vis­it: www.biofuelwatch.org.uk

See you on the 15th

Cli­mate Camp − Open invite to a UK-wide deci­sion mak­ing meet­ing − Glas­gow 5th and 6th April
The next Cli­mate Camp gath­er­ing is head­ing north to Scot­land on April 5–6. The meeting/sleeping/socialising will all take place at Car­ni­val Arts Cen­tre, 34 Albion Street Glas­gow. This is in Mer­chant City and about a ten minute walk from Buchanan Street bus station/Queen Street train sta­tion. See map

Pro­posed agen­da items should be in by Mon­day March 24th. For guide­lines on gath­er­ing agen­da items see the fol­low­ing page on the web­site

The venue and sleep­ing space are both acces­si­ble. Accom­mo­da­tion will be crash pad and avail­able from Fri­day night. Should you real­ly need a bed for some rea­son be sure to get in touch. If you do not let us know in advance, we can­not guar­an­tee we’ll be able to find you an alter­na­tive.

The organ­is­ing team is work­ing hard to make the gath­er­ing as kid friend­ly as pos­si­ble. There will be an ear­ly to bed sleep­ing space at anoth­er venue, and a kids space through­out the week­end. If you are plan­ning to bring kids, please get in touch so we can bet­ter plan activ­i­ties.

Break­fast, lunch and din­ner will be pro­vid­ed Sat­ur­day and Sun­day. Every­thing will be veg­an and most­ly organ­ic. Get in touch if you have aller­gy con­cerns.

We will be ask­ing for a sug­gest­ed dona­tion (unless you real­ly can’t afford it) of £5 to cov­er the venue and £10 to cov­er food. There will also be a trav­el pool. The idea is that peo­ple with more mon­ey or low­er trav­el costs con­tribute towards the costs of peo­ple with less mon­ey or high­er trav­el costs. Please con­tribute if you can afford it.

There will be a film night and intro­duc­tion to Cli­mate Camp on Fri­day evening. Also, excit­ing things are brew­ing for Mon­day. If you can stick around an extra day, bring your bike and join in on a crit­i­cal mass to a site of some impor­tance… Alter­na­tive trans­porta­tion will be avail­able for those who can’t or don’t want to bike.

It would be extreme­ly use­ful if any­one plan­ning on attend­ing all or part of the week­end could let us know. This will help in buy­ing food, booze and lots of oth­er things too. RSVPs and all oth­er queries/info should be direct­ed to gath­er­ing (at) climatecamp.org.uk That is ‘gath­er­ing’ NOT ‘gath­er­ings’ (the old email address has been nuked).

The Cli­mate Camp on its own did­n’t stop cli­mate change — but it’s part of a grow­ing social move­ment that can! Come and take the next steps for­ward at the upcom­ing UK-wide meet­ing on April 5th to 6th in Glas­gow. Every­one is wel­come, whether you came to the camp, or were sim­ply inspired by it. The Cli­mate Cam­p’s at Drax and Heathrow had 4 key aims: pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion, direct action, sus­tain­able liv­ing, and build­ing a social move­ment to col­lec­tive­ly tack­le cli­mate change. Region­al meet­ings have been hap­pen­ing up and down the coun­try, and the last nation­al meet­ing was in Not­ting­ham .We will meet in Glas­gow to col­lec­tive­ly share all our ideas for tak­ing our aims into 2008.