Author: earthfirst

EDF suing climate activists for £5 million — protesters face losing homes Wed 20th

EDF suing cli­mate activists for £5million

Evi­dence of police/corporate col­lu­sion as police serve legal papers on activists on behalf of EDF, and hand over per­son­al data

EDF suing cli­mate activists for £5million

Evi­dence of police/corporate col­lu­sion as police serve legal papers on activists on behalf of EDF, and hand over per­son­al data

Key CCTV footage at police sta­tion may have been delet­ed

Counter-Ter­ror­ism Com­mand vis­it­ed activist at home

Home Sec­re­tary There­sa May ques­tioned in Par­lia­ment

For more infor­ma­tion, pho­tos, film footage and inter­views email
press@nodashforgas.org.uk or phone 07447027112. A new short film of two of
the activists speak­ing about the civ­il claim can be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kTZgMIn4Go

Fol­low­ing the week-long shut-down and occu­pa­tion of EDF’s West Bur­ton gas-fired pow­er sta­tion last Octo­ber by cam­paign group ‘No Dash for Gas’, EDF has launched a civ­il claim for dam­ages against the group and asso­ci­at­ed activists for costs the com­pa­ny claims to have incurred – a fig­ure it puts at £5 mil­lion [1].

Should the claim suc­ceed, sev­er­al of the cam­paign­ers face los­ing their homes, and all could face  bank­rupt­cy or be forced to pay a per­cent­age of their salaries to EDF for decades to come. The amount of the claim rep­re­sents just 0.3% of EDF’s annu­al UK prof­its, which rose by 7.5% this year to £1.7 bil­lion [2].

This is the first time an ener­gy com­pa­ny has attempt­ed such a claim, and cam­paign­ers say it rep­re­sents the open­ing of a new front against peace­ful direct action pro­test­ers. If suc­cess­ful, it could have a chill­ing effect on oth­er groups – such as UK Uncut and Green­peace – who use civ­il dis­obe­di­ence to chal­lenge social and envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems.

Anea­ka Kel­ly, one of the No Dash for Gas defen­dants said: ‘This un-civ­il action by EDF is not about mon­ey – they know we don’t have this kind of cash. EDF just want to make sure that any­one who tries to stand up and chal­lenge their prof­i­teer­ing price hikes, shady gov­ern­ment lob­by­ing and cli­mate-trash­ing pow­er plants is quick­ly silenced by the threat of legal action.”

Six­teen cam­paign­ers occu­pied two chim­neys at West Bur­ton for a week in Octo­ber 2012, stop­ping near­ly 20,000 tonnes of CO2 emis­sions [3]. The activists – 21 in total — were con­vict­ed of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass at
Mans­field Mag­is­trates Court today. Sev­en­teen are due to be sen­tenced on March 20th, and the remain­ing four on April 2nd.

There is evi­dence that Not­ting­hamshire Police col­lud­ed with EDF against ‘No Dash for Gas’ by for­mal­ly serv­ing civ­il papers on the activists after their arrest, and by shar­ing their per­son­al data with the pow­er com­pa­ny. In one case offi­cers served the papers on the activists’ lawyer, in anoth­er they chased an activist down the street out­side the sta­tion and served the papers on him direct­ly, com­ment­ing, “I’m doing this as a
cour­tesy to EDF” [4]. Last week, the Home Sec­re­tary was ques­tioned in Par­lia­ment about whether this kind of prac­tice is rou­tine [5].

The cam­paign­ers believe that Not­ting­hamshire Police’s sup­port for the civ­il claim is part of a larg­er strat­e­gy to crack down on envi­ron­men­tal protest, as evi­denced by the use of extreme­ly oner­ous bail con­di­tions on
the activists after their arrest. They were not allowed to asso­ciate with each oth­er and most were sub­ject to home cur­fews from 9pm to 7am. Those con­di­tions were only lift­ed once the com­pa­ny had ordered its own civ­il legal strat­e­gy against the activists. FOI doc­u­ments obtained by No Dash for Gas show that a Spe­cial Advi­sor in the Depart­ment for Ener­gy was liais­ing with the police about those bail con­di­tions before most of the activists were even arrest­ed. [6]

In anoth­er inci­dent, Counter Ter­ror­ism Com­mand offi­cers vis­it­ed an activist at her home to ‘remind’ her of her bail con­di­tions and cau­tion her against going with­in 50 metres of E.ON’s Grain Island Pow­er Sta­tion.

Deeply con­cerned by police involve­ment in the unprece­dent­ed civ­il claim, the activists’ lawyer Mike Schwarz of Bind­mans wrote to the police ask­ing to view CCTV footage from inside the sta­tion, only to be told it had
prob­a­bly been delet­ed as footage was only kept for three months – despite the fact that this three-month dead­line had not yet passed.

Anea­ka Kel­ly from No Dash For Gas said: “The police are meant to be work­ing in the pub­lic inter­est, not act­ing as EDF’s pri­vate police force. If I want­ed to sue EDF over their pol­lu­tion or their price hikes, would
you expect the police to deliv­er the legal papers to EDF on my behalf, or hand over the names and address­es of their top exec­u­tives? Some­how, I don’t think so.”

The protest itself aimed to chal­lenge the Gov­ern­men­t’s plan to build up to 40 new gas-fired pow­er sta­tions, which would see gas account­ing for over 50% of the UK’s pow­er gen­er­a­tion over the next three decades. The Gov­ern­men­t’s own Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change have said that a new “dash for gas” would make it impos­si­ble for the Gov­ern­ment to meet its legal­ly-bind­ing car­bon reduc­tion tar­gets, and thus would push us ever clos­er to the brink of unstop­pable cli­mate change [7].

The Com­mit­tee also point out that a greater reliance on gas would increase house­hold bills by up to six times more than a shift to renew­able ener­gy [8]. These com­ments were echoed this week by the Chief Exec­u­tive of Ofgem Alis­tair Buchanan, who warned that an increased reliance on gas will lead
to high­er prices in the near future [9]. Cam­paign­ers blame the lob­by­ing pow­er of big ener­gy com­pa­nies like EDF for the Gov­ern­men­t’s cur­rent pro-gas posi­tion [10].

The case is rem­i­nis­cent of the record-break­ing “McLi­bel” case, when the fast food chain McDon­alds sued two activists from North Lon­don from 1990–1997. Ewa Jasiewicz, anoth­er No Dash for Gas defen­dant said: ‘This is start­ing to look just like McLi­bel. It’s a David and Goliath bat­tle between pro­test­ers with noth­ing but their bod­ies to put in the way, and out-of-con­trol Big Ener­gy which has a busi­ness plan that will dri­ve up
bills, push mil­lions into fuel pover­ty and crash our cli­mate tar­gets. We will be resist­ing EDF’s claim every step of the way’.

ENDS

Notes for edi­tors

[1] Copies of the legal papers from EDF are avail­able — please email us on
press@nodashforgas.org.uk or phone 07447027112 to see them. The £5 mil­lion
fig­ure was pre­sent­ed in court today, in evi­dence from Graeme Belling­ham,
Project Direc­tor at West Bur­ton’s, who stat­ed that: ‘Delays to the final
com­ple­tion of the project has caused total loss­es to EDF in excess of £5
mil­lion’. See also
http://www.channel4.com/news/edf-sues-activists-for-5m-an-attack-on-peaceful-protest

[2]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/14/edf-profits-rise-following-price-hike

[3] See
http://www.nodashforgas.org.uk/blog/press-release-campaigners-prevent-carbon-emissions-in-longest-ever-power-station-occupation.
The cam­paign­ers cal­cu­lat­ed that they were stop­ping 2,371 tonnes per day, and the action last­ed for sev­en days, so that’s 2371 x 7 = 19117 tonnes of CO2 saved.

[4] See
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/20/activists-police-edf-law-suit

[5] On Fri­day 8th Feb­ru­ary, Car­o­line Lucas (MP for Brighton Pavil­ion) put for­ward the fol­low­ing ques­tion in Par­lia­ment:

“To ask the Sec­re­tary of State for the Home Depart­ment, what her pol­i­cy is on (a) the pro­vi­sion of
infor­ma­tion by the police to pri­vate com­pa­nies that are plan­ning or tak­ing civ­il legal action against pro­test­ers, where those pro­test­ers may be sub­ject to crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings, (b) the tim­ing of the pro­vi­sion of such infor­ma­tion and © pro­vi­sion of oth­er prac­ti­cal assis­tance by the police to com­pa­nies tak­ing civ­il pro­ceed­ings, includ­ing ser­vice or qua­si-ser­vice of court papers; whether her Depart­ment has estab­lished any for­mal pro­ce­dures or organ­i­sa­tions to (i) facil­i­tate the flow of any such infor­ma­tion and (ii) estab­lish com­pli­ance with or breach of any such pro­ce­dures and poli­cies; and if she will make a state­ment.”

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmordbk2/130212o01.htm#13_

The Home Sec­re­tary has not yet respond­ed.

[6] FOI doc­u­ments avail­able on request — please email us on
press@nodashforgas.org.uk or phone 07447027112 to see them.

[7]
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/tories-dash-for-gas-risks-climate-target-8120153.html

[8]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/dec/13/gas-energy-bills-renewables

[9]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/9878281/Ofgem-boss-warns-of-higher-energy-prices-in-supply-roller-coaster.html

[10] See for exam­ple
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/dirty_half_dozen.pdf

Statement from No Dash for Gas on today’s court appearance 20th Feb

Today, 21 No Dash for Gas activists appeared in court, to face charges of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass fol­low­ing the week-long occu­pa­tion of EDF’s West Bur­ton pow­er sta­tion last October/November. All 21 chose to plead guilty, because they felt their time will be bet­ter spent cam­paign­ing against the gov­ern­men­t’s insane dash for gas, rather than being tied up in a pro­tract­ed court case.

Today, 21 No Dash for Gas activists appeared in court, to face charges of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass fol­low­ing the week-long occu­pa­tion of EDF’s West Bur­ton pow­er sta­tion last October/November. All 21 chose to plead guilty, because they felt their time will be bet­ter spent cam­paign­ing against the gov­ern­men­t’s insane dash for gas, rather than being tied up in a pro­tract­ed court case. They are due to be sen­tenced on 20th March and 2 April.

The activists have issued the fol­low­ing state­ment:

“We under­took our care­ful­ly con­sid­ered protest action last Octo­ber out of a sin­cere belief that com­pa­nies such as EDF, in col­lu­sion with gov­ern­ment, are unac­count­able, unrep­re­sen­ta­tive and wrong in pur­su­ing gas as a dom­i­nant fuel in our coun­try’s ener­gy sys­tem.

We have no influ­ence over where and how our ener­gy is sourced, priced and deliv­ered in this coun­try. We believe that these deci­sions should be made demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly and in the pub­lic inter­est.

Six large multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions have a monop­oly over our domes­tic ener­gy sup­ply and some of their per­son­nel write pol­i­cy at the Depart­ment for Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change. These com­pa­nies set the ener­gy agen­da in this coun­try, to the detri­ment of the pub­lic inter­est and legal­ly bind­ing car­bon reduc­tion tar­gets. We do not have the pow­er, access or cap­i­tal that these com­pa­nies have. Civ­il dis­obe­di­ence is one of the only means we have to inter­vene in this agen­da.

The major­i­ty of peo­ple in this coun­try want clean, renew­able, cheap­er ener­gy. We act­ed out of neces­si­ty and, we sin­cere­ly believe, in the pub­lic inter­est — to pre­vent an esca­la­tion in the cri­sis of cli­mate change that threat­ens the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of mil­lions of peo­ple and ecosys­tems in the UK and around the world.”

Blockade at Fracking Waste Storage Facility

This morn­ing 19th Feb, pro­test­ers block­ad­ed a Frack­ing Waste Stor­age Facil­i­ty in New Mata­moras, OH. Truck traf­fic to the facil­i­ty was dis­rupt­ed for 2.5 hours. As of this post­ing, a mono­pod is still in place on the site.

This morn­ing 19th Feb, pro­test­ers block­ad­ed a Frack­ing Waste Stor­age Facil­i­ty in New Mata­moras, OH. Truck traf­fic to the facil­i­ty was dis­rupt­ed for 2.5 hours. As of this post­ing, a mono­pod is still in place on the site.

In an unprece­dent­ed show of uni­ty against the extrac­tion indus­try mem­bers of  Appalachia Resist!, Tar Sands Block­ade, Rad­i­cal Action for Moun­tain Peo­ples’ Sur­vival (RAMPS), a coali­tion of indige­nous lead­ers includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from No Line 9 and the Unis’tot’en Camp, Great Plains Tar Sands Resis­tance, and Earth First! chap­ters from across the coun­try have gath­ered in South­ern Ohio to par­tic­i­pate in and sup­port this action.  This is the lat­est in an ongo­ing and esca­lat­ing cam­paign of resis­tance to the dan­ger­ous and exploita­tive resource extrac­tion indus­try that is threat­en­ing the exis­tence and sur­vival of the earth and all of it’s inhab­i­tants world-wide.

 

 

“Cancel Keystone Pipeline:” Largest Climate Protest in U.S. History

Between 35,000 and 50,000 peo­ple ral­lied in Wash­ing­ton, DC on Sun­day, Feb 17th in the largest glob­al warm­ing protest in U.S. his­to­ry. The pri­ma­ry demand: ditch the Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline.

Between 35,000 and 50,000 peo­ple ral­lied in Wash­ing­ton, DC on Sun­day, Feb 17th in the largest glob­al warm­ing protest in U.S. his­to­ry. The pri­ma­ry demand: ditch the Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline.

Read some tes­ti­mo­ni­als here from women who trav­eled to DC to protest the pipeline.

Mean­while, in spite of vague promis­es to take action to avert cat­a­stroph­ic glob­al warm­ing, Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion is gear­ing up for a big frack­ing push to accel­er­ate nat­ur­al gas min­ing.

Just another manic monday.

Glen­gad com­pound invad­ed and work stopped for over 3 hours. Traf­fic con­trol out of con­trol.

Glen­gad com­pound invad­ed and work stopped for over 3 hours. Traf­fic con­trol out of con­trol.

On a sun­ny dawn after a suc­cess­ful nation­al cam­paign meet­ing at the week­end, cam­paign­ers decid­ed to take to the bog and stop work on the Glen­gad com­pound where Shell are cur­rent­ly exca­vat­ing the recep­tion pit for the tun­nel bor­ing machine.

All the pro­test­ers man­aged to breach the rag­tag fences and two decid­ed to rest them­selves upon a Shell dig­ger.
Work was stopped for over 3 hours on the com­pound.

Protest con­tin­ued with a road block­ade but when dig­gers recom­menced there work, pro­test­ers ran back to the com­pound and tried once more to breach the fences and stop work.

After a short scuf­fle with Shell secu­ri­ty IRMS pro­test­ers moved back to block­ade trucks for the rest of the day.
 

Relat­ed Link: http://www.shelltosea.com
 

Combe Haven Defenders deliver tree to East Sussex County Council offices

14.2.13

Not deterred by the evic­tion of the camps on the route over thir­ty oppo­nents of the £100 mil­lion Bex­hill-Hast­ings link road vis­it­ed East Sus­sex Coun­ty Coun­cil in Lewes this w

14.2.13

Not deterred by the evic­tion of the camps on the route over thir­ty oppo­nents of the £100 mil­lion Bex­hill-Hast­ings link road vis­it­ed East Sus­sex Coun­ty Coun­cil in Lewes this week.

They did­n’t arrive emp­ty hand­ed how­ev­er– they turned up with big bits of tree, left over from the felling at Adam’s Farm. They then pro­ceed­ed to wedge them into the doors of the coun­cil offices. The coun­cil’s door­men seemed remark­ably reluc­tant to take deliv­ery of the boughs which ESCC has com­pul­so­ri­ly pur­chased.

The coun­cil came togeth­er on Tues­day for a rare meet­ing of all 49 coun­cil­lors to agree its 2013 bud­get, George Osborne will have been pleased to hear that his Tory cronies vot­ed to spend pub­lic mon­ey on the Road — which will dev­as­tatethe Combe Haven val­ley — at the same time as it is mak­ing cuts of £ 70m, which will be borne main­ly by chil­dren and vul­ner­a­ble adults.

Accord­ing to Combe Haven Defend­ers “Peter Jones, ESC­C’s bul­ly boy has aban­doned claims that the road will relieve con­ges­tion, con­struct­ing instead a myth of job cre­ation, yet the day before the bud­get meet­ing, cen­tral Gov­ern­ment announced £16m to regen­er­ate sea­side towns like Bex­hill and Hast­ings, much of it sus­tain­able and com­mu­ni­ty-based. West­min­ster expects to gen­er­ate 4000 jobs. This is more than four times total num­ber of jobs that the Link Road might hope to cre­ate at a frac­tion of the cost.”

In a fur­ther devel­op­ment, a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion request by Hast­ings Alliance revealed that the road has yet to receive final fund­ing approval from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. How­ev­er, the doc­u­ments were heav­i­ly redact­ed and cam­paign­ers are demand­ing to know what oth­er embar­rass­ing infor­ma­tion has been with­held.

There are an increas­ing num­ber of autonomous affin­i­ty groups com­mit­ted to resist­ing by direct action. Combe Haven Defend­ers are now joined by a Crowhurst res­i­dents group and a local Quak­er affin­i­ty. The bat­tle over Combe Haven is only just begin­ning.

www.combehavendefenders.org.uk

Protesters continue to frustrate Shell’s work 17th Feb

This last week has been anoth­er week of resis­tance to Shell con­tro­ver­sial pipeline, with numer­ous truck block­ades and dis­rup­tion to work­ers

This last week has been anoth­er week of resis­tance to Shell con­tro­ver­sial pipeline, with numer­ous truck block­ades and dis­rup­tion to work­ers

In sol­i­dar­i­ty with our friend Izzy Ní Ghraidm, we have con­tin­ued to keep up the pres­sure on Shell by block­ing trucks and work­ers through­out the day.
Shell work­ers arrive at 6.30am and there are up to 105 truck move­ments per day so there’s plen­ty of chance to show your oppo­si­tion and sup­port the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Shell was forced to admit that they had been expe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems with the Tun­nel Bor­ing Machine after it was announced on the radio that work on the tun­nel had resumed.
How­ev­er just days after this was announced there are rumours fly­ing of fur­ther prob­lems.

As the pho­to of Glen­gad shows, the Shell com­pound has expand­ed and is now just next to the old camp field. It is a real eye­sore on this beau­ti­ful land­scape but it is not too late to stop it.
Come up and sup­port this com­mu­ni­ty under siege from Shell.
 

Relat­ed Link: http://www.shelltosea.com
 

actions against E‑On in Nottingham

15.02.2013

Last night the doors to the Not­ting­ham E‑on Open House on Lis­ter Gate were d‑locked shut in sol­i­dar­i­ty with any­one strug­gling to stay warm this win­ter.

15.02.2013

Last night the doors to the Not­ting­ham E‑on Open House on Lis­ter Gate were d‑locked shut in sol­i­dar­i­ty with any­one strug­gling to stay warm this win­ter.

Eon and their part­ners in crime are not only destroy­ing the plan­et as they extract every last inch of nat­ur­al resources from the ground, they’re also doing their best to fleece each and every­one of us as they raise the prices year in year out. What we did last night was a minor act. Car­ried out by indi­vid­u­als who are dis­gust­ed with the ways in which the cor­po­rate pow­er and greed which goes hand in hand with this sys­tem. It is destroy­ing the plan­et, human beings and every liv­ing thing. We must fight back.
 
Update: I work across the road from the open house. It had to open two hours lat­er than usu­al.
 
——-
 
Stop G8 Notts hit the streets of Not­ting­ham yes­ter­day dis­trib­ut­ing a leaflet that made con­nect­ing the every­day real­i­ty of pover­ty in the city, where peo­ple are forced to choose between eat­ing or stay­ing warm to the cap­i­tal­ist spec­ta­cle of the G8 sum­mit tak­ing place lat­er this year.
Indi­vid­u­als were recep­tive to the mes­sage although many peo­ple did­n’t view them­selves as empow­ered to do any­thing about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. This re-enforced the impor­tance of us being on the streets talk­ing and engag­ing with as many peo­ple as we can, talk­ing about the prob­lems, their caus­es and how we can tack­le them on micro and macro lev­els.

Starv­ing to Sttay Warm

Fuel pover­ty protest against E.on.

Eon and the oth­er five big ener­gy com­pa­nies (EDF, Cen­tri­ca, SSE, Scot­tish Pow­er and npow­er) are a car­tel which con­trols 99% of the domes­tic ener­gy mar­ket. Domes­tic ener­gy prices for us are con­stant­ly ris­ing whilst every year these com­pa­nies declare record prof­its.

Accord­ing to a recent sur­vey, this win­ter 1 in 4 fam­i­lies have had to face a stark choice between heat­ing and eat­ing. Whilst e.on exec­u­tives and share­hold­ers spend bumper prof­its on sec­ond homes and hol­i­days
abroad, peo­ple in the UK are freez­ing because they need to eat.

We are starv­ing to stay warm!

On June the 17th and 18th the G8 world lead­ers will be meet­ing in Fer­managh, North­ern Ire­land, to dis­cuss how to main­tain the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem which enables and jus­ti­fies this day­light rob­bery. While we allow our lives to be gov­erned by these crooks prof­it will always come before peo­ple. The only way to achieve real change is to break from this vicious cycle of exploita­tion, smash cap­i­tal­ism and reor­gan­ise our com­mu­ni­ties in a way which ensures every­one has access to the neces­si­ties of life.

From the 10th of June there will be a week of action, work­shops and meet­ings in Lon­don to protest against the G8 and to work towards build­ing the sort of world that we want to live in

stopg8notts@riseup.net

 

Tasmanian Activists Challenge Mining in The Tarkine

Two female activists from envi­ron­men­tal direct action group Groundswell have tak­en peace­ful action to high­light the detri­men­tal impacts that min­ing in the Tarkine will have on healthy dev­il pop

Two female activists from envi­ron­men­tal direct action group Groundswell have tak­en peace­ful action to high­light the detri­men­tal impacts that min­ing in the Tarkine will have on healthy dev­il pop­u­la­tions liv­ing in the region.

At 10AM on Sat­ur­day, Feb. 2, Groundswell activists deployed a ban­ner read­ing “FOR DEVILS SAKE, DON’T MINE THE TARKINE” from the Alexan­dra Sus­pen­sion Bridge, in Launceston’s Cataract Gorge.  The two climbers– a local law stu­dent and a doc­tor- remained sus­pend­ed from the bridge for two hours until 12pm.

“The Tarkine region of North West Tas­ma­nia con­tains the last wild pop­u­la­tions of dis­ease free dev­ils.   Min­ing and asso­ci­at­ed activ­i­ties are of sig­nif­i­cant threat to the dev­ils of this region” said Groundswell spokesper­son Sarah Van Est.

tasmanian-devil

“Already under direct threat from the dead­ly facial tumour dis­ease, loss of habi­tat sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­es the like­li­hood of con­tact between healthy and dis­eased ani­mals. This has the poten­tial to increase the rate of spread of DFTD.”

“A fur­ther threat is the sub­stan­tial increase of heavy traf­fic in the area, which would great­ly increase wildlife road­kill” added Miss Van Est.

A lead­ing wildlife expert, Prof. Hamish McCal­lum, head of Grif­fith University’s School of Envi­ron­ment and for­mer chief sci­en­tist of the Save the Tas­man­ian Dev­il Pro­gram, con­firmed that the mines would have a poten­tial­ly dis­as­trous impact on dev­ils.

“There is suf­fi­cient evi­dence to sug­gest that it may threat­en the sur­vival of pop­u­la­tions of Tas­man­ian dev­ils in the area,” said Pro­fes­sor McCal­lum.

Miss Van Est said that “Self-reg­u­la­tion and token fines offer no real incen­tive for wealthy min­ing com­pa­nies to take mea­sures to ensure pro­tec­tion for the endan­gered Tas­man­ian icon.”

As well as con­tain­ing sig­nif­i­cant dev­il habi­tat, much of the Tarkine has already been inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied as high con­ser­va­tion val­ue wilder­ness. Groundswell is call­ing on the State and Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ments, specif­i­cal­ly fed­er­al envi­ron­ment min­is­ter Tony Burke,  to safe­guard the area and the dev­ils by ensur­ing imme­di­ate and ongo­ing pro­tec­tion in the form of Nation­al Park or World Her­itage List sta­tus for the Tarkine region.

48 arrested in historic act of civil disobedience to stop Keystone XL pipeline

JULIAN BOND, BILL MCKIBBEN, MICHAEL BRUNE, AND OTHERS ARRESTED IN FRONT OF WHITE HOUSE IN CALL FOR ACTION ON CLIMATE

JULIAN BOND, BILL MCKIBBEN, MICHAEL BRUNE, AND OTHERS ARRESTED IN FRONT OF WHITE HOUSE IN CALL FOR ACTION ON CLIMATE

WASHINGTON, D.C. — This morn­ing, 48 envi­ron­men­tal, civ­il rights, and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers from across the coun­try joined togeth­er for a his­toric dis­play of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence at the White House where they demand­ed that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma deny the Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline and address the cli­mate cri­sis.

Among the notable lead­ers involved in the civ­il dis­obe­di­ence were Michael Brune, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Sier­ra Club; Bill McK­ibben, Founder of 350.org; Julian Bond, for­mer pres­i­dent of the NAACP; Dan­ny Kennedy, CEO of Sungevi­ty; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Con­nor Kennedy, and Daryl Han­nah, Amer­i­can actress.

After block­ing a main thor­ough­fare in front of the White House, and refus­ing to move when asked by police, the activists were arrest­ed and trans­port­ed to Ana­cos­tia for pro­cess­ing by the US Park Police Depart­ment.

“The threat to our planet’s cli­mate is both grave and urgent,” said civ­il rights activist Julian Bond. “Although Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has declared his own deter­mi­na­tion to act, much that is with­in his pow­er to accom­plish remains undone, and the deci­sion to allow the con­struc­tion of a pipeline to car­ry mil­lions of bar­rels of the most-pol­lut­ing oil on Earth from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast of the U.S. is in his hands. I am proud today to stand before my fel­low cit­i­zens and declare, ‘I am will­ing to go to jail to stop this wrong.’ The envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis we face today demands noth­ing less.”

 

“We real­ly shouldn’t have to be put in hand­cuffs to stop KXL–our nation’s lead­ing cli­mate sci­en­tists have told us it’s dan­ger­ous fol­ly, and all the recent Nobel Peace lau­re­ates have urged us to set a dif­fer­ent kind of exam­ple for the world, so the choice should be obvi­ous,” said 350.org founder Bill McK­ibben. “But giv­en the amount of mon­ey on the oth­er side, we’ve had to spend our bod­ies, and we’ll prob­a­bly have to spend them again.”

“For the first time in the Sier­ra Club’s 120-year his­to­ry, we have joined the ranks of vision­ar­ies of the past and present to engage in civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, know­ing that the issue at hand is so crit­i­cal, it com­pels the strongest defen­si­ble action,” said Michael Brune, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Sier­ra Club. “We can­not afford to allow the pro­duc­tion, trans­port, export and burn­ing of the dirt­i­est oil on Earth via the Key­stone XL pipeline. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma must deny the pipeline and take deci­sive steps to address cli­mate dis­rup­tion, the most sig­nif­i­cant issue of our time.”

If approved, the Key­stone XL pipeline would boost car­bon pol­lu­tion tomor­row by trig­ger­ing a boom of growth in the tar sands indus­try in Cana­da, and great­ly increas­ing green­house gas emis­sions.

The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) has esti­mat­ed that this tar sands pipeline will boost annu­al U.S. car­bon pol­lu­tion emis­sions by up to 27.6 mil­lion met­ric tons – the impact of adding near­ly 6 mil­lion cars on the road.

How­ev­er, new research by Oil Change Inter­na­tion­al (OCI) shows that the government’s esti­mates of the car­bon emis­sions asso­ci­at­ed with Key­stone XL under­es­ti­mates the full impact of tar sands because a bar­rel of tar sands pro­duces sig­nif­i­cant­ly more petro­le­um coke than con­ven­tion­al crude, which is more car­bon-inten­sive than coal. The research can be found at: http://priceofoil.org/2013/01/17/petroleum-coke-the-coal-hiding-in-the‑t….

OCI’s research shows that Key­stone XL will pro­duce enough pet­coke to fuel five U.S. coal plants. The emis­sions from this pet­coke have not yet been includ­ed in cli­mate-impact analy­sis of the pipeline or the tar sands indus­try and OCI shows that it will raise total emis­sions by at least 13 per­cent.