Author: earthfirst

Hambach Forest: Day 3 of Eviction

Today is the third day of the evic­tion at the Ham­bach For­est, which is occu­pied against the biggest cli­mate killer in Europe, the Rhen­ish brown coal-min­ing dis­trict (Rheinis­ches Braunkohlere­vi­er).

Today is the third day of the evic­tion at the Ham­bach For­est, which is occu­pied against the biggest cli­mate killer in Europe, the Rhen­ish brown coal-min­ing dis­trict (Rheinis­ches Braunkohlere­vi­er).

After three days of evic­tion one activist is left, who’s inside a tun­nel sys­tem under the ground. As this is the first tun­nel block­ade action Police don’t have a clue how to han­dle this. They ordered dif­fer­ent tech­ni­cal teams, who also did­n’t have an idea.

Now police want to dig down from the top, which is high­ly dan­ger­ous. They have been told that there is an evic­tion team with­in UK police who know how to evict a tun­nel-sys­tem.

Resis­tance will not be over after this evic­tion. The for­est is not lost yet to be res­cued. Every­body is wel­come to help. Next sum­mer there will be anoth­er cli­mate camp in the area, and a Europe wide Reclaim the fields camp in this region…

Day 2 of eviction Hambach Forest / tunnel-system

 

 

At the sec­ond day of evic­tion the cops evict­ed every­body from the trees. On the evening of the first day they evict­ed every­body in con­crete-lock-ons. Now there’s one activist in a block­ade-tun­nel. And police don’t have any idea how to evict that. So it still could still take a few days. Police that went down just said: “there’s a huge tun­nel-sys­tem, we don’t know wich direc­tion we have to go”

The occu­pa­tion of the for­est is against a coal open-cast-mine, that is togeth­er with two more sites, the biggest pro­duc­er of CO2 in Europe. The dust from the pit is radioac­tive.

Police said, that there were hun­dred crimes count­ed from the occu­pa­tion, but don’t have proof of any of them. There have been a lot of sol­i­dar­i­ty actions in lot of citys against the evic­tion of the for­est.
The for­est is one of the old­est in Mid­dle-Europe. There’s a type of bat, that will not exi­ct any­more any­where after the for­est is  cleared. They will com­plet­lyey clear the for­est in the next 5 to 10 years.

Next sum­mer there will be the europe wide “reclaim the field” camp in the region and the ger­man-wide cli­mate-camp. But also before this there will be more activ­i­ties. So come over and help fight RWE, the enery-giant, if you can. N‑Power is part of RWE. Would be also cool to vis­it them.

Activists disrupt Shell greenwashing event

Ris­ing Tide activists have invad­ed the stage tonight at a Shell-spon­sored lec­ture at the Geo­log­i­cal Soci­ety!

The title of the lec­ture — “Geo­log­i­cal Aspects of Renew­able Ener­gy”; the *only* speak­er — a Shell employ­ee. Coin­ci­dence? Or per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty for seri­ous green­wash­ing?

(The ban­ner says — “Shell Tar Sands = 55 years First Nations treaty vio­la­tions”)

Belo Monte construction halts after protestors torch buildings at three construction sites

Work on Brazil’s $13 bil­lion Belo Monte mega-dam was stopped on Mon­day after pro­test­ers torched build­ings at three dam con­struc­tion sites over the week­end.

Work on Brazil’s $13 bil­lion Belo Monte mega-dam was stopped on Mon­day after pro­test­ers torched build­ings at three dam con­struc­tion sites over the week­end.

Sat­ur­day, “a group of 30 peo­ple set fire to pre­fab struc­tures at the Pimen­tal site. They went into the cafe­te­ria, destroyed every­thing and robbed the till” before set­ting it ablaze, said Fer­nan­do San­tana, spokesman for builders Con­sor­cio Con­struc­tor Belo Monte (CCBM).

And late Sun­day, groups of 20 peo­ple set struc­tures ablaze at Canais and Diques, two oth­er dam con­struc­tion sites, said San­tana.

“On Mon­day, as a pre­cau­tion­ary secu­ri­ty mea­sure, all activ­i­ties were sus­pend­ed at the con­struc­tion site,” said San­tana, sug­gest­ing that “van­dals” might be try­ing to derail salary rene­go­ti­a­tion under way.

CCBM have pro­posed a sev­en per­cent wage increase to the work­ers in an area where the infla­tion rate is at 30 per­cent

Pro­test­ers have dis­rupteed con­struc­tion of the dam sev­er­al times already over the past few months includ­ing an occu­pa­tion of the main con­struc­tion site at Pimen­tal  and in Sep­tem­ber a group of fish­er­men block­ad­ed the Xin­gu Riv­er pre­vent­ing a fer­ry from trans­port­ing machines and work­ers to a cof­fer dam being built for the Belo Monte Dam Com­plex. They then set up a protest camp on one of the main islands of the Xin­gu Riv­er near the con­struc­tion site. 

Indige­nous groups fear the dam across the Xin­gu Riv­er, a trib­u­tary of the Ama­zon, will harm their way of life. Envi­ron­men­tal­ists have warned of defor­esta­tion, green­house gas emis­sions and irrepara­ble dam­age to the ecosys­tem.

The dam is expect­ed to flood some 500 square kilo­me­ters (200 square miles) along the Xin­gu and dis­place 16,000 peo­ple, accord­ing to the gov­ern­ment, although some NGOs put the num­ber at 40,000 dis­placed.

The indige­nous peo­ple want their lands demar­cat­ed and non-indige­nous peo­ple removed from them, as well as a bet­ter health­care sys­tem and access to drink­ing water.

Expect­ed to pro­duce 11,000 megawatts of elec­tric­i­ty, the dam would be the third biggest in the world, after China’s Three Gorges facil­i­ty and Brazil’s Itaipu Dam in the south.

It is one of sev­er­al hydro­elec­tric projects billed by Brazil as pro­vid­ing clean ener­gy for a fast-grow­ing econ­o­my.

Castle Point Essex — Green Belt Threatened!

For­mer MP and Eco cam­paign­er Bob Spink has jet­ti­soned his ‘green’ cre­den­tials in favour of prof­it 
 
Spink  was orig­i­nal­ly elect­ed as a Con­ser­v­a­tive but switched alle­giances to the UK Inde­pen­dence Par­ty. Hav­ing left UKIP Spink then cam­paigned at the last elec­tion as a envi­ron­men­tal­ist as part of a self-cre­at­ed ‘Save Our Green­belt’ par­ty.

For­mer MP and Eco cam­paign­er Bob Spink has jet­ti­soned his ‘green’ cre­den­tials in favour of prof­it 
 
Spink  was orig­i­nal­ly elect­ed as a Con­ser­v­a­tive but switched alle­giances to the UK Inde­pen­dence Par­ty. Hav­ing left UKIP Spink then cam­paigned at the last elec­tion as a envi­ron­men­tal­ist as part of a self-cre­at­ed ‘Save Our Green­belt’ par­ty. He was defeat­ed at the last elec­tion by the cur­rent incum­bent, Rebec­ca Har­ris MP.
 
As can be seen from the attached local news cov­er­age, Spink has renounced his ‘green’ cre­den­tials and instead has been act­ing as a con­sul­tant to devel­op­er Redrow to advise on a plan­ning appli­ca­tion to build 250 new homes on Green Belt land in his for­mer con­stituen­cy. To make mat­ters worse, Spink’s home is locat­ed in the cen­tre of the pro­posed devel­op­ment and togeth­er with a con­sor­tium of res­i­dents has been offered a sum con­sid­er­ably in excess of the mar­ket val­ue of his home by Redrow should the appli­ca­tion prove suc­cess­ful.
 
The area under threat is ancient wood­land, rich in flower and fau­na includ­ing bad­gers, bats and wood­peck­ers. 
 
This is anoth­er exam­ple of a for­mer pub­lic fig­ure using his time in office to acquaint him­self with plan­ning reg­u­la­tions for his pri­vate gain. There is con­sid­er­able local oppo­si­tion to this devel­op­ment and a great deal of ani­mos­i­ty against Spink and the ease with which he seems to have jet­ti­soned his Eco cre­den­tials in favour of prof­it.
 
We have estab­lished a protest group to oppose this devel­op­ment but we need to hear from expe­ri­enced activists to advise us on how best to resist these plans.
 
Please con­tact us via our Face­book page ‘Friends of Bow­ers Road Green Belt Ben­fleet’ and help us save our wood­land.
 
 
 
 

Eviction of the Hambach Forest (Germany)

The evic­tion of the squat­ted ham­bach For­est begun this morn­ing. The for­est which is in the rheinisch brown­coal region (close to col­logne) has been squat­ted since April to stop the defor­esta­tion. RWE is cut­ting the trees to expand the largest open cast mine in europe where they extract brown coal.The rhein­ish Brown Coal area is the largest CO2 source in europe.

Sev­er­al hun­dred police forces are in the area and activists are locked-on in the trees and on the ground. They cut the walk­ways to stop the police from enter­ing the tree hous­es. The police removed an occu­pied tri­pod on the road to the squat and they have a spe­cial force for tree climb­ing in the for­est. A few activists on the ground already been arrest­ed and the main bridge to the for­est is closed. In many cities around ger­many there will be sol­i­dar­i­ty actions today. Organ­ise oth­er action in your city to sup­port the resis­tance against brown coal and for the ham­bach for­est. Look out for offices of RWE or sub­sidary com­pa­nys.

Notre-Dame-des-Landes (France): Yet Another Forest Eviction

We live in the Rohanne For­est. Over the last two years the many peo­ple who lived and passed by here built sev­en high tree hous­es and a beau­ti­ful three storey col­lec­tive house. On Thurs­day 19th Octo­ber the police came with bull­doz­ers and destroyed and removed the house.

We live in the Rohanne For­est. Over the last two years the many peo­ple who lived and passed by here built sev­en high tree hous­es and a beau­ti­ful three storey col­lec­tive house. On Thurs­day 19th Octo­ber the police came with bull­doz­ers and destroyed and removed the house.

Start­ing the next day, and with lots of moti­vat­ed helpers, we built a new kitchen six metres up in the trees, and a new com­mu­nal sleep­ing area a bit high­er. On Tues­day 30th Octo­ber and Wednes­day 31st Octo­ber they returned with bull­doz­ers and cher­ry pick­ers to destroy the two new­ly fin­ished cab­ins, plus all of the sev­en high tree hous­es.

Dur­ing the week­end we built a quick tem­po­rary shel­ter on the ground with palettes and tarps so we could sleep there while we rebuilt tree hous­es. It was basi­cal­ly a few mat­tress­es on palettes, with beams lashed in the trees and cov­ered with tarps.

Ear­ly in the morn­ing on Mon­day 5th Novem­ber around twen­ty vans of police blocked the roads around the Rohanne For­est. They entered on foot, and at half eight in the morn­ing six sleep­ing peo­ple were sur­round­ed by about thir­ty cops with shields, full riot gear and loud walkie-talkies, and shout­ed at to take what they could car­ry and get out of the for­est. The cops start­ed tak­ing the shel­ter apart and cut­ting the tarps into small pieces while we were still inside. After forc­ing us out­side and push­ing us to the ground they slashed the mat­tress­es and pulled every­thing apart, includ­ing cut­ting the polyprop into lit­tle tiny bits so it couldn’t be used again. If I didn’t know bet­ter I’d say we’re real­ly start­ing to piss them off.

They tipped a first aid kit out onto the wet mud­dy for­est floor and stamped on it, and did the same with a box of mues­li and the whole con­tents of the bike pan­niers. They destroyed the two bikes despite our hand on heart promise from the head of oper­a­tions that we could keep our bikes and they wouldn’t be touched. They pushed us, threat­ened us and forced us out of the for­est. They tried to march us through a huge pud­dle near the entrance which we know to be knee-deep, but we sug­gest­ed they instead fol­low us along the path which they did.

All the male bod­ied peo­ple were searched by the cops, and one had an iden­ti­ty card with them. The oth­er two were tak­en to the police sta­tion for an iden­ti­ty con­trol. The three female bod­ied peo­ple were asked to wait for a female cop to search them. And wait. And wait. And wait. It seems that there are not so many female bod­ied cops around and after about an hour they just asked for our names and places of birth. When they had no joy extract­ing per­son­al infor­ma­tion there was a small cop hud­dle, after which they came and told us we could just go. Why? We were told they’re sick of us, and that they didn’t want to waste time in the police sta­tion, again, if we weren’t going to give our names, again.

It was a pret­ty unpleas­ant way to wake up, all told, and it is get­ting slight­ly tedious hav­ing our hous­es destroyed every week. Hav­ing had some time to reflect though, I can’t help but see a fun­ny side to all this. When we asked why we were being tak­en the police told us it was ille­gal to free camp in the for­est. So around two hun­dred riot police sur­round­ed the for­est and spent almost an entire day scour­ing through every inch of it just to find six free campers. Twen­ty vans full of high­ly equipped cops just to take down a few beams and tarps put up in a week­end. We might have had enough of cops but it’s clear that we are annoy­ing the shit out of them. To the next for­est cab­in!

Groundswell shuts down Ta Ann veneer mill (Tasmania)

 Grass­roots envi­ron­men­tal group Groundswell have today shut down oper­a­tions at Ta Ann’s veneer mill in Smith­ton, with a peace­ful protest. The group are high­light­ing the ongo­ing loss of Tasmania’s forests by Ta Ann, 2 pro­test­ers are locked onto a con­vey­or belt inside the mill, com­plete­ly shut­ting down oper­a­tions. A num­ber of oth­er mem­bers of the group are present and hold­ing a ban­ner in front of the mill, which reads; “TA ANN – SELLING TASMANIAN FOREST DESTRUCTION”.  Ta Ann is a Malaysian-based tim­ber com­pa­ny that has been accused of human rights vio­la­tions and con­tin­ues to destroy pris­tine rain­for­est in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. Ta Ann has had log­ging con­tracts in Tas­ma­nia from 2006 and is the dri­ving force behind the ongo­ing log­ging of old growth forests.  

“Today’s protest is being held at the Ta Ann Smith­ton mill to oppose the ongo­ing dev­as­ta­tion of Tasmania’s native forests just for the sake of a quick prof­it.” Groundswell spokesper­son Dr Lisa Sear­le said.

“As the for­est peace talks have car­ried on over the last 3 years, the destruc­tion of Tasmania’s native forests has con­tin­ued. The talks have so far failed to deliv­er any form of per­ma­nent pro­tec­tion and the future of these ecosys­tems hangs in the bal­ance. .” Dr Sear­le con­tin­ued.  

“There is cur­rent­ly a very lim­it­ed mar­ket for Tas­man­ian wood­chips, and Ta Ann is dri­ving the con­tin­u­ing destruc­tion of huge tracts of for­est. These forests are being clear-felled just to remove a few select logs for Ta Ann while low-grade sawlogs and wood­chip-grade logs are being left behind to rot in these dec­i­mat­ed areas.” Said Dr Sear­le.

The pro­test­ers will stay in place locked onto machin­ery until they are removed and Groundswell will con­tin­ue stand­ing up for the pro­tec­tion of our wild nat­ur­al state.

*Update: ENVIRONNMENTAL activists have been removed from a con­vey­or belt at the Ta Ann veneer mill in Smith­ton.

Tas­ma­nia Police offi­cers were called to the site ear­li­er today after two pro­test­ers from green group Groundswell chained them­selves to machin­ery inside the tim­ber pro­cess­ing plant. Sev­er­al oth­er activists gath­ered out­side the mill.

Groundswell said the “peace­ful protest” was aimed at high­light­ing the ongo­ing loss of Tas­man­ian forests to pro­vide the tim­ber used in the mill.

Ta Ann Tas­ma­nia said it was dis­ap­point­ed the group was ille­gal­ly protest­ing at its Smith­ton mill today.

“Ta Ann Tas­ma­nia also wish­es to point out that it is not a log­ger, as false­ly claimed, but a “tim­ber proces­sor”,” a com­pa­ny spokesper­son said.

Tas­ma­nia Police issued a short state­ment at 12.25pm, say­ing the Ta Ann demon­stra­tion had been cleared

Notre-Dame-des-Landes (France): Operation Obelix, a menhir in your face, Ayrault!

Sto­ry of the assaults and loot­ing of the ZAD — Europe’s biggest anti-air­port protest camp by the forces of cap­i­tal­ist destruc­tion. Writ­ten thanks to the tes­ti­mo­ny of many friends.

*Le Sabot* —  Tues­day,

Sto­ry of the assaults and loot­ing of the ZAD — Europe’s biggest anti-air­port protest camp by the forces of cap­i­tal­ist destruc­tion. Writ­ten thanks to the tes­ti­mo­ny of many friends.

*Le Sabot* —  Tues­day,

We woke up at 5:00am and had cof­fee togeth­er. The cops showed up by the Paque­lais road around 7:00am at day­break. We got the info that the cops had attacked the south bar­ri­cade. They moved with­out the usu­al three warn­ings, they spent thir­ty sec­onds at the burn­ing bar­ri­cade before get­ting some paint-eggs in their faces. They secured the whole road from the Far Ouezt to Sabot. Clash­es occured at the first bar­ri­cades of the Sabot. Cops man­aged to bypass the bar­ri­cades through the fields and make us move back by copi­ous­ly spray­ing tear gas in our faces. Six­ty of us charged the cops. An exchange of var­i­ous colour­ful pro­jec­tiles and col­or­ful shots against their tear gas. Cops and offi­cials are forced to retreat, suf­fo­cat­ed by their own tear gas, those big ass­holes. We spend all the after­noon in a tense face off. In the after­noon, the cops man­age to secure the Sabot. Any resis­tance becomes impos­si­ble. The Zadists can no longer defend them­self once the bull­doz­er has destroyed all the bar­ri­cades and opened a trench along the Paque­lais road.

Thir­ty peo­ple in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the strug­gle sit in front of the gap­ing hole left on the road, pre­vent­ing the bull­doz­er to enter the com­mu­ni­ty gar­den. The pigs take a lot of shit. Their eyes, with­out a shred of human­i­ty and gray mat­ter, remain unmoved despite the relent­less jokes that from all sides. The night cops and the Depart­men­tal Direc­torate of Equip­ment col­lab­o­ra­tors who are work­ing with them go away booed.

Wednes­day

A small gath­er­ing in the Sabot fol­lowed by break­fast. The day before, Caesar’s legions destroyed all the bar­ri­cades and pro­jec­tiles (5 bar­ri­cades smashed the shov­el, paint-eggs, rot­ten veg­eta­bles, bot­tles of paint, stones, shield to pro­tect from tear gas and rack­ets to throw it back to the pigs). In the ear­ly-morn­ing, only one bar­ri­cade pro­tects us from the cops, built in the night by new­ly arrived com­rades, farm­ers and sup­port­ers that came on the spot. Cops sur­prise us by very quick­ly spread­ing out in the field. They keep their posi­tion thir­ty meters from us. The cops shoot us with tear gas from behind then gas the road of the Sabot where we are. It quick­ly becomes impos­si­ble to stay there, the atmos­phere is unbreath­able and we are a bit help­less in front of the robo­cops. We move back they advance, gas mask on the snout, and they quick­ly enter and block off the Sabot (west side). The cops also take the East side of Bel­ish­root bar­ri­cades, bar­ri­cades of Pimky (north) and con­tain peo­ple at the Far West (south). Speed con­fronta­tion, which leaves us with a bad taste of pow­er­less­ness. Dif­fer­ent groups are try­ing to focus on the machin­ery to slow down their work, but the con­voy is well pro­tect­ed, foot patrols, escorts and all the trim­mings. Result of the day of destruc­tion: the com­mon house of the Sabot is down, the col­lec­tive gar­den is dev­as­tat­ed, home of the Cent Chênes (for­mer bak­ery from ZAD, bread is excel­lent, thank you) is also destroyed. Three oth­er hous­es we built on the Sabot zone are also down the ground. Cop climbers tack­le the tree­hous­es.

*Rohanne **For­est *

Tues­day, around 3:00pm, cops charge Rohanne for­est with the aim to destroy the huts in the trees. Cops make use of many rub­ber bul­lets. The bas­tards aim for the head. A friend tes­ti­fies that he took a flash­ball shot in the neck. Sev­er­al friends were injured by shrap­nel of con­cus­sion grenades. Oth­ers are wound­ed by rub­ber bul­lets.

On Wednes­day morn­ing, the police sur­round­ed the for­est and secured every­thing. Police trained for moun­tain res­cue begin to fetch activists still perched in the trees to pro­tect the huts. A cher­ry pick­er destroyed a hut under heavy pro­tec­tion of the cops.

The cops destroyed sev­er­al huts with cher­ry pick­ers dur­ing the day. The zadists on the spot remain pow­er­less in front of insur­mount­able repres­sion.

*Bar­ri­cades north and south on the Vigneux **road *

Tues­day morn­ing, 7:30am, the cops take the cen­tral bar­ri­cade run­ning through the Suez road. Some of the activists go back to the south bar­ri­cade and end up in the fields of the right to pass through the Rohanne for­est and defend the north bar­ri­cade block­ing the road that leads to the Vache Rit. At the inter­sec­tion of the Fos­s­es-Noires and Vigneux road a bat­tuca­da enters the cow field in front of the Saulce. Bull­doz­ers and trucks full of rub­ble come and go and begin their death bal­let. The house will final­ly be razed to the ground, the tree hous­es destroyed and also all the build­ings on the ground. Cops that pro­tect bull­doz­ers and trucks receive paint-eggs. The cops, already ridicu­lous, are the laugh­ing stock of the peo­ple there. Fierce Zadists resist on the north bar­ri­cade all day long. The cops sprayed the activists on site with tear gas and con­cus­sion grenades. The bar­ri­cade with­stands the onslaught of hel­met­ed fren­zy until 5:00pm.

*Pimky Road*

The cops were in front of the Pimky on Tues­day after­noon. The demo which start­ed from Notre Dame at 10:00am is just on the left side after the Fos­s­es-Noires road. Many zadists and sup­port­ers make a human chain to pre­vent cops from access­ing to the road to the cab­in. The next morn­ing, two friends hid­den in the bush­es for an hour and a half hear the cops make bad jokes. These brain­washed idiots fin­ished by tak­ing apart the four tents on site in the midst of filthy laughs.

*Search at the Secherie*

Wednes­day after­noon, sev­er­al police vans sur­round­ed the Secherie mak­ing it impos­si­ble for inhab­i­tants to enter or exit. Two offi­cers of the Judi­cial Police are look­ing for a trans­mit­ter, cer­tain­ly annoyed by the con­tin­u­ous emis­sion of Radio Klax­on mak­ing the social­ist state, cops and Vin­ci look ridicu­lous for the past two weeks. After an unsuc­cess­ful search of two long hours, the whole ridicu­lous troop go back, tails between their legs, hands emp­ty. A bull­doz­er pulls up a tree on the site of the for­mer house of the Coin, under heavy police escort along the the Fos­s­es-Noires road. Our com­rades has­sle the pigs until they leave.

Thurs­day

The cops block the round­about of Ardil­lères and Paque­lais and search all vehi­cles. It seems that we expect a new wave of repres­sion tomor­row “par Tou­tatis” !

AND for more … Obelix oper­a­tion is launched !

The strug­gle will con­tin­ue until the total defeat of the ene­my forces and the with­draw­al of social­ist occu­pa­tion army from the ZAD.

In the end, Vin­ci and the Left Gov­ern­ment must not mis­un­der­stand ! The fact that near­ly all of our liv­ing places are destroyed will not make us renounce. Quite the oppo­site. We will rebuild on the ruins that Caesar’s legions have left. We will now be more mobile and reac­tive to future attacks of the French state, of Vin­ci and its sub­sidiary AGO.

The State lies ! The ZAD is absolute­ly not evac­u­at­ed ! We are all there and ready for any­thing ! This place will not be con­cret­ed !

Oper­a­tion Obelix : A men­hir in your face, Ayrault ! Vin­ci, out of our lives!

Frack Off (London) Stage Die In Outside Shale Gas Conference

Mem­bers of the group Frack Off (Lon­don) staged a die in out­side the Respon­si­ble Shale Con­fer­ence in Lon­don. [1]  The con­fer­ence held at Hogan and Lovells explores the ben­e­fits of shale gas and informs investors of its chal­lenges.  Speak­ers include mem­bers of the shale gas indus­try from the Unit­ed States as well as senior mem­bers from Sta­tOil, IGas and the British Geo­log­i­cal Soci­ety.  It is believed that they are prepar­ing for the British Geo­log­i­cal Society’s lat­est esti­mate of shale gas with­in the coun­try. [2]

The demon­stra­tion comes with­in days of protest group No Dash for Gas’s end­ing their record occu­pa­tion of the West Bur­ton gas pow­er sta­tion. [3] Both these demon­stra­tions are part of the ongo­ing debate over the UK’s ener­gy future.  Last week Ener­gy min­is­ter John Hayes entered the fray by sug­gest­ing that there are enough wind tur­bines in the UK and that we need to invest in shale gas. [4]

The group says that the die in was to high­light the fact that burn­ing gas is not a clean fuel and that it will lead to us not meet­ing our cli­mate change tar­gets. Gideon George, a par­tic­i­pant in the demon­stra­tions says “Build­ing more pow­er sta­tions to run on shale gas only leads to more coal being burned as the price drops on the glob­al mar­ket. Instead of con­tin­u­ing to invest in dan­ger­ous fos­sil fuels, the gov­ern­ment needs to con­tin­ue to invest in renew­ables so that we can tack­le cli­mate change.  Oth­er­wise droughts and extreme storms like Hur­ri­cane Sandy will become com­mon­place.”

Frack­ing uses water and a mix­ture of chem­i­cals to extract shale gas from the ground. The process is cred­it­ed with reduc­ing the price of gas in the Unit­ed States. How­ev­er in the UK the process caused two minor earth­quakes in Lan­cashire.

END

Notes for Edi­tor
All pho­tos are cour­tesy of Guy Bell.  Please con­tact him for high res­o­lu­tion pho­tos – guy@gbphotos.com

[1]http://www.responsibleshale.co.uk/
[2]http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/10/16/uk-shale-idUKBRE89F0JW20121016
[3]http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/05/no-dash-for-gas-end-occupation
[4]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/9644558/Death-knell-for-wind-farms-Enough-is-Enough-says-minister.html

Frack Off (Lon­don) is a peace­ful direct action group cam­paign­ing against all forms of uncon­ven­tion­al fos­sil fuel extrac­tion.  They have per­formed street the­atre out­side DECC and co-host­ed last year’s ‘frack mob’ out­side the uncon­ven­tion­al gas con­fer­ence.