Camp for Climate Action up & running — workshops, eco-infrastructure, litter pick & Bicycology day out, plus assorted photos

About 100 work­shops have been hap­pen­ing at the cli­mate camp. Some work­shop intros were videoed: road cam­paigns work­shop (video/mp4 831K), social ecol­o­gy lon­don work­shop (video/mp4 3.7M), deal­ing with cli­mate scep­tics work­shop (video/mp4 1.9M), how renew­ables are being co-opt­ed by cor­po­rates (video/mp4 9.5M), Sav­ing Ice­land work­shop (video/mp4 27K), bio­fu­el cri­tique work­shop (video/mp4 6.4M), Mark Lynas on the 2 degrees tip­ping point the­o­ry (video/mp4 2.7M)

Cli­mate Camp work­shop: Wales LNG Pipeline

After two days of set­ting up the site and run­ning around deal­ing with the police and main­stream media, the work­shops at the Cli­mate Camp began yes­ter­day.

One of the most excit­ing of the work­shops so far was an impas­sioned report and dis­cus­sion on the Liqui­fied Nat­ur­al Gas pipeline devel­op­ment that is cur­rent­ly under­way from Mil­ford Haven to Tir­ley in Glouces­ter­shire.

Lin­da Ware of Cil­frew Res­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion gave a full and frank account of the cam­paign over the last 18 months by res­i­dents and eco­log­i­cal activists against the destruc­tion of the south Wales coun­try­side, the increas­ing reliance on new forms of fos­sil fuels, the hor­rif­ic health and safe­ty con­cerns and the lack of con­sul­ta­tion with the peo­ple who’s lives are being ruined by this devel­op­ment.

“peo­ple pow­er is the most pow­er­ful thing there is”

There have been sev­er­al protest camps at Tre­banos, Mil­ford Haven, & Bre­con as well as mass direct action in Cil­frew and else­where.

For a back­ground to the cam­paign check out:
http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk
http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol/pipeline
http://www.gaggedanarchist.tk

Lin­da high­light­ed the coun­cil cor­rup­tion that is so endem­ic to Labour dom­i­nat­ed welsh local gov­ern­ment. Her expla­na­tion of why she has cho­sen to stand as a prospec­tive Plaid Cym­ru coun­cil­lor raised inter­est­ing ques­tions about the appeal of the welsh nation­al­ist move­ment to com­mu­ni­ty strug­gles such as this.
“We are going nation­al­ist, not because we believe in nation­al­ism, but because we oppose Labour and there is no oth­er alter­na­tive”

The lack of media cov­er­age out­side Wales has been inter­est­ing in it’s absence. There have been only a hand­ful of arti­cles men­tion­ing the devel­op­ment in the UK press. This is in con­trast to the Ross­port pipeline which has got much more media atten­tion despite being in a dif­fer­ent coun­try. It would appear that due to ‘safe­ty con­cerns’ the press are being leaned on not to cov­er the sto­ry.

The pipeline is only the begin­ning of a south west wales pow­er cor­ri­dor that the DTI envis­age stretch­ing from mil­ford haven to the east of Swansea, with a num­ber of pow­er sta­tions and ener­gy extrac­tion sites clus­tered around the area. The new gen­er­a­tion coal pow­er sta­tion in Neath Port Tal­bot has already been announced and methane is already been extract­ed and stored in dis­used mines in the area.

This pipeline is set to be the first of many, as devel­op­ments are on the table for pipelines to con­nect from Tir­ley to Leeds and Ply­mouth.

Peo­ple’s respons­es to what they heard cen­tred around three themes: cor­po­ra­tions behind LNG, media response, and direct action.

The con­struc­tion of the pipeline is being done by Nation­al Grid, who have been the main focus for direct action so far. How­ev­er the con­sor­tium behind the devel­op­ment is head­ed by Exxon Mobil among oth­ers. The finance has been put up by oil and gas loan spe­cial­ists the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land.

What Next?

There was a feel­ing that we need to increase the knowl­edge amongst envi­ron­men­tal activists of the full pic­ture of the pipeline devel­op­ment and its wider impli­ca­tions.

get­ting a high­er lev­el of cov­er­age in UK and inter­na­tion­al media.

Tak­ing the strug­gle to the big play­ers behind it. Espe­cial­ly as they have a pres­ence on many high streets.

Under­tak­ing a speak­ing tour of social cen­tres, with a par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the routes of the oth­er pro­posed pipelines.

“We can do all the talk­ing in the world but the only thing that will have an effect on cor­po­ra­tions is direct action”

cardiff@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk/bristol/pipeline

I think work has already start­ed on 2 sec­tions of the gas pipeline run­ning west through Devon to Ply­mouth, work has been ongo­ing this sum­mer on the sec­tion to the east of Ply­mouth just to the south of the A38 (near totnes) and I think work is going on on anoth­er sec­tion to the east of Exeter

Audio avi­a­tion — mp3 2.3M

Audio mark lynas — mp3 4.2M

“Two Degree Time­bomb” by Mark Lynas

“Avi­a­tion: The Need to Stop Expan­sion” with some­one from Air­port­watch and local cam­paign group HACAN (nb he does­n’t real­ly mean there were 1500 peo­ple in the work­shop!)

Audio is mp3, mono, 96kbps

(sor­ry about the back­ground noise dur­ing the avi­a­tion inter­view but it was done in a tent when it start­ed to rain rain rain…)

This pan­el dis­cus­sion hap­pened dur­ing an evening at the Cli­mate Camp. It’s an hour or var­ied thoughts about the present and future of cli­mate sci­ence and what our response should be to it. The pan­elists are Oli and Sophie involved in the Cli­mate camp set up, Richard from CAT and George Mon­biot.
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Coun­ter­ing rub­bish about the camp!
17.08.2007




In spite of the planes tak­ing of every 45 sec­onds, cli­mate camp activists are pret­ty pleased that the smart folk who sort­ed the loca­tion land­ed us in such a bril­liant lit­tle bit of coun­try­side.

Just to do our bit for the local envi­ron­ment, 20 inspired cli­mate activists, inspired by the ini­tia­tive of the Scot­tish Bar­rio, sur­rep­ti­tious­ly made their way out the camp main gate this morn­ing, tow­ing wheel­ing bins and loads of recy­cling bags, to gath­er togeth­er the junk lying at the side of the lane. 4 com­put­er mon­i­tors, dozens of sacks and a pret­ty inven­tive plas­tic dil­do were the hall of the day…

The camp recy­cling team dealt with the lot, and the locals seemed pret­ty impressed with our efforts..

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At around 8am this morn­ing I saw a cou­ple of police fol­low­ing a group of peo­ple push­ing a large cylin­der in a wheel­bar­row south through the camp towards the air­port. Could it be a lock-on device intend­ed for a block­ade I won­dered? No, it was a domes­tic water heat­ing cylin­der and short­ly after peo­ple walked by with a load of pipe and then three solar water heat­ing pan­els.

I decid­ed it would be good to doc­u­ment the renew­able ener­gy sys­tems being used on site and went to fetch my cam­era before return­ing to take some pic­tures and find out about the sys­tem they were putting togeth­er.

Along with the 166 litre tank and the three 1m x 1.5m dou­ble glazed flat plate col­lec­tors, they also had a small­er head­er tank with a ball cock. I was told that the sys­tem would ini­tial­ly pow­er two show­er cubi­cles but they might dou­ble the num­ber if it appeared to be pow­er­ful enough. They referred to the design as an indi­rect ther­mal store sys­tem and guessed that they’d have around 1.5kw of heat avail­able.

Wan­der­ing back north through the site I was sur­prised and pleased to find anoth­er solar show­er being being built in the West Side neigh­boor­hood . I’d spent a cou­ple of hours with them before I arrived on site while held and the police road block dur­ing vehi­cle search­es last sun­day night. They had pur­chased a wind tur­bine much like mine while at the big green gath­er­ing and erect­ed it for the first time at the cli­mate camp. It’s rate at 300 watts at quite low speeds for a bar­gain 300 pounds includ­ing the mast, guys, stakes, charge con­trollers, every­thing. Theirs is the 24 volts ver­sion and they using it to charge the bulk of their 500 amp/hrs bat­tery bank — most­ly used for light­ing in their neigh­bor­hoods com­mu­nal spaces. Addi­tion­al­ly they have a cou­ple of small solar pan­el’s which they use to charge one of their bat­ter­ies at 12 volt which they’ve been using for their lit­tle sound sys­tem. But I digress — back to their solar show­er, it’s pret­ty much all made from reclaimed mate­ri­als — the flat plate col­lec­tor was built from an old cen­tral heat­ing radi­a­tor and has been placed in a glazed frame that had pre­vi­ous­ly con­tained a menu dis­played out­side of a restau­rant. The head­er tank was a home brew­ing bar­rel and the main tank anoth­er bar­rel inside a bin and insu­lat­ed with fiber lag­ging. The whole thing was erect­ed on a frame­work of reclaimed tim­ber.

Next to West Side I found the Scot­land neigh­bor­hood which had a sin­gle 40 watt pan­el charg­ing a cou­ple of deep cycle leisure bat­ter­ies in rota­tion and being used for light­ing. Like­wise, East Side had just one pan­el being used in a sim­i­lar way. The York­shire neigh­bor­hood (rumored to be serv­ing the best food on site) had just two pan­els sup­ply­ing a healthy 100 watts max while the South Coast neigh­bor­hood had three 63 watts uniso­lars pan­els. These seem quite pop­u­lar on site despite their large phys­i­cal size, and are appar­ent­ly more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly to the man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nique which appar­ent­ly involves spray­ing sil­i­con onto the pan­el rather than using actu­al crys­tal wafers.
Pass­ing the Man­ches­ter neigh­bor­hood I found them start­ing to set up a pret­ty mas­sive array of six of the uniso­lar 63 watt pan­els. In total, this sys­tem would pro­vide 380 watts in opti­mum con­di­tions and I was told that the tech­nol­o­gy used was par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­able to the cloudy con­di­tions would in the UK. Char­ing a 660 amp/Hr bat­tery bank, their sys­tem would clear­ly be more than capa­ble of pro­vid­ing all their neigh­bor­hoods needs so they were plan­ning on pro­vid­ing their sur­plus pow­er to their neigh­bors.

A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion was found at the West Mid­lands neigh­bour­hood. Their lit­tle 400 watt wind tur­bine was lov­ing the high winds found on site this week. This par­tic­u­lar type of gen­er­a­tor per­forms bad­ly in more typ­i­cal wind speeds but the last few days has seen it fre­quent­ly knock­ing out it’s max­i­mum out­put. Along with their wind pow­er, they also had 120 watts worth of solar pan­els and as their own pow­er needs were quite mod­est they were doing what they called ‘rov­ing bat­tery charg­ing’ and charg­ing up bat­ter­ies for oth­er peo­ple on site.

Tak­ing a break, I stopped off for a piss and noticed that all to the toi­lets on site (and the cen­tral kitchen) where equipped with a small stand alone solar pan­el and bat­tery to sup­ply light­ing. Mean­while ‘V3’, who run cours­es on wind ener­gy, have two 58 watt pan­els and a 500 watt home made Huge Pig­ot designed wind tur­bine. They’ve been charg­ing oth­er peo­ples bat­ter­ies but a site wide short­age of spare bat­ter­ies has left their wind gene sit­ting idle for much of the time.

The two big providers on site dwarf those found in the neigh­bor­hoods. Ray-Mun­do is sup­ply­ing the indy­media open access suite with anoth­er 1,150 watts of solar and a 2,250 amp/Hr bat­tery bank. Mean­while, the gigan­tic Gen­er­a­tor X truck has 1.5kw of solar and a bank of bat­ter­ies equiv­a­lent to an incred­i­ble 3,000 amp/hr. The orig­i­nal plan for the camp site lay­out placed the major pow­er providers near the biggest uses of pow­er on site but due to the police pre­vent­ing vehi­cle access to the camp, both these trucks have been parked in the adja­cent field (also being used as the police car park).

Back at the indy­media tent there is pow­er rig that I bought along from the ram­pART social cen­tre. This sys­tem con­sists of a 600 amp/hr bat­tery bank plus a 300 watt invert­er. Pow­er is gen­er­at­ed by 220 watts of solar and a 200 watt tur­bine. The Chi­nese made tur­bine is very sim­i­lar to the one used at the West Side Neigh­bor­hood, but rat­ed at 200 watts not 300. Both are designed to pro­duce their rat­ed pow­er in fair­ly low winds so have been max­ing out a lot of the time dur­ing the time at the camp. While the Ray-Mun­do sys­tem has been pro­vid­ing the pow­er for the open access inter­net suite, the ram­pART sys­tem has been pow­er­ing the lap­tops used by those edit­ing and upload­ing mul­ti­me­dia work. On the Wednes­day night the sys­tem was pressed into ser­vice to pow­er the PA and the light­ing in the main mar­quee dur­ing the ceilidh.

I’ve prob­a­bly missed a few of the sys­tems on site. Even as I type, anoth­er big wind tur­bine is being pre­pared to be raised and the Col-Tech gen­er­a­tor is expect­ed to arrive some time this evening to take over sup­ply­ing the main mar­quee.
Mark in the process of prov­ing the camp with hot show­ers. They are being built using all sal­vaged mate­ri­als, the solar pan­els com­ing from a house in Oxford under­go­ing a refit. No pump is nec­ces­sary as the water is moved using the nat­ur­al laws of physics; warm water ris­es, cold water falls — the ther­mo syphon sys­tem. Mark — “I just hope it works! All we need is the sun to stay..”

How to set up a grey water recy­cling sys­tem using bath tubs and straw

com­post toi­lets on the cli­mate camp site — a diy guide (video/mp4 5.3M)

posh show­ers at the cli­mate camp — video/mp4 1.9M

Video a com­post toi­let in progress — video/mp4 3.7M

Video a solar show­er from recy­cled mate­r­i­al — video/mp4 80K

Video solar pan­els with a low impact — video/mp4 5.4M

Video a rock­et stove to save ener­gy — video/mp4 5.9M

Video a wind tur­bine gen­er­at­ing pow­er — video/mp4 1.8M

On Thurs­day the cli­mate camp was vis­it­ed by pupils and par­ents from Heathrow Pri­ma­ry School, which along with two oth­er local schools will be demol­ished by the pro­posed third run­way. The school is an inte­gral part of the com­mu­ni­ty with for­mer pupils becom­ing teach­ers, and the head­mas­ter — Mr Hobbs — serv­ing over 25 years. The school also received the bor­oughs top marks in the last Ofst­ed report.

Today, Fri­day 17th August, sev­er­al local groups toured the cli­mate camp, along with sev­er­al local res­i­dents who moved onto the site to camp.

One group was a local scout group with some of them doing their envi­ron­ment badge. They came for a tour around the infra­struc­ture includ­ing the solar show­ers, com­post toi­lets, solar pan­els, wind gen­er­a­tors and pow­er providers, the indy­media com­put­er tent and rinky dink the ped­al pow­ered bicy­cle sound sys­tem. Liv­ing local­ly their homes are under threat from the Heathrow air­port expan­sion.

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Bicy­col­o­gy Cli­mate Camp out­reach day


A short report on Bicy­col­o­gy’s day out from the Cli­mate Camp on Sat­ur­day vis­it­ing a local hous­ing estate to fix bikes and spread the word about the Camp.

On Day 5 (Sat­ur­day 18/8/07) of the Cli­mate Camp, Bicy­col­o­gy, the cycle activism and edu­ca­tion col­lec­tive, went out from the Camp to vis­it a hous­ing estate in Feltham near Heathrow at the invi­ta­tion of the res­i­dents.

The group rode out in the morn­ing, “facil­i­tat­ed” by a police escort despite assur­ances from the cyclists that after sev­er­al nation­al cycle tours they knew how to cycle safe­ly and assertive­ly on UK roads.

The group set up in a small park in the mid­dle of the estate, offer­ing free Dr Bike checks, ped­al-pow­ered games, music from the Ped­als II soundsys­tem, bike jew­ellery mak­ing. They also pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion about cycling, cli­mate change and the Cli­mate Camp. Around 80 locals came along, main­ly kids, and every­one seemed to have a good time.

A van load of police kept watch to forstall any riots, and even made a sor­tie to play footie with the local kids for a while before appar­ent­ly being ordered back in their van by high­er com­mand.

info@bicycology.org.uk
http://www.bicycology.org.uk