Category: Climate Chaos

Climate suffragettes storm municipal city council! Stop the motorway!

On Novem­ber 12th, 2008 at 5.15 pm. six cli­mate activists dressed in peri­od cos­tumes as suf­fragettes com­plete with big hats, marched into a munic­i­pal city coun­cil meet­ing in Gothen­burg, the sec­ond largest city of Swe­den.

Swedish suffragettes 1Swedish suffragettes 2On Novem­ber 12th, 2008 at 5.15 pm. six cli­mate activists dressed in peri­od cos­tumes as suf­fragettes com­plete with big hats, marched into a munic­i­pal city coun­cil meet­ing in Gothen­burg, the sec­ond largest city of Swe­den.

The politi­cians were debat­ing a new six-lane motor­way, called the Marieholm tun­nel, planned to be built under the riv­er that runs through the city. The six women, activists from the cli­mate net­work Kli­max, stormed in to the meet­ing blow­ing whis­tles. A ban­ner was unfold­ed with the text: “No more tun­nel vision – cli­mate smart pol­i­tics now!” The activists voiced two demands:

Stop Marieholm tun­nel, no more motor­ways.
Local pol­i­tics in accor­dance with the lat­est cli­mate sci­ence.

From the stand oth­er activists and mem­bers of the pub­lic cheered. Leaflets explain­ing the action were hand­ed out. The action com­mem­o­rat­ed the 100 years anniver­sary of the Suf­fragettes burst­ing into the British Par­lia­ment to demand women’s suf­frage.
The offi­cial cli­mate goal of Gothen­burg is to sta­bi­lize the emis­sions caused by the city to a glob­al­ly sus­tain­able and fair lev­el by 2050. Still the politi­cians (con­ser­v­a­tives, lib­er­als and social democ­rats) are cook­ing up plans for a new six-lane motor­way under the riv­er, even though they know that new roads lead to more traf­fic. To build a new motor­way is insan­i­ty. Its the abso­lut last thing we need in these times of cli­mate change!
As did the Suf­fragettes 100 years ago, we are fac­ing an urgent prob­lem of huge injus­tice. It is women all over the world who will suf­fer the worst con­se­quences of cli­mate change, even though it isn’t women who are respon­si­ble for the largest sources of emis­sions. With this action we cel­e­brate the strong women before us who fought for a bet­ter world. We have picked up the torch the suf­fragettes car­ried and we will pass it on!

green­gote­borg at yahoo.se
http://www.klimatet.org

Bath Bomb #16 out now

The Bath Bomb
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #16
free/donation
Nov 08

Because now it’s okay to love Amer­i­ca

We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis

The Bath Bomb
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #16
free/donation
Nov 08

Because now it’s okay to love Amer­i­ca

We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis

Sat­ur­day the 22nd of Novem­ber sees a new cam­paign tak­ing to the streets of Bath. Going under the slo­gans ‘Can’t pay, Won’t pay’ and ‘We won’t pay for their cri­sis!’, the cam­paign will be tak­ing the fight to the greedy politi­cians, bankers and boss­es who are behind this finan­cial cri­sis. The cam­paign will also focus on pro­tect­ing the rights of aver­age peo­ple and will cen­tre around five key demands – 1) decent coun­cil sub­si­dies on gas and elec­tric bills, 2) afford­able food and hous­ing, 3) bailiffs and repos­ses­sion men out of our com­mu­ni­ties, 4) pro­tec­tion of jobs and ben­e­fits, and 5) full con­trol over the banks that our mon­ey has bailed out. These demands, and the cam­paign itself, are time­ly. Already, in the ear­ly stages of the cri­sis, unem­ploy­ment is up 20%, gas and elec­tric bill prices are up over 40% and home repos­ses­sions are up 70% on last year’s fig­ures. Now more than ever, we need to group togeth­er to pro­tect our­selves against the cal­lous greed of the wealthy. We need to be ready to fight against bailiffs who for too many years have strode unop­posed into our homes. We need to be ready to fight against the ener­gy com­pa­nies who increase our bills, leav­ing thou­sands to freeze while con­tin­u­ing to rake in prof­its. We need to be ready to fight against the gov­ern­ment who cut our ben­e­fits and use our mon­ey to bail out their big busi­ness bud­dies and we need to be ready to fight against the boss­es, who think noth­ing of mak­ing ded­i­cat­ed work­ers redun­dant to keep their own wal­lets fat. We have not caused this cri­sis, nei­ther have we asked for it. It has been caused by greedy politi­cians, bankers and boss­es, chas­ing after the big bucks, not wor­ry­ing about who they crush to get there. Yet who is expect­ed to pay when their shit hits the fan? Us. We are expect­ed to pay with our tax­es, with our jobs and with soar­ing food, rent and gas and elec­tric­i­ty costs. Well no more! This cam­paign is not just about wav­ing plac­ards or ‘mak­ing a point’, it is about win­ning. It is about tak­ing back what is ours from the greedy and wealthy who work so hard to take it from us, and it is a cam­paign that we can win togeth­er. If we are unit­ed in a belief that ‘enough is enough’, and a deter­mi­na­tion not to let them get rich from our labour while we strug­gle to make ends meet, we can and will win this cam­paign. So, to get involved, and wrench con­trol of our lives back from the greedy bas­tards at the top, meet at 12.30pm in the Abbey court­yard on Sat­ur­day the 22nd of Novem­ber.

Nude Girls Do It Togeth­er…

…Union­iz­ing to improve their work­ing con­di­tions, that is. Screen­ing on Sun­day Novem­ber the 30th as part of the month­ly Bub­bling Under rad­i­cal cin­e­ma, from 1 til 4pm, get an eye­ful of ‘Live Nude Girls Unite’, a doc­u­men­tary about the for­ma­tion of the first union of strip­pers in the US. This rau­cous film is to be pre­sent­ed by Bris­tol Indy­media, who are sure to come back with future offer­ings. Entry is free, and the Porter veg­gie lunch is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Get your plac­ards out for the lads!

Mini­bar — 0 Mega­BAN — 1

In the lat­est of a long line of foie gras vic­to­ries, Mini­bar have pulled the del­i­ca­cy from their menu after just two demos. At the end of the sec­ond 14 strong-protest, mem­bers of Bath Ani­mal Action and Bath Activist Net­work reached an ami­ca­ble agree­ment with the own­er that foie gras would be removed from the restau­rant with imme­di­ate effect. After this demo, activists paid a short and sharp vis­it to an emi­nent­ly less sen­si­ble foie gras pur­vey­or, Christophe LeCroix, own­er of The Pinch in St Margaret’s build­ings. Start­ing at 9pm, the demo last­ed only 10 min­utes, dur­ing which time the let­ter­box was flood­ed with leaflets, din­ers’ con­ver­sa­tions were drowned out with a bar­rage of noise, leaflets lit­tered the out­side of the build­ing and Christophe, seen cow­er­ing at the back of the restau­rant, brave­ly sent a wait­ress to lock the doors and draw the blinds. Christophe has twice removed and replaced foie gras from his menu, and is now sell­ing again, and despite his macho image, and a his­to­ry of punch­ing and sex­u­al­ly assault­ing both male and female activists, has twice been seen beg­ging pro­test­ers to leave him alone. Well, not any­more. BAA and BAN are back out­side The Pinch until foie gras comes off the menu for good. The protests could come at any time, but for now, we will leave Christophe to pon­der the fact that Hallowe’en is not the only time of year when things go ‘smash’ in the night! All foie gras-relat­ed com­plaints to:

Christophe LeCroix

The Pinch
11 St Margaret’s Build­ings
Bath, BA1 2LP
01225 421251
info@thepinch.biz

Tofu Sal­ad­fest Ahoy!

Sat­ur­day the 22nd Novem­ber is promis­ing to be a busy day for Batho­ni­ans, as we also have the Bath Veg­an Fayre! Run­ning at the Per­cy Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on New King Street from 12 til 3.30pm, all are wel­come to come along and sam­ple the deli­cious food, and find out how those pale and sick­ly lentil-eaters can still scrape up pro­tein enough to draw breath with­out a nice slab of steak or ched­dar. As well as infor­ma­tion on veg­gie health, nutri­tion, envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits, com­pas­sion­ate liv­ing, and veg­an-cater­ing eater­ies in the city, GeneWatch will also be there to talk about genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tion of ani­mals in sci­en­tif­ic research, just like the franken-doc­tors do up at Bath Uni­ver­si­ty – such as poten­tial­ly high-risk tam­per­ing with the genes of insects to con­trol food sup­plies. Con­tro­ver­sial? Con­tact eatoutveganbath@yahoo.co.uk for more infor­ma­tion.

www.vegansociety.com/
www.genewatch.org/

EVENTS

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ings, 2nd and 4th Mon­day of the month, 8pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road

Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

‘Baked Alas­ka’ film screen­ing, Mon­day 17th Novem­ber, 7.30pm, upstairs at the Rum­mer, Grand Parade

‘We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis’ march, Sat­ur­day 22nd Novem­ber, meet­ing 12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

Bath Veg­an Fayre, Sat­ur­day 22nd Novem­ber, 12–3.30pm, Per­cy Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, New King Street

Green Light lec­ture: the Sev­ern Bar­rage, Tues­day 25th Novem­ber, 7.30pm, BRLSI, Queen Square

Anti-foie gras demo, Fri­day 28th Novem­ber, meet­ing 7pm, the Cir­cus

‘Open­ing the doors to auton­o­my’: a day of work­shops, activ­i­ties and art­work on urban sur­vival – cred­it crunch­ing strate­gies for get­ting through hard times; from the legal­i­ties and prac­ti­cal­i­ties of squat­ting and resist­ing repossession/eviction & gen­tri­fi­ca­tion to urban for­ag­ing, a bike work­shop, tai chi & self-defence, screen­print­ing and DIY wire­less inter­net – this will be a day of shar­ing skills and build­ing the net­works to not only sur­vive the eco­nom­ic cri­sis but to begin to col­lec­tive­ly shape what may replace it; Sat­ur­day 29th Novem­ber, 11–6pm, the Red Fac­to­ry, Cave Street, St Pauls, Bris­tol

Bub­bling Under, Sun­day 30th Novem­ber, 1–4pm, Porter Cel­lar bar, George Street

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Wednes­day 3rd Decem­ber, 7.30–8.30pm, back room of The Bell

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 4th Decem­ber, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs Hob­gob­lin

Bath Green­peace meet­ing, Mon­day 8th Decem­ber, 7.30–9pm, Still­point, Broad Street Place

Tran­si­tion Bath Forum, Tues­day 9th Decem­ber, 7pm, Wid­combe Social Club

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 10th Decem­ber, 8.30pm, the Rum­mer, Grand Parade

Bath FreeShop, Sat­ur­day 13th Decem­ber, 12–3pm, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall Street

Tal­ly Ho-peless

Well, it’s Novem­ber again, so that means hunt­ing season’s back on, and anoth­er 3 or 4 months of pompous red-coat­ed throw­backs and legal grey areas. Although hunt­ing was offi­cial­ly banned in Feb­ru­ary 2005, it turned out to be the one law police chose not to enforce, and a law fraught with so many loop­holes that most hunts could car­ry on just like as they like – pre­tend­ing to fol­low a trail set by a scent­ed rag rather than a fox, when they’re being watched. And so the fine tra­di­tion of hunt sab­o­tage can’t hang up its mud-crust­ed wellies, just yet. On Sat­ur­day the 1st Novem­ber, a small group from Bath, Bris­tol, Pewsey and New­port kept an eye on the Mon­mouthshire Hunt, fol­low­ing leaked info about their meet­ing point. Using cit­ronel­la spray to mask fox scent, cam­eras to mon­i­tor activ­i­ty, and a com­bi­na­tion of hunt­ing horns, voice calls and whips (crack­ing the air, not phys­i­cal­ly strik­ing) to call off or con­fuse the hounds, a crisp autumn day out in the Welsh coun­try­side was enjoyed by all, espe­cial­ly the two pur­sued fox­es that we helped escape. If you want to help save inno­cent lives and reclaim rur­al space from arro­gant thugs, then become an Anti: ring Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs on 07854 062336.

http://hsa.enviroweb.org/hsa.shtml

Green Space: Going, Going, Gone?

Res­i­dents and greens held a protest in Bath on Sat­ur­day the 8th Novem­ber out­side the Guild­hall, hop­ing to save Bathamp­ton Mead­ows from unnec­es­sary devel­op­ment. Poten­tial­ly a vic­tim of yet anoth­er B&NES Coun­cil jobsworth’s twist­ed log­ic, the idea is we can save nature by killing it; in this case, the ancient mead­ow will make way for a 1,400 space Park and Ride con­crete job to abate traf­fic con­ges­tion and pol­lu­tion in the city cen­tre. The prob­lem here is that the main cause of con­ges­tion in Bath is the flow of east to west and west to east through traf­fic, rather than that of dri­vers com­ing into the city, so the Park & Ride will be bare­ly used and what­ev­er slack is saved will just be tak­en up by sup­pressed demand. The con­sul­ta­tion ends after the 14th Novem­ber and the con­sul­ta­tion form can be down­loaded from the Save Bathamp­ton Mead­ows’ site: http://www.savebathamptonmeadows.org.uk. Why not sign up today? It can’t hurt.

Alder-Nasty Antics

One activist from BAN joined 300 oth­ers from around the UK to block­ade the Alder­mas­ton Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment on Mon­day the 27th Octo­ber, part of the ongo­ing cam­paign to kick weapons of mass destruc­tion out of the UK. AWE Alder­mas­ton is the site where exper­i­ments for the next gen­er­a­tion of unpop­u­lar ‘Tri­dent’ nuclear sub­ma­rine arma­ments will be designed. A major part in this cost­ly scheme is expect­ed to be the ‘Ori­on’ laser facil­i­ty, cur­rent­ly being built. The MoD has also recent­ly applied for plan­ning per­mis­sion to car­ry out ura­ni­um enrich­ment there, too. Pro­test­ers from as far afield as Scot­land, Lon­don, Nor­folk, Ply­mouth and Yeovil took part, meet­ing to plan actions the day before. At 5.30am, activists locked on to bar­rels of con­crete and blocked the first gate, caus­ing police to prompt­ly close the road. Anoth­er group of Green­ham women (Green­ham Com­mon being a famous and long-lived peace camp, run­ning 1981–2000) took a sec­ond, while sev­er­al oth­er groups locked and super­glued them­selves to Tadley gate, the main entrance for fac­tor work­ers. The main gate itself was also held for a short time. Both the Rinky Dink ped­al-pow­ered sound sys­tem and band Seize The Day also showed up. Work at the fac­to­ry was shut down most of the morn­ing, and 33 were charged with Obstruc­tion of the High­way. As usu­al, the state refus­es to heed pub­lic oppo­si­tion to Tri­dent: the cam­paign to shut them down con­tin­ues!

www.tridentploughshares.org

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When You Threat­en One, You Threat­en All!

So read the ban­ner flut­ter­ing from the win­dow of the 89 Ash­ley Road squat in Bris­tol as bailiffs last week clam­oured at the door to evict the 20 res­i­dents who call the long dis­used build­ing ‘home’. This came as a sur­prise to res­i­dents who had not been served the manda­to­ry 7‑day notice of evic­tion a land­lord is required to pro­vide. What hap­pened next, and what of the sen­ti­men­tal mes­sage adorn­ing the front of the build­ing? Before we find out, a lit­tle look into the his­to­ry, and intend­ed future of the build­ing, those inside, and those who hope to get rich off it. Owned by prop­er­ty devel­op­ers ‘Places for Peo­ple’, the build­ing has been ear­marked for ‘regen­er­a­tion’ (read — gen­tri­fi­ca­tion) along with the sur­round­ing area. Despite the group’s claims that they are pri­mar­i­ly con­vert­ing homes into assist­ed accom­mo­da­tion for the home­less and elder­ly, Ash­ley Road is ear­marked to be turned into lucra­tive pri­vate flats, while the ‘char­i­ta­ble’ group is hap­py to allow oth­er­wise home­less peo­ple to be turfed out into the street at the begin­ning of win­ter. After res­i­dents saw the bailiffs, a call for sup­port was put out, and with­in an hour, around 50 activists, some from Bath, had descend­ed on Ash­ley Road, mak­ing the ille­gal evic­tion a logis­ti­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty. After a tense stand­off, the bailiffs and their police mates left, deject­ed. A vic­to­ry for sol­i­dar­i­ty, and a reprieve for the inhab­i­tants of Ash­ley Road. While the bailiffs will cer­tain­ly return soon, and may in the future be suc­cess­ful in their evic­tion attempts, the response of peo­ple to the fate of the squat demon­strates the pow­er of sol­i­dar­i­ty and col­lec­tive action over the often over­whelm­ing seem­ing forces of author­i­ty and pow­er.

Uncle Bul­gar­ia Weeps

Regret­tably, the Bath Bomb has just learnt about the demise of yet anoth­er of Bath’s great­est insti­tu­tions: Envolve. Who? Under the mot­to ‘Part­ner­ships in Sus­tain­abil­i­ty’, the for­mer envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ty start­ed out 14 years ago as the Bath Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre on Mil­som Street, and did exact­ly what it said on the recy­cled and biodegrad­able tin. Orig­i­nal­ly a resource for green activists and curi­ous passers­by, the cen­tre got too big for its boots, and moved to larg­er premis­es in the sub­ter­ranean tun­nel com­plex beneath Green Park Sta­tion – now depen­dent not just on its bene­fac­tors but also on state fund­ing. But such pay­outs rarely come with­out strings, and that proved the centre’s down­fall. Becom­ing more and more cor­po­rate, Envolve began a cam­paign of ostracism towards its more prag­mat­ic sup­port­ers, who recog­nise that ‘green cap­i­tal­ism’ is a con­tra­dic­tion in terms – they let go of staff and vol­un­teers deemed too rad­i­cal; arbi­trar­i­ly chose between which local cam­paigns have a right to be adver­tised or not; and then, one-by-one, kicked out use­ful but unprof­itable ini­tia­tives, like the green library, farm­ers’ mar­ket offices, meet­ing spaces for local greens, alter­na­tive trans­port offices, car-free schemes and food co-ops – after all, it doesn’t pay to be green. All that remained in the end was busi­ness con­sul­tants, edu­ca­tion offi­cers and a string of com­mu­ni­ty schemes they didn’t quite have the heart to grind out: a text­book exam­ple of state co-option. Hav­ing com­man­deered and neutered yet anoth­er group of poten­tial world-chang­ers, they then cut the fund­ing alto­geth­er – and that was that. The irony is that Envolve was held up entire­ly by com­pas­sion­ate peo­ple ham­strung by the restric­tive con­di­tions of their fund­ing, danc­ing to the master’s tune… but the road to hell is paved with good inten­tions. We here at the Bath Bomb hate to say I told you so, but… Let’s hope their suc­ces­sors, the Eth­i­cal Prop­er­ty Com­pa­ny, don’t go the same way.

Bath Activist Net­work are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce The Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

Danc­ing On The Grave Of Cap­i­tal­ism

It is not just in Bath that peo­ple are get­ting angry about hav­ing to pay for a cri­sis caused by politi­cians and big busi­ness. Cardiff, Bris­tol, Edin­burgh and Lon­don have also already seen mass action against the finan­cial cri­sis. In Lon­don, the finan­cial dis­trict has twice been invad­ed by hun­dreds of angry peo­ple demand­ing that the gov­ern­ment stops using our mon­ey to bail out fail­ing big busi­ness. The first Lon­don demo saw the police tak­en by sur­prise as hun­dreds showed their anger in the finan­cial dis­trict, attempt­ing, and only nar­row­ly fail­ing, to occu­py the Bank of Eng­land. The sec­ond demo, called on Hallowe’en and billed as a chance to ‘dance on the grave of cap­i­tal­ism’ saw a larg­er turnout of both police and pro­test­ers and end­ed in clash­es as peo­ple tried to make their way to the offices of recent­ly bank­rupt­ed firm Lehman Broth­ers. Up and down the coun­try, peo­ple are show­ing their dis­gust about a sys­tem that has failed us, and leaves us poor­er and poor­er while the rich con­tin­ue to get rich­er. At both Lon­don demos, stock­bro­kers promised to vio­lent­ly con­front pro­test­ers who dared to speak out about the sys­tem that keeps them rich and us poor, but, on both occa­sions, failed to mate­ri­alise. We can only imag­ine they are flick­ing the last of the white pow­der from their nos­trils, wip­ing a tear from their eyes, push­ing the ‘top floor’ but­ton on the lift and won­der­ing how their lit­tle game has gone so bad­ly wrong.

And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of each con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat on. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor…

For fur­ther info on any of our sto­ries see www.myspace.com/bathbomb

Activists in Dublin renamed the street where the Shell office is after Ken Saro Wiwa

Sur­pris­ing­ly, many streets in Dublin, cap­i­tal of the Repub­lic of Ire­land, are still named after heroes of monar­chy and colo­nial­ism.

Ken Saro-Wiwa Street sign replacement, DublinSur­pris­ing­ly, many streets in Dublin, cap­i­tal of the Repub­lic of Ire­land, are still named after heroes of monar­chy and colo­nial­ism.

Ade­laide Road, which is home to the main entrance of Shel­l’s Irish head office as well as the gov­ern­ment depart­ment which hands out licences for the exploita­tion of Irish gas and oil reserves, is named after Queen Ade­laide, the unfor­tu­nate Ger­man princess who mar­ried the Eng­lish King William IV (he already had a mis­tress and ten chil­dren).

At the week­end, oppo­nents of Shel­l’s activ­i­ties in Ire­land and around the world took the deci­sion to rename the street after Ken Saro-Wiwa. He was the leader, until his death, of the Move­ment for the Sur­vival of the Ogo­ni Peo­ple and a fierce crit­ic of Shel­l’s destruc­tion of the Niger Delta and its peo­ple.

Ken Saro Wiwa and eight oth­ers were exe­cut­ed by hang­ing in Port Har­court prison on Novem­ber 10th 1995. The Niger­ian gov­ern­ment claimed he was guilty of con­spir­a­cy to mur­der, but exec­u­tives from Shell pri­vate­ly admit­ted that they were behind the pros­e­cu­tion, tri­al and exe­cu­tion of Saro-Wiwa and the oth­ers.

You can see a short video of the chang­ing of the signs here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBHp–u4QVk

and a few more pic­tures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24935400@N06/sets/72157608792269359/

rememberkensarowiwa@gmail.com
http://www.remembersarowiwa.com

Manchester Students remember Ken Saro-Wiwa in University Shell protest

Stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter held a memo­r­i­al protest in remem­brance of Niger­ian human rights activists who were killed by the Niger­ian mil­i­tary in 1995. The protest high­light­ed the new part­ner­ship to research bio­fu­els between the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter and Shell.

Shell logo burningStu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter held a memo­r­i­al protest in remem­brance of Niger­ian human rights activists who were killed by the Niger­ian mil­i­tary in 1995. The protest high­light­ed the new part­ner­ship to research bio­fu­els between the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter and Shell.

STUDENTS HANG MEMORIAL EFFIGY IN UNIVERSITY SHELL PROTEST

Mon­day 10th Novem­ber 2008

Stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter held a memo­r­i­al protest in remem­brance of a Niger­ian human rights activist who were killed by the Niger­ian mil­i­tary in 1995. Novem­ber 10th marked the 13th anniver­sary of the exe­cu­tion of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight oth­er activists.[1]

Shell oil com­pa­ny will be tak­en to court this Feb­ru­ary 2009, charged with com­plic­i­ty in his mur­der. ( http://www.unpo.org/content/view/8792/236/)

The protest high­light­ed the new part­ner­ship between the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter and Shell. [2] (www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/business/s/1068530_shell_and_manchester_universitys_biofuels_project)

The group held ban­ners read­ing ‘Remem­ber Ken Saro-Wiwa mur­dered on behalf of Shell on 13th of Novem­ber 1995’ and ‘Shell oper­at­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter’ out­side the Man­ches­ter Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Bio­cen­tre. They also dis­played an effi­gy of Ken Saro-Wiwa as a pow­er­ful reminder of the exe­cu­tion of the envi­ron­men­tal and human rights activist.

Phi­los­o­phy stu­dent Gabriel Has­san said, “Until Shell sort out their human rights record and stop dev­as­tat­ing the envi­ron­ment with their oil projects they have no busi­ness being on cam­pus. Ken Saro-Wiwa was a man who stood up to the ruin brought upon his peo­ple in Nige­ria by Shell and for that Shell had him hung. This is the kind of the thing that the uni­ver­si­ty was always going to turn a blind eye to though.”

The group asked if some­one from the Insti­tu­tion could explain the eth­i­cal prob­lems con­cern­ing the University’s part­ner­ship with Shell but were told to speak to the University’s press office. The press office sug­gest­ed writ­ing a let­ter to Pres­i­dent and Vice-Chan­cel­lor Alan Gilbert. The group will deliv­er an open let­ter to the Vice-Chan­cel­lor ask­ing for an expla­na­tion.

Secu­ri­ty were called and removed the ban­ners from the Uni­ver­si­ty build­ing wall. Some stu­dents remained to fly­er out­side. Mean­while anoth­er group retrieved the ban­ner and dis­played them high up on a lamp­post on the oth­er side of the build­ing on Princess Street.

The stu­dent group held a dis­cus­sion on the role of Shell in the Niger Delta and Ross­port lat­er that evening attend­ed by around 100 peo­ple.

( http://www.corribsos.com/)

—————————————————————————
NOTES TO THE EDITOR

[1] Ken Saro-Wiwa was a leader in the protest against the dev­as­ta­tion of the Ogo­ni peo­ple’s home­land in Nige­ria caused by oil extrac­tion projects run by Shell and Chevron. For more infor­ma­tion about Ken Saro-Wiwa and the cir­cum­stances of his exe­cu­tion vis­it http://www.remembersarowiwa.com/

[2] Shell is one of 17 com­pa­nies work­ing with The Cen­tre of Excel­lence in Bio­catal­y­sis, Bio­trans­for­ma­tions and Bio­cat­alyt­ic Man­u­fac­ture (CoEBio3) based at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter. See http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/archive/list/item/?id=3983&year=2008&month=09 and http://www.student-direct.co.uk/2008/10/shelling-out/ for more infor­ma­tion.

Man­ches­ter Cam­paigns Col­lec­tive
mcrcampaignscollective@gmail.com

Climate Change Activists Occupy EONs Coventry Headquarters

Mon­day Novem­ber 10th saw a noisy, 45 min­utes long, office occu­pa­tion and an attempt­ed ban­ner drop at EONs head­quar­ters in Coven­try in protest against plans to build Kingsnorth coal fired pow­er sta­tion. Four activists were arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass.

Mon­day Novem­ber 10th saw a noisy, 45 min­utes long, office occu­pa­tion and an attempt­ed ban­ner drop at EONs head­quar­ters in Coven­try in protest against plans to build Kingsnorth coal fired pow­er sta­tion. Four activists were arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass.

On the after­noon of Novem­ber 10th, cli­mate change activists’ occu­pied EONs Coven­try head­quar­ters in protest against plans to renew Kingsnorth coal fired pow­er sta­tion. Activists’ entered the build­ing at around 2.30pm and con­duct­ed a noise protest for around 45 min­utes, caus­ing work to be severe­ly dis­rupt­ed. There was a direct con­fronta­tion with EON man­age­ment when they attend­ed the scene of the protest. A sep­a­rate team simul­ta­ne­ous­ly attempt­ed to scale the out­side of the build­ing and drop a ban­ner from the roof read­ing ‘no new coal’. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, one activist fell dur­ing the climb and broke his ankle, lead­ing to the ban­ner drop being abort­ed. Four activists were arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass. Two were released with­out charge, and two have been bailed with­out charge until late Novem­ber.

EON was specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed because their plan to build Kingsnorth severe­ly under­mines efforts to fight cli­mate change. Accord­ing to the Inter­na­tion­al Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC), in order to avoid aver­age glob­al tem­per­a­ture ris­es of more than 2 degrees Cel­sius since 2000, the lim­it of what the plan­et can tol­er­ate before feed­back cycles make cli­mate change cat­a­clysmic (ref1), glob­al CO2 emis­sions need to start to fall before 2015 (ref 2). In order to achieve this we need a mas­sive reduc­tion in ener­gy con­sump­tion, a move to renew­able ener­gy sources and micro-gen­er­a­tion of ener­gy. In this cli­mate build­ing a coal fired pow­er sta­tion, burn­ing the dirt­i­est form of ener­gy avail­able, is sui­ci­dal.

EON have been attempt­ing to green­wash their plans to build Kingsnorth, claim­ing that the addi­tion of Car­bon diox­ide Cap­ture and Stor­age (CCS) tech­nol­o­gy will make the pow­er plant more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly.

How­ev­er, it is unclear whether Kingsnorth is even due to be fit­ted with CCS, as EON have made no guar­an­tee that if a bid for gov­ern­ment fund­ing to fit the tech­nol­o­gy fails, they will finance it them­selves (ref 3).
Even if Kingsnorth is fit­ted with CCS, the effi­cien­cy of this process is dubi­ous in that CCS itself uses up to 40% of the ener­gy pro­duced by the pow­er sta­tion, depend­ing on the method (ref 4). Addi­tion­al­ly, only 20% of the sta­tion would be fit­ted with CCS, mean­ing the oth­er 80% would be emit­ting CO2 as nor­mal. There­fore, Kingsnorth would still pro­duce almost twice as much CO2 as a gas pow­er plant gen­er­at­ing the equiv­a­lent amount of elec­tric­i­ty (ref 5), and of course mas­sive­ly more CO2 than from renew­able sources.

The gov­ern­ment is due to make a deci­sion on whether to approve plans to build Kingsnorth in the near future, which would be the first new coal fired pow­er sta­tion to be built in the UK for over 30 years (ref 6). If approved, EON will face resis­tance not only at the Kingsnorth site, but also around the coun­try as demon­strat­ed by last Monday’s action.

(ref 1) ‘Too late to avoid glob­al warm­ing,’ say sci­en­tists The Inde­pen­dant, 19th Sep­tem­ber 2007, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/too-late-to-avoid-global-warming-say-scientists-402800.html

(ref 2) ‘Too late to avoid glob­al warm­ing,’ say sci­en­tists The Inde­pen­dant , 19th Sep­tem­ber 2007, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/too-late-to-avoid-global-warming-say-scientists-402800.html

(ref 3) Green­peace Press Release, ‘White­hall emails reveal gov­ern­ment cli­mate pol­i­cy being dic­tat­ed by Ger­man util­i­ty giant’, 31 Jan­u­ary 2008, http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/press-releases/government-climate-policy-dictated-by-german-utility-giant-20080131 viewed 17/3/08

(ref 4) Fred Pearce “clean­ing up coal” New Sci­en­tist 29/03/2008

(ref 5)World Devel­op­ment Move­ment “Kingsnorth Your Ques­tions Answered”

(ref 6) Green­peace UK shuts down coal fired pow­er sta­tion Green­peace Inter­na­tion­al News 8/10/2007 http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/kingsnorth-coal-plant-protest071008

Anti-incinerator protest staged

The SCAI who are try­ing to stop an incin­er­a­tor being built in south Oxford­shire have held a protest out­side Coun­ty Hall. The site at Sut­ton Courte­nay near Did­cot is one of two being con­sid­ered by Oxford­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil.

Anti-incinerator protest stagedThe SCAI who are try­ing to stop an incin­er­a­tor being built in south Oxford­shire have held a protest out­side Coun­ty Hall. The site at Sut­ton Courte­nay near Did­cot is one of two being con­sid­ered by Oxford­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil.

One of the cam­paign­ers, Cal­lum MacKen­zie, said they did not want to see an incin­er­a­tor built any­where in the Oxford­shire area.

The pro­test­ers also hand­ed over a peti­tion against the plans. “We are opposed to incin­er­a­tion, not just in Sut­ton Courte­nay, but in Oxford­shire,” said Mr MacKen­zie.

“We are not talk­ing of what we can get out of this as a result of it com­ing here. We are talk­ing about it not com­ing here full stop.”

More careers fair antics — Cambridge, Birmingham, Oxford — update: RBS & e.on no-shows

Update: RBS did­n’t turn up to a Cam­bridge careers fair and e.on have giv­en a few a miss now — keep on going folks, there’ll be lots of oth­er mur­der­ous com­pa­nies com­ing your way…

–

Career­ing Down­wards, cour­tesy of Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty!

Make a living not a killing bannersUpdate: RBS did­n’t turn up to a Cam­bridge careers fair and e.on have giv­en a few a miss now — keep on going folks, there’ll be lots of oth­er mur­der­ous com­pa­nies com­ing your way…

–

Career­ing Down­wards, cour­tesy of Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty!
5th Novem­ber 2008
Today and tomor­row, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty are host­ing a Careers Fair, which seems to com­prise a mot­ley col­lec­tion of arms man­u­fac­tur­ers, plan­et wreck­ers and Vivi­sec­tion­ists.

To high­light just how dubi­ous many of the exhibitors at this event are, some activists decid­ed to go along today.

Despite the extreme­ly fluffy actions under­tak­en by activists, which were hand­ing out fly­ers to vis­i­tors (for a while inside the venue as well as on the road out­side), and dis­play­ing ban­ners, there was a high pres­ence not only of the expect­ed Proc­tors, but also many police, includ­ing a FIT team who made a point of pho­tograph­ing every­one while they were there, but seemed to be strange­ly cam­era shy them­selves.

Appar­ent­ly ear­li­er in the day there were at least two van loads of police in atten­dance, although by the time activists arrived in num­bers they had gone, with ‘just’ sev­er­al cars hav­ing a vis­i­ble pres­ence there all of the after­noon, includ­ing (I wit­nessed) the search­ing of some­one’s Gui­tar case at the door!

——-

Stu­dents Dying to Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment

Last Fri­day (31st Octo­ber) stu­dents from Keele, BCU, Birm­ing­ham, War­wick and Aston Peo­ple and Plan­et groups staged a die-in at Roy­al Bank of Scot­land’s stall in the Grad­u­ate Recruit­ment Fair at the NEC in Birm­ing­ham. It was the lat­est in a series of actions as part of Peo­ple and Plan­et’s Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment Cam­paign tar­get­ing RBS at careers’ fairs and pre­sen­ta­tions at uni­ver­si­ties around the coun­try.

Stu­dents grit­ted their teeth through the secu­ri­ty checks into the careers’ fair are­na, as well as resist­ing the temp­ta­tion to tar­get oth­er com­pa­nies in a who’s who of uneth­i­cal com­pa­nies (includ­ing defence con­trac­tors such as BAE Sys­tems, and the Arca­dia Group own­ers of noto­ri­ous sweat­shop high street brand Top­shop) before con­gre­gat­ing at the RBS stall. At an agreed time the stu­dents per­formed a mass die-in in and around the stall, dying on oil slicks to make the point about oil extrac­tion and cli­mate change already killing those in devel­op­ing coun­tries.

Secu­ri­ty arrived prompt­ly to remove pro­test­ers from the scene, pro­test­ers singing “Oil and Gas RBS” as they were removed from the fair. Some stu­dents were then ques­tioned by secu­ri­ty and the police, while oth­ers were tak­en out­side and told to protest in a spe­cial­ly pre­pared pen out­side the main entrance. Those being ques­tioned were then removed from the premise, one was even threat­ened with arrest by police offi­cers in order for them to obtain their name and address, and were informed that should they return they would be arrest­ed, on rather legal­ly dubi­ous grounds.

Those in the “protest pen” out­side were sub­ject­ed to snif­fer dog checks of bags for explo­sives, and also of per­sons for drugs in an attempt to try and pin more on the protest­ing stu­dents. Once this ordeal had been endured, with no short­age of cyn­i­cal humour and grit­ted teeth, the remain­ing stu­dents con­tin­ued to protest out­side, and, despite a secu­ri­ty pres­ence, attempts to stop stu­dents using a mega­phone, not being allowed to leave the pen with­out an escort, man­aged to engage mem­bers of the pass­ing pub­lic in the cam­paign. Spir­its were kept high with chants and songs before stu­dents decid­ed to end the protest and were escort­ed out of the area by secu­ri­ty.

While those who took part were sat­is­fied with the day’s protest­ing, police offi­cers ques­tion­ing and threat­en­ing par­tic­i­pants with arrest as well as the use of snif­fer dogs rep­re­sents was a wor­ry­ing devel­op­ment, espe­cial­ly in response to what was essen­tial­ly a very fluffy direct action protest. How­ev­er, protests against RBS at careers events will con­tin­ue no mat­ter how much they hide behind secu­ri­ty and police. The cam­paign con­tin­ues.…

Some of the exhibitors include…

Proc­tor & Gam­ble (vivi­sec­tion fun­ders)

Eon (Pro Nuclear and Coal pow­er)

Rolls Royce (Arms Man­u­fac­tur­ers, spon­sors of Uni­ver­si­ty Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment)

Shell (arche­typ­al oil green­wash­ers)

…And many more besides.

It would seem that despite pre­vi­ous years’ Careers Fairs also hav­ing activists in atten­dance, due to the moral bank­rupt­cy of the com­pa­nies being booked for said event, the Uni­ver­si­ty still has­n’t fig­ured out that it’s actu­al­ly bet­ter for their wider rep­u­ta­tion to dis­play some ethics in their book­ing choic­es for such an event.

You could always come along and see it for your­self, as it’s open again Thurs­day after­noon (Novem­ber 6th), by The Mill Pond at The Grad­u­ate Cen­tre, although if you’re not a Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Stu­dent, you may get ID’ed.

——-

E.ON Recruiters Tar­get­ed AGAIN — in Oxford

6.11.2008
Cli­mate-trash­ing ener­gy mon­sters E.ON con­tin­ued their nation­al recruit­ment tour with a stall at the Oxford Careers Fair today. They seemed mis­er­able but not sur­prised when a group of local activists turned up too…

This after­noon, Oxford Town Hall played host to a thrilling smor­gas­bord of uneth­i­cal cor­po­rate recruiters, at the “Sci­ence, Engi­neer­ing and IT Careers Fair”. BAe, AWE, npow­er, BP, Proc­tor & Gam­ble, and the Army were all in atten­dance, but it was coal-burn­ing cli­mate rene­gades E.ON who were in the spot­light today.

Over the last few weeks they’ve been tar­get­ed by activists at careers fairs across the land, and today was no excep­tion. A group of cam­paign­ers from Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action were in atten­dance, mak­ing sure that every­one at the fair had an anti-brain­wash­ing leaflet detail­ing what E.ON were real­ly up to (with more gen­er­al infor­ma­tion on the oth­er side about evil cor­po­rate recruiters, so the rest of them did­n’t feel neglect­ed). The recruiters wast­ed plen­ty of time talk­ing to under­cov­er activists, and every gen­uine stu­dent who vis­it­ed the stall got a friend­ly chat from a cam­paign­er as well.

Even­tu­al­ly, though, the shiny cor­po­rate dis­plays all got too much to bear, and some more action was required. E.ON were (loud­ly) pre­sent­ed with a fan­tas­tic prize for the most egre­gious piece of green­wash on dis­play (despite some stiff com­pe­ti­tion): their dis­play read “Tack­ling cli­mate change isn’t some­thing that’s tacked onto our agen­da. It’s at the heart of our busi­ness” (oh, for a bit of paint to remove the word “tack­ling”). Their prize? A fan­tas­tic bag of (char)coal, scat­tered all over their stall, and the sight of the pro­test­ers being firm­ly escort­ed from the build­ing, still loud­ly detail­ing E.ON’s activ­i­ties, much to the enter­tain­ment of the watch­ing crowd.

The activists then spent some time dish­ing out the rest of their leaflets out­side the fair — we’ll post the leaflet here in case any­one else wants to use it (we cribbed bits of it from the Not­ting­ham careers fair leaflet, so let’s keep shar­ing it all around!).

Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action
oxford@climatecamp.org.uk
http://tvca.atspace.com

John Gormley interrupted by Plane Mad

Novem­ber 5, 2008

Novem­ber 5, 2008
Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley was inter­rupt­ed dur­ing his speech to the Green Infra­struc­ture con­fer­ence this morn­ing in Malahide. The envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign group Plane Mad dis­rupt­ed the con­fer­ence to express their oppo­si­tion to anoth­er run­way at Dublin Air­port. The group oppose the run­way on the grounds that it will dou­ble the air­craft emis­sions at the air­port. These emis­sions play a dan­ger­ous part in caus­ing cli­mate change. Two activists dressed as car­toon crim­i­nals mimed build­ing a run­way around the podi­um that Gorm­ley was speak­ing from. Air­craft noise was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly played from the back of the room. One of the “crim­i­nals” moved among the audi­ence pass­ing out infor­ma­tion about the pro­posed new run­way form his bag of “swag”. The min­is­ter was also pre­sent­ed with a let­ter by the group which he accept­ed.

The activists were dressed as crim­i­nals to rep­re­sent the crime that it would be if Fin­gal Coun­ty Coun­cil and the Dublin Air­port Authority(DAA) were allowed to dou­ble capac­i­ty at Dublin Air­port. The activists had “DAA-CLIMATE CRIMINALS” writ­ten on their backs.

Min­is­ter Gorm­ley said that he agreed with them on this issue, indeed he had men­tioned the “seri­ous threat” of cli­mate change sev­er­al times in his speech. After the cam­paign­ers had made their point they were peace­ful­ly escort­ed out of the con­fer­ence suite and Mr Gorm­ley was allowed to con­tin­ue. Despite all he says Plane Mad con­tin­ue to be dis­ap­point­ed that nei­ther John Gorm­ley or his par­ty are clear or vocal enough in their oppo­si­tion to expan­sion at Dublin Air­port.

Ian Clot­wor­thy, one of car­toon crim­i­nals, said
“Fin­gal Coun­ty Coun­cil are not fit hosts for a green infra­struc­ture con­fer­ence when one of the least “green” pieces of infra­struc­ture in Ire­land is cur­rent­ly being built at Dublin Air­port.”
“We sup­port “UPROAR” in their cam­paign against this sec­ond run­way and we oppose it our­selves because of the con­tri­bu­tion of avi­a­tion emis­sions to cli­mate change”

UPROAR (Unit­ed Port­marnock res­i­dents oppos­ing anoth­er run­way) have been oppos­ing the con­struc­tion of a 2nd run­way for 8 years, since 2000. 850 peo­ple from the area object­ed to the run­way after the cam­paign was launched around Christ­mas 2000. UPROAR were ini­tial­ly extreme­ly suc­cess­ful in that the Inspec­tor review­ing the Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment (EIS) and all the infor­ma­tion avail­able about the planned devel­op­ment found in favour of the objec­tors. The Inspec­tor rec­om­mend­ed that the plan­ning appli­ca­tion be refused on main­ly on the issue of noise pol­lu­tion and com­mu­ni­ty wel­fare. Her deci­sion how­ev­er, was over­turned by An Bord Pleanala.

Tara Shee­hy of Plane Mad who was also in the con­fer­ence suit in Malahide said,
“Dou­bling capac­i­ty at Dublin Air­port will also dou­ble the amount of emis­sions. Spend­ing mon­ey in an eco­nom­ic down­turn on such a project of pol­lu­tion is mad­ness.”

The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency allo­cat­ed just over 20,000 tonnes CO2 equiv­a­lent for each of the years 2005, 2006 and 2007 to Dublin Air­port. This is only 1% of the 2 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 (at least), emit­ted by Dublin Air­port’s 21 mil­lion pas­sen­gers.

On a day when even Amer­i­ca can elect a pres­i­dent who claims to under­stand the impor­tance of cli­mate change, Plane Mad would like to see this “Green-tinged” gov­ern­ment halt their air­port expan­sion plans. Plane Mad will con­tin­ue to fight the sec­ond run­way until it is stopped.

http://www.planemad.org

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 84, OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, Oct/Nov 08
2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08
6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, Oct/Nov 08
2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08
6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08
7) Nation­al Cli­mate March, 06.12.08
8) Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
9) Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-
1) Towards Copen­hagen 2009 – the first glob­al gath­er­ing, 13/14.09.08
2) Coal pow­er sta­tion block­ad­ed in Vir­ginia, USA, 15.09.08
3) Ross­port — Soli­taire leaves Irish waters with no pipeline laid! 20.09.08
4) Flash­mob against air­port expan­sion a suc­cess! 23.09.08
5) Cli­mate Camp polic­ing con­demned, 30.09.08 & 28.10.08
6) Boston (US) Ris­ing Tide pay Citibank a vis­it, 7/10/08
7) Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp dam, 10.10.08
8) Par­lia­ment rushed by cli­mate activists, 13.10.08
9) Oxford stu­dents just say no to BP jobs, 14.10.08
10) Art Not Oil vis­it the NT and hoax boss Hyt­ner, 15.10.08
11) Pro­test­ers dis­rupt Euro­pean bio­fu­els sum­mit, 16.10.08
12) Scot­tish cli­mate activists tar­get Scot­tish First Min­is­ter, 16.10.08
13) Green­wash Guer­ril­las EDF Action, 22.10.08
14) Man­ches­ter stu­dents flash­mob RBS and E.On recruit­ment stalls, 23.10.08
15) Bar­clays’ coal invest­ments tar­get­ed in Leam­ing­ton Spa, 25.10.08
16) Pro­tes­tors stop work at Ship­ley open-cast; Ship­ley Bodge court case
col­laps­es, 27.10.08
17) The Rain­bow War­rior goes to Kingsnorth, 29.10.08
18) Bris­tol Uni­ver­si­ty Death Fair
19) Con­vey­er belt lock-on stops Aus­tralian coal pow­er sta­tion, 1.11.08

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-

1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, OCT/NOV 08
Cli­mate crim­i­nals are recruit­ing now, in a Uni­ver­si­ty near you. Find out when and where, as they have kind­ly post­ed their itin­er­aries online.
www.makeitrbs.com/events/

www.shell.com/home/content/gbr/aboutshell/careers/students_and_graduates/calendar_of_events/calendar_of_events_30052008.html

www.eon-uk.com/Careers/Graduates/807.aspx

Stuck for a direct action idea? Check out Ris­ing Tide’s “15 ways to top­ple
the Fos­sil Fuel Empire” on our web­site.

2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
The next Cli­mate Camp gath­er­ing will be in Brad­ford on the 8th and 9th Novem­ber. Come along and get involved.This month we will be in the fair city of Brad­ford, based up at the stu­dent union. Food will be pro­vid­ed by the deli­cious Tree­house Cafe and crash space will be near­by.

Large Group Facil­i­ta­tion Train­ing
Seeds for Change are run­ning a Large Group Facil­i­ta­tion Train­ing for Cli­mate Campers on Fri­day Novem­ber 7th in Leeds (just down the road from the gath­er­ing in Brad­ford), 11AM to 5.30 PM. Please email process at climatecamp.org.uk asap if you are inter­est­ed.

3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
Film screen­ing and fundrais­er at 7PM at LARC in Lon­don, 62 Fieldgate St, E1 1ES. On the 13th anniver­sary of the mur­der of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the rest of the Ogo­ni 9 by the Niger­ian state in 1995, with Shell in close cahoots, we will be remem­ber­ing what they fought for and what they died for. We’ll also be hear­ing about the inspi­ra­tional resis­tance of peo­ple around the world to Shel­l’s unfor­tu­nate­ly far from unique brand of destruc­tion, duplic­i­ty and over­all may­hem in the chase for ever-greater prof­its. There will be film screen­ings of ‘Those Who Dance’ and ‘Shad­ows and Light: Oil, Pow­er, and the Niger Delta’, inspi­ra­tional art on the walls and food and drink. Funds raised will go towards Art Not Oil’s new cam­paign against the Shell-spon­sored Oedi­pus pro­duc­tion cur­rent­ly run­ning at the Nation­al The­atre.

4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
The Uni­ver­si­ty of Birm­ing­ham — Shared Plan­et is the UK’s largest stu­dent con­fer­ence on world pover­ty, human rights and the envi­ron­ment. It brings hun­dreds of stu­dents togeth­er for a week­end packed with big-name speak­ers, skills and issue based work­shops, debates, dis­cus­sions, film and a mas­sive par­ty! http://peopleandplanet.org/events/sharedplanet

5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08

The UK Gov­ern­ment is call­ing for an 80% reduc­tion in car­bon emis­sions by 2050, we are call­ing for 48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal NOW. Join us in say­ing ‘No to New Coal’: get your friends togeth­er and plan an action for your area. Go stick­er­ing, blockad­ing, serv­ing direct action warn­ing notices at sup­ply chain premis­es, organ­ise an aware­ness rais­ing talk, hang a ban­ner, get cre­ative on the streets, the options are end­less. Get togeth­er, get cre­ative, and plan an action! For more infor­ma­tion vis­it — www.e‑onf-off.org — where a list of poten­tial tar­gets, action ideas and plen­ty of resources will fol­low short­ly.

6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08
Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 29h 2008 is Buy Noth­ing Day. It’s a day where you chal­lenge your­self to switch off from shop­ping and tune into life. The rules are sim­ple, for 24 hours you will detox from con­sumerism and live with­out shop­ping. Any­one can take part pro­vid­ed they spend a day with­out spend­ing – bet­ter yet, get togeth­er with some friends and chal­lenge con­sumer cul­ture direct­ly!
www.buynothingday.co.uk

7) Nation­al Cli­mate March, 06.12.08
March on Par­lia­ment to demand that the gov­ern­ment acts on cli­mate now! The march this year goes to Par­lia­ment Square to demand that the gov­ern­ment act now on cli­mate. The march will start at Speak­ers Cor­ner, Hyde Park — assem­ble 12 noon. The march will be pre­ceed­ed by a cli­mate protest bike ride start­ing from Lin­col­n’s Inn Fields at 10.30 am: see more here. There will be an After-Par­ty in the Syn­er­gy Cen­tre from 5.00 pm till late.!
www.campaigncc.org/index.shtml

8) Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
The Earth First! Win­ter Moot is a week­end to reflect on where we are as a rad­i­cal ecol­o­gist move­ment and on where we are going. The moot will be about dis­cussing strat­e­gy, strength­en­ing the EF! net­work, secu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tions and action plan­ning. A ses­sion is also reserved for dis­cussing a UK mobil­i­sa­tion for the UN cli­mate con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen late 2009. The moot will be held in Brighton (t.b.c.). Please check this web­site near­er to the time for fur­ther details and email any items you would like to add an item to the agen­da to moot2009 at earthfirst.org.uk.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21557

9) Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
Just in case you missed the news last month – Fos­sil Fools Day is back! Whether you’ve been look­ing for a chance to dip a toe into the grow­ing cli­mate action move­ment, or have had your kick-ass action planned since last year, now is the time to do it – what­ev­er it is. On April 1st, join the glob­al day of resis­tance and pull a prank that packs a punch. Call-out now avail­able on the web­site, so get spread­ing the word. Info and resources will be post­ed on the web­site soon, and look out for leaflets to dis­trib­ute in Decem­ber.
www.risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday2009

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RECENT HAPPENINGS:
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1) Towards Copen­hagen 2009 – the first glob­al gath­er­ing, 13/14.09.08
The first social move­ments’ meet­ing was from 13–14 Sep­tem­ber 2008, in a free school in Nor­rberg, host­ed by the Dan­ish move­ment Cli­maX (klimax2009.org). There were about 100 peo­ple present from 21 coun­tries around the world, and mobil­isa­ta­tions towards Decem­ber 2009 were well and tru­ly launched. For the call to action, trans­la­tions, and a per­son­al per­spec­tive on the meet­ing, see http://risingtide.org.uk/copenhagen. To get involved, send an email to cli­mate09-int-sub­scribe at list.riseup.net.

2) Coal pow­er sta­tion block­ad­ed in Vir­ginia, USA, 15.09.08
At 6:00am on Sep­tem­ber 15 around 40 peo­ple block­ad­ed the con­struc­tion site of Domin­ion Vir­gini­a’s Wise Coun­ty coal-fired pow­er sta­tion. Eleven pro­test­ers were arrest­ed after four hours. Pro­test­ers locked their bod­ies to eight large steel drums, two of which had oper­a­tional solar pan­els illu­mi­nat­ing a ban­ner that read “renew­able jobs to renew Appalachia.” In addi­tion, pro­test­ers held a 10’x30’ ban­ner, which said: “we demand a clean ener­gy future.”

3) Ross­port — Soli­taire leaves Irish waters with no pipeline laid! 20.09.08
On Fri­day the 20th Sep­tem­ber, the pipe lay­ing ship, the Soli­taire, final­ly left Irish waters. Dur­ing the ship’s time in Ire­land, Shell failed to lay any part of the off­shore pipe line. The depar­ture of the Soli­taire is a mas­sive vic­to­ry for the Shell to Sea cam­paign. Resis­tance in the past six weeks has tak­en many dif­fer­ent forms: fish­er­men pre­vent­ing the ship’s access to the bay by refus­ing to move from her path, site inva­sions by local peo­ple and the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, numer­ous water­borne actions to pre­vent work by sup­port­ers from oth­er parts of Ire­land and fur­ther afield, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty actions and final­ly, an 11 day hunger strike by local cam­paign­er Mau­ra Har­ring­ton, that con­tin­ued until the ship left Irish waters. The events of the last 6 weeks have inspired not only those involved, but also many who wit­nessed them from afar, new links and friend­ships have been forged and many lessons learned. In the after­math, the Shell to Sea cam­paign can clear­ly be seen to have been revi­tal­ized, both local­ly and nation­al­ly. It is unclear when the ship will attempt to return to Broad­haven Bay. It is pos­si­ble it could still be this year if repairs are quick and a suit­able weath­er win­dow appears, or it may not be until next spring. How­ev­er, while it may be uncer­tain exact­ly when the ship will return, what is cer­tain, is that it will meet even greater oppo­si­tion upon its next arrival. Come and be part of it! The Ross­port com­mu­ni­ty is call­ing on peo­ple every­where to put pres­sure on Shell, Allseas (the com­pa­ny that owns the Soli­taire) and Irish embassies to demand that the Soli­taire leaves Irish waters imme­di­ate­ly.

4) Flash­mob against air­port expan­sion a suc­cess! 23.09.08
Over 100 cam­paign­ers staged a colour­ful flash­mob against air­port expan­sion at mid­day today out­side Man­ches­ter Town Hall. The group includ­ed Lon­don cam­paign­ers opposed to the expan­sion of Heathrow. The flash­mob was timed to coin­cide with the Labour Par­ty Con­fer­ence. At 12.45 pre­cise­ly the cam­paign­ers stripped off to reveal red t‑shirts with the words ‘Stop Air­port Expan­sion’ embla­zoned across them. They then lay down to form the words ‘TAKE TRAINS’ with their bod­ies. The protest marked the pub­lic launch of the recent­ly formed ‘Stop Expan­sion at Man­ches­ter Air­port’.

5) Cli­mate Camp polic­ing con­demned, 30.09.08 & 28.10.08
A spokesman for Med­way Trades Union Coun­cil said “We have decid­ed to hold an inquiry into the Polic­ing of the Cli­mate Camp because of our con­cern over the lev­el of polic­ing and var­i­ous inci­dents such as a police­man in riot gear assault­ing a pro­test­er with a riot shield, as shown on TV, and oth­er alle­ga­tions includ­ing local cam­paign­ers being sub­ject­ed to pep­per spray and a local coun­cil­lor being pushed to the ground”

Also, in the House of Com­mons, MPs accused police of unnec­es­sary aggres­sion towards cli­mate campers. Home Office min­is­ters were told that offi­cers “pro­voked vio­lence against peace­ful pro­test­ers” and even arrest­ed some­one for “aggres­sive­ly pick­ing up lit­ter”.
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/09/409732.htm

6)Boston (US) Ris­ing Tide pay Citibank a vis­it, 7/10/08
Four activists chained them­selves to the front entrance of the Citibank branch in Har­vard Square, Cam­bridge. The action start­ed as a protest in front of the Bank of Amer­i­ca branch a block away before march­ing down the street to Citibank, where the four activists had already chained them­selves to the front door, clos­ing the bank for a peri­od of time. Over 150 peo­ple attend­ed the protest, while many more onlook­ers gath­ered in Har­vard Square. The action, using the tag-line “Not With Our Mon­ey”, was intend­ed to raise aware­ness of the con­nec­tions between the cur­rent finan­cial cri­sis and the impend­ing cli­mate cri­sis. Both Bank of Amer­i­ca and Citi Bank are respon­si­ble for fund­ing dirty coal pow­er that harms the envi­ron­ment, and engag­ing in preda­to­ry lend­ing prac­tices that are fuelling the fore­clo­sure cri­sis and have left fam­i­lies in Boston home­less. Sev­er­al groups were involved with the protest includ­ing Ris­ing Tide Boston and Rain­for­est Action Net­work, both envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice groups, and City Life/Vida Urbana, a ten­ants’ rights orga­ni­za­tion.

7) Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp dam, 10.10.08
A coali­tion of Kla­math Riv­er Indi­an tribes, fish­er­men, con­ser­va­tion­ists and local sup­port­ers (includ­ing Cas­ca­dia Ris­ing Tide) ramped up their cam­paign to remove four fish-killing dams on the riv­er today when they held a spir­it­ed protest in front of PacifiCorp’s head­quar­ters in Port­land. The “Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp” start­ed off at 8:30 a.m. on Sep­tem­ber 18th when local activists hung a ban­ner pro­claim­ing “War­ren Buf­fett Kills Salmon, Jobs and Com­mu­ni­ties” over Inter­state-84 in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Tribes. Around 200 peo­ple con­verged in front of Paci­fi­Corp for a press con­fer­ence. After the con­fer­ence, 70 peo­ple occu­pied the area in front of the head­quar­ters, effec­tive­ly shut­ting down the front entrance to Paci­fi­Corp as com­pa­ny staff locked the doors.

8) Par­lia­ment rushed by cli­mate activists, 13.10.08
Demand­ing deeds not words from the gov­ern­ment, 500 Cli­mate Rush­ers gath­ered in Par­lia­ment Square to cel­e­brate 100 years to the day since the Suf­fragettes rushed par­lia­ment demand­ing votes for women. After shar­ing tea and cake on the lawn of Par­lia­ment Square, men and women dressed in Edwar­dian garb became a lit­tle less civilised, and the doors of to Par­lia­ment were locked as cli­mate activists rushed the main entrance. Although no one got in, the sounds of pro­test­ers strik­ing the doors were clear­ly audi­ble from the inside.
www.climaterush.co.uk

9) Oxford stu­dents just say no to BP jobs, 14.10.08
Activists infil­trat­ed an attempt by BP to woo Oxford grad­u­ates at a top-notch hotel on Octo­ber 14th. One inter­rupt­ed the cheesy BP PR man’s pre­sen­ta­tion as he claimed that he ‘loved the coun­try­side’ — while putting the gloss on oil and gas explo­ration, extrac­tion and financ­ing — to ask, why then, has BP spent more on its green sun­flower rebrand­ing than on its annu­al renew­able ener­gy bud­get? Activists then gave their own pre­sen­ta­tion of BP’s activ­i­ties around the world, why major oil com­pa­nies are counter-pro­duc­tive to cli­mate change solu­tions, and why any tempt­ed grad­u­ates should recon­sid­er their career options. A mem­ber of Colom­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign gave a first hand account of BP’s com­plic­i­ty in envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion, sub­vert­ing peace­ful social move­ments and fund­ing death squads. A moment of stunned silence was fol­lowed by applause as the re-edu­cat­ed audi­ence aban­doned the shindig.

10)Art Not Oil vis­it the NT and hoax boss Hyt­ner, 15.10.08
After a vis­it to the the­atre (Dar­ling!), arty cli­mate activists cooked up a let­ter claim­ing to be from NT boss Nicholas Hyt­ner ques­tion­ing the use of oil spon­sor­ship in the arts. The NT were none too pleased about this and the ensu­ing row reached the let­ters pages of luvvie-week­ly “The Stage”(a first for the direct action move­ment?). Art not Oil ask: “We’re ask­ing peo­ple if they’re up for mak­ing an art­work of some kind as a response This could be an image, song, film or poem to appear on our web­site, or to be print­ed on a post­card or some­thing sim­i­lar. We’re open to ideas. (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we aren’t able to pay for your work, but we have no wish to pos­sess it!) If this is of inter­est, we’d love to see it as soon as pos­si­ble, as ‘Oedi­pus’ runs until Jan­u­ary 2009 only.”
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/10/411200.html and
http://www.thestage.co.uk/features/feature.php/22157/chit-chat-hytner-miss-or-maybe-an-attack-

11) Pro­test­ers dis­rupt Euro­pean bio­fu­els sum­mit, 16.10.08
On World Food Day, 16th Octo­ber, activists from Action Against Agro­fu­els dis­rupt­ed the Bio­fu­els Expo in Newark, one of the largest bio­fu­el indus­try con­fer­ences in Europe. Four ban­ners were dropped, as pro­test­ers climbed on the roof out­side the main entrance and on a ledge inside the main exhi­bi­tion hall, where they remained for over three hours. Rape alarms were set off across the exhi­bi­tion cen­tre. Ban­ners read “Agro­fu­els for cars and pow­er plants wors­en cli­mate change”, “Land-grab­bing for agro­fu­els caus­es hunger”, “Agro­fu­els — a cli­mate crime” and “Green­wash­ing hunger and defor­esta­tion”. Sep­a­rate­ly, Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents held a ban­ner and leaflet­ting protest out­side the con­fer­ence.

12) Scot­tish cli­mate activists tar­get Scot­tish First Min­is­ter, 16.10.08
At 4am, res­i­dents from Clyde­bank, Pais­ley, Kirk­lis­ton and Cra­mond peace­ful­ly set up a stereo and blast­ed aero­plane noise through the entrance of the First Min­is­ter’s pri­vate res­i­den­cy in Edin­burgh. The action stands as a protest ‘dawn cho­rus’ to high­light the expe­ri­ence of liv­ing life in the shad­ow of a grow­ing air­port. Iron­i­cal­ly, the stereo caused 110 deci­bels of noise — the equiv­a­lent of a jum­bo jet tak­ing off. For half an hour about ten res­i­dents sur­round­ed the build­ing dressed in bright paja­mas, night caps, clutch­ing ted­dy­bears, with ear defend­ers to dis­play the dan­ger­ous lev­els of noise pol­lu­tion endured by their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. Their plac­ards stat­ed “It’s time to wake up to the impacts of avi­a­tion” and “have a taste of your own med­i­cine”. The res­i­dents took these steps to state loud and clear to the First Min­is­ter, who holds ulti­mate say over the fate of the expan­sion plans, that he can­not ignore any of the effects of air­port expan­sion. These impacts include dan­ger­ous noise lev­els, ris­ing air pol­lu­tion, cli­mate change and increas­ing eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty dur­ing the cur­rent cred­it crunch.

13) Green­wash Guer­ril­las EDF Action, 22.10.08
Lon­don Ris­ing Tide’s Green­wash Gueril­las Brigade, Detec­tion Pla­toon #1, moved into action on Mon­day morn­ing, 22 Octo­ber, at 08:00 hours – tar­get­ing ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion Élec­tric­ité de France (EDF) at the cen­tral Lon­don head­quar­ters of their UK sub­sidiary EDF Ener­gy. EDF has recent­ly bought out British Ener­gy and have announced that they plan to build 4 new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in the UK in the com­ing years. Inspired by our coun­ter­parts in France demon­strat­ing against new nuclear pow­er, we chose to tar­get EDF’s attempts to mus­cle in their FALSE nuclear solu­tion to the loom­ing dis­as­ter of cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate chaos. Our action (con­sist­ing of 12 Green­wash Gueril­las) high­light­ed the dan­gers of nuclear pow­er to the bios­phere, human­i­ty, and REAL renew­able ener­gy solu­tions.

14) Man­ches­ter stu­dents flash­mob RBS and E.On Recruit­ment Stalls, 23.10.08
A busy careers fair at Man­ches­ter’s GMex was inter­rupt­ed yes­ter­day by sev­er­al long whis­tle blasts. 30 or so pro­tes­tors sud­den­ly revealed their yel­low ‘Leave it in the Ground’ t‑shirts and sur­round­ed the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land stall, hold­ing ban­ners and chant­i­ng ‘leave it in the ground!’. A pro­tes­tor then read some extracts from the excel­lent report “Cash­ing in on Coal”, which shows that RBS is a cli­mate crim­i­nal, pour­ing mon­ey into new fos­sil fuel extrac­tion projects. The secu­ri­ty guards even­tu­al­ly began drag­ging pro­tes­tors out so they did­n’t get a chance to vis­it the E.ON stall. How­ev­er the protest con­tin­ued out­side where peo­ple hand­ed out leaflets explain­ing how E.ON (with a fat loan from RBS) plans to build the first new coal pow­er sta­tion in the UK in 30 years, while secu­ri­ty guards repeat­ed­ly threat­ened to have them arrest­ed for tres­pass­ing.

15) Bar­clays’ coal invest­ments tar­get­ed in Leam­ing­ton Spa, 25.10.08
Leam­ing­ton Ris­ing Tide took aim at a town cen­tre Bar­clays on Sat­ur­day 25 Octo­ber 2008 in protest at the bank’s heavy invest­ment in dirty coal. Ban­ners, leaflets and bal­loons let peo­ple know that ‘Bar­clays are fuelling glob­al warm­ing’. One of the ban­ners used an image of scales to demol­ish the myth that Bar­clays cares about cli­mate change: they invest a whop­ping 3,300 mil­lion invest­ed in coal against 15 mil­lion in renew­able tech on the oth­er. Over the last two years, Bar­clays has been involved in 17 sep­a­rate loans to the coal indus­try, and togeth­er with RBS and HSBC, has loaned $70 bil­lion to E.ON alone.

16) Pro­tes­tors stop work at Ship­ley open-cast; Ship­ley Bodge court case col­laps­es, 27.10.08
Pro­tes­tors from Earth First! stopped work at an open-cast coal site for over two hours – they ran onto the site and clam­bered on dig­gers & dumpers and held out ban­ners stop­ping the work safe­ly. Some of the dig­ger dri­vers were very friend­ly and were glad to have a break as they work very long shifts, from 7am‑6:30 with only lunch & half hour breaks at 10 & 3. Today work had not been able to start till 10 as nature was fight­ing its own cor­ner, with rain drown­ing the site, and it was stopped again at 1 for 3 hours due to the protest.

Mean­while, the first court case aris­ing from the evic­tion of Bodge House, Ship­ley, where pro­test­ers occu­pied the site of the pro­posed open cast coal mine from June until August, col­lapsed today after the pros­e­cu­tion admit­ted that it did­n’t have the evi­dence to sup­port its case. The crown pros­e­cu­tor asked for an adjourn­ment, the defence object­ed, the dis­trict
judge agreed with the defence and dis­missed the case. Let’s hope the oth­ers go the same way.

17) The Rain­bow War­rior goes to Kingsnorth, 29.10.08
The Green­peace flag­ship Rain­bow War­rior led a peace­ful arma­da of boats down the Med­way to Kingsnorth, and thir­ty cam­paign­ers, each car­ry­ing flags from 30 nations, dis­em­barked onto Kingsnorth’s jet­ty. E.on’s pro­posed new plant would emit as much car­bon diox­ide as the world’s 30 least pol­lut­ing coun­tries com­bined (hence the flags), dash­ing our chances of beat­ing cli­mate change and spelling dis­as­ter for mil­lions of fam­i­lies around the world. Mean­while, anoth­er group of vol­un­teers — includ­ing two of the Kingsnorth Six (recent­ly cleared of crim­i­nal dam­age to Kingsnorth’s smoke­stack using the defence of cli­mate change) – occu­pied a small, con­crete, E.ON-owned island just next to the jet­ty until they were forced to leave by a high court injunc­tion.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/vigil-ends-20081030

18) Bris­tohl Uni Death Fair, 29.10.08
This time it was the 4 horse­man of the apoc­a­lypse (well, 2 of them) who high­light­ed the real­i­ty behind the shiny facades of com­pa­nies like E.On and BAE Sys­tems.
http://westsideclimateaction.wordpress.com

19) Con­vey­er belt lock-on stops Aus­tralian coal pow­er sta­tion, 1.11.08
29 peo­ple from Ris­ing Tide Aus­tralia have been arrest­ed after a cli­mate change protest at Bayswa­ter pow­er sta­tion today. Four peo­ple attached them­selves to machin­ery, stop­ping the con­vey­or belts that car­ry coal to Bayswater’s fur­naces for six hours while 25 oth­ers occu­pied the coal piles.
http://www.risingtide.org.au/node/802

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Com­piled and sent out by Ris­ing Tide UK.

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29 arrested after six hour Climate Protest at Australian power station

1st Novem­ber 2008
29 peo­ple have been arrest­ed after a cli­mate change protest at Bayswa­ter pow­er sta­tion today. Four peo­ple attached them­selves to machin­ery, stop­ping the con­vey­or belts that car­ry coal to Bayswater’s fur­naces while about 25 oth­ers occu­pied the coal piles in protest against the Fed­er­al Government’s fail­ure to stop Australia’s green­house pol­lu­tion ris­ing.

Bayswater 1Bayswater 21st Novem­ber 2008
29 peo­ple have been arrest­ed after a cli­mate change protest at Bayswa­ter pow­er sta­tion today. Four peo­ple attached them­selves to machin­ery, stop­ping the con­vey­or belts that car­ry coal to Bayswater’s fur­naces while about 25 oth­ers occu­pied the coal piles in protest against the Fed­er­al Government’s fail­ure to stop Australia’s green­house pol­lu­tion ris­ing.

Spokesper­son, Georgina Woods, said, “Australia’s green­house pol­lu­tion is still increas­ing and our addic­tion to coal-fired pow­er is the main cause. We are here because every day we hes­i­tate, we are killing the Great Bar­ri­er Reef.”

In 2006/07, Bayswa­ter Pow­er Sta­tion cre­at­ed approx­i­mate­ly 14 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide pol­lu­tion, mak­ing it equal great­est sin­gle source of green­house pol­lu­tion in the coun­try and among the top 100 pol­lut­ing pow­er sta­tions in the world.

The Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment is expect­ed to announce medi­um term green­house emis­sion reduc­tion tar­gets at the end of the month, but pro­tes­tors say that 2020 is too late, and want a com­mit­ment that 2010 will be Australia’s “peak emis­sions” year.

The Bayswa­ter pow­er sta­tion near Muswell­brook in the Upper Hunter and the adja­cent Lid­dell pow­er sta­tion togeth­er sup­ply around 40% of NSW’s elec­tric­i­ty.

Details of Peo­ple’s Block­ade of the World’s Biggest Coal Port — 14 March 2009 Ma href=“http://www.risingtide.org.au/node/794”>here
The pro­tes­tors say pow­er sta­tions like Bayswa­ter will need to be shut down over the next few years: “Where is the plan to phase out facil­i­ties like these? Why are we twid­dling our thumbs?”

“The nation and the world are watch­ing and we will not get anoth­er chance. The peo­ple that are here today are par­ents and grand­par­ents, pro­fes­sion­als and trades­peo­ple. We are demand­ing a com­mit­ment from the Gov­ern­ment today: Australia’s green­house emis­sions must start drop­ping from 2010, we must do what­ev­er it takes to save the Bar­ri­er Reef from wipe-out and the world from dev­as­tat­ing run­away cli­mate change.”

The fight for the cli­mate is far from over; the need for peo­ple to protest our fail­ure to reverse green­house pol­lu­tion is greater than ever.