Category: Climate Chaos

Sabotage against the Glensanda Quarry Expansion

An aggre­gates pro­cess­ing plant on the edge of the York­shire Dales Nation­al Park has been sab­o­taged. The Plant is owned by Bar­don Aggre­gates a mem­ber of Aggre­gate Indus­tries, part of the Hol­cim Group. Aggre­gate Indus­tries own the Glen­san­da Quar­ry on the north west coast of Scot­land. The quar­ry is europes biggest coastal quar­ry and has it’s own port. Aggre­gate Indus­tries plan to expand the quar­ry from 125 ha to 206 ha giv­ing reserves of 814 mil­lion tonnes of gran­ite. They cur­rent­ly extract 7–8 mil­lion tonnes a year and can increase this to 15 mil­lion tonnes. The expan­sion plan includes remov­ing the peaks “The Mam” and “Lag a ‘mhaim” from the sky­line. This would be vis­i­ble from the Scot­tish islands and will effect the ecol­o­gy of many species includ­ing otters, seals, and gold­en eagles. 20% of the stone extract­ed will go to major road net­work con­struc­tion across europe.

An aggre­gates pro­cess­ing plant on the edge of the York­shire Dales Nation­al Park has been sab­o­taged. The Plant is owned by Bar­don Aggre­gates a mem­ber of Aggre­gate Indus­tries, part of the Hol­cim Group. Aggre­gate Indus­tries own the Glen­san­da Quar­ry on the north west coast of Scot­land. The quar­ry is europes biggest coastal quar­ry and has it’s own port. Aggre­gate Indus­tries plan to expand the quar­ry from 125 ha to 206 ha giv­ing reserves of 814 mil­lion tonnes of gran­ite. They cur­rent­ly extract 7–8 mil­lion tonnes a year and can increase this to 15 mil­lion tonnes. The expan­sion plan includes remov­ing the peaks “The Mam” and “Lag a ‘mhaim” from the sky­line. This would be vis­i­ble from the Scot­tish islands and will effect the ecol­o­gy of many species includ­ing otters, seals, and gold­en eagles. 20% of the stone extract­ed will go to major road net­work con­struc­tion across europe.
The Plant in York­shire was entered and sab­o­taged. Vehi­cles includ­ing all bull­doz­ers had holes drilled in vital parts of their engines and their tires. Both con­trol rooms were bro­ken into and all com­put­ers and instru­ment pan­els were smashed. Keys to all build­ings and machin­ery were removed from the site. The mes­sage “Stop Glen­san­da” was left. Aggre­gate indus­tries have sites all over the UK and the World, you know what to do!

Earth First! Blockades Power Plant Construction Site, 27 Arrested

18th Feb­ru­ary 2008
Palm Beach Coun­ty — Ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing dozens of con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Palm Beach Coun­ty and all over the nation put their bod­ies on the line to halt con­struc­tion of FPL’s West Coun­ty Ener­gy Cen­ter (WCEC), demand­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, tru­ly clean, renew­able ener­gy and a mora­to­ri­um on devel­op­ment in south Flori­da. Ever­glades Earth First! blocked the main entrance to the WCEC site, a pro­posed mas­sive 3800 MW gas-fired pow­er plant that would emit 12 mil­lion tons of CO2, a lead­ing green­house gas, every year. The plant is cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion despite ongo­ing legal chal­lenges to the plant’s need­ed per­mits and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which have been spear­head­ed by the local Palm Beach Coun­ty Envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion.

West County gas power plant blockade 218th Feb­ru­ary 2008
Palm Beach Coun­ty — Ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing dozens of con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Palm Beach Coun­ty and all over the nation put their bod­ies on the line to halt con­struc­tion of FPL’s West Coun­ty Ener­gy Cen­ter (WCEC), demand­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, tru­ly clean, renew­able ener­gy and a mora­to­ri­um on devel­op­ment in south Flori­da. Ever­glades Earth First! blocked the main entrance to the WCEC site, a pro­posed mas­sive 3800 MW gas-fired pow­er plant that would emit 12 mil­lion tons of CO2, a lead­ing green­house gas, every year. The plant is cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion despite ongo­ing legal chal­lenges to the plant’s need­ed per­mits and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which have been spear­head­ed by the local Palm Beach Coun­ty Envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion.

A dozen activists locked them­selves togeth­er through met­al pipes as 200 sup­port­ers ral­lied around them. The block­ade stopped work on the con­struc­tion site for six hours before a total of 27 peo­ple were arrest­ed.

This con­fronta­tion­al action was tak­en to pro­tect the Lox­a­hatch­ee Nation­al Wildlife Refuge which sits 1000 ft from the pow­er plant site and to pro­tect the larg­er Ever­glades sys­tem. Restora­tion would be under­mined by new devel­op­ment that the pow­er plant is expect­ed to encour­age in the area. The civ­il dis­obe­di­ence action also aims to pro­tect the entire plan­et from the destruc­tive effects of cli­mate change caused by pow­er plant emis­sions.

“We just don’t need this plant,” said Lynne Purvis, an activist with Ever­glades Earth First! who was born and raised in the Lox­a­hatch­ee area. “I’m not will­ing to threat­en the integri­ty of the Lox­a­hatch­ee, one of the last large, intact pieces of north­ern Ever­glades, so that peo­ple can fuel their greedy ener­gy desires.”

Purvis says that the Ever­glades Earth First! group intends to con­tin­ue a sus­tained cam­paign of direct action against this pow­er plant and its adja­cent gas pipeline.
The protest was also attend­ed by grass­roots activists and group across the Unit­ed States who have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the annu­al Earth First! Win­ter Ren­dezvous. One such group, Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca, is part of an inter­na­tion­al move­ment for cli­mate jus­tice, which con­nects the social and envi­ron­men­tal issues relat­ed to the grow­ing
cli­mate cri­sis and calls for urgent and bold respons­es to the glob­al human-caused dilem­ma.

Bri­an Sloan, an orga­niz­er with Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca and par­tic­i­pant in Mon­day morning’s protest, said “FPL is doing what we call ‘green-wash­ing’. Gas-fired pow­er is not a clean or sus­tain­able ener­gy. It is a dirty and dwin­dling fos­sil fuel.” Sloan also states that Ris­ing Tide does not trust ener­gy com­pa­nies to solve the cli­mate cri­sis. “The solu­tions to cli­mate change will nev­er come from the peo­ple who cre­at­ed the prob­lem.”

Earth First! and the Ris­ing Tide move­ments rec­og­nize that the fight against fos­sil fuel pow­er is being used by the ener­gy indus­try to push a new wave of nuclear ener­gy. These grass­roots groups are com­mit­ted to extend­ing their fight against the dan­gers of nuclear pow­er with an eye on oth­er FPL pro­pos­als, such as Turkey Point and St. Lucie.

For info on local Earth First! efforts, vis­it: www.earthfirst2008oc.info

Con­tact: Ever­glades Earth First! (561) 588 — 9666
Pho­tos avail­able at www.risingtidenorthamerica.org

Ever­glades Earth First! group intends to con­tin­ue a sus­tained cam­paign of direct action against this pow­er plant and its adja­cent gas pipeline.

WE NEED YOUR HELP with bond mon­ey & legal fees for the 27 who were arrest­ed. We need to raise $10,000 to cov­er the bond fees. Please vis­it the Palm Beach Coun­ty envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion’s web­site to donate online or email us for how to send a check!

Swedish climate action update

Cli­mate activists in deten­tion after try­ing to break into air­port

On Fri­day, groups of activists con­nect­ed to Kli­max, Sweden’s direct action move­ment against the root caus­es of cli­mate change, struck against the country’s domes­tic avi­a­tion indus­try. At Malmö Air­port, sev­en activists were appre­hend­ed when try­ing to brake into the run­way, some of them dressed as polar bears. They were trans­ferred to a deten­tion cen­tre in anoth­er city in south­ern Swe­den and kept in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more than 60 hours. The sev­en activists were inter­ro­gat­ed through­out the days, charged with “intent to sab­o­tage air traf­fic” and threat­ened with four years in prison if con­vict­ed.

Cli­mate activists in deten­tion after try­ing to break into air­port

On Fri­day, groups of activists con­nect­ed to Kli­max, Sweden’s direct action move­ment against the root caus­es of cli­mate change, struck against the country’s domes­tic avi­a­tion indus­try. At Malmö Air­port, sev­en activists were appre­hend­ed when try­ing to brake into the run­way, some of them dressed as polar bears. They were trans­ferred to a deten­tion cen­tre in anoth­er city in south­ern Swe­den and kept in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more than 60 hours. The sev­en activists were inter­ro­gat­ed through­out the days, charged with “intent to sab­o­tage air traf­fic” and threat­ened with four years in prison if con­vict­ed.

– It’s total­ly absurd to place peo­ple in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more than two days when they’ve done noth­ing but attempt­ing to cross a fence, in a peace­ful, sym­bol­ic action. The activists did what every­one should do: they tried to stop cli­mate change from accel­er­at­ing. With their heavy-hand­ed repres­sion, the police are try­ing to deter us from fur­ther direct action, but we vow to step up our strug­gle. Since the police suc­ceed­ed in nab­bing the activists in Malmö this time, we will have to be more cre­ative when plan­ning our next actions, says Sho­ra Esmail­ian, media spokesper­son for Kli­max.

Also on Fri­day, scores of activists entered the ter­mi­nals at Brom­ma Air­port in Stock­holm and Land­vet­ter Air­port out­side of Gothen­burg. Many were dressed as polar bears and pen­guins. The demon­stra­tions were fol­lowed by die-ins in front of queu­ing pas­sen­gers. In Upp­sala, a city north of Stock­holm, yet anoth­er Kli­max group staged a protest against a planned local air­port. Pic­tures from the actions can be found at this web­site.

On Sat­ur­day, activists in Stock­holm broke into a police sta­tion to demand the imme­di­ate release of their com­rades in Malmö, and a sol­i­dar­i­ty man­i­fes­ta­tion was held in Gothen­burg. All in all, more than a hun­dred activists were involved in the coor­di­nat­ed activ­i­ties over the week­end.

On late Sun­day, the last remain­ing Malmö-activist was released from the deten­tion cen­tre. All sev­en activists will face tri­al, as will anoth­er group of activists who suc­cess­ful­ly seized the run­way at Brom­ma Air­port in April last year.

Kli­max is a rapid­ly grow­ing move­ment in Swe­den. In Stock­holm, the group has focused on an upcom­ing deci­sion to extend the premis­es of Brom­ma Air­port to the year 2038, allow­ing it to increase traf­fic with at least 20 per­cent. The con­tract, due for final approval in March, will be impos­si­ble to abro­gate if politi­cians elect­ed in Stock­holm in the com­ing decades wish to do so: it can only be annulled by the nation­al gov­ern­ment. This is con­sid­ered deeply unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic by Kli­max, but even worse, Brom­ma Air­port is now poised to con­tin­ue pro­pelling domes­tic flights to Gothen­burg, Malmö and oth­er des­ti­na­tions well cov­ered by rail­way con­nec­tions, thus increas­ing unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions at a time when they have to be slashed. Already at this date, the avi­a­tion indus­try accounts for at least 10 per­cent of Sweden’s car­bon emis­sions, accord­ing to esti­mates from the Roy­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, and the share is grow­ing. Kli­max is deter­mined to fight this whol­ly irra­tional devel­op­ment until Sweden’s domes­tic avi­a­tion is abol­ished in its entire­ty, as a first nec­es­sary step to a fos­sil-free soci­ety

Stop the Swedish “Triangle of Death” Seven polar bears held for attempted air travel

Cli­mate activist group Kli­max in Swe­den are tired of unnec­es­sary short haul and nation­al flights. Espe­cial­ly between the major cities of Gothen­burg, Stock­holm and Malmo/Copenhagen, all direct­ly cou­pled by the near­est thing Swe­den has to a high speed train. That’s why that on Fri­day the 15th of Feb­ru­ary strange things start­ed hap­pen­ing at air­ports around Swe­den.

Gothenburg airport action 1
Stockholm airport action 2
Cli­mate activist group Kli­max in Swe­den are tired of unnec­es­sary short haul and nation­al flights. Espe­cial­ly between the major cities of Gothen­burg, Stock­holm and Malmo/Copenhagen, all direct­ly cou­pled by the near­est thing Swe­den has to a high speed train. That’s why that on Fri­day the 15th of Feb­ru­ary strange things start­ed hap­pen­ing at air­ports around Swe­den.

Time might be mon­ey but how much cli­mate change is ten min­utes worth? If you don’t have any lug­gage and check in on-line that’s about how much time you can save by fly­ing between Swe­den’s major cities. Con­sid­er­ing that the Swedish trains run on renew­able elec­tric ener­gy, that’s a hell of a lot of cli­mate change for ten min­utes. Ok, it’s not that sim­ple. Why would any sane per­son with­out a cli­mate con­science or a fat wal­let take the train when it’s cheap­er to fly? A rail­way sys­tem that makes the UK’s look mod­ern could also help weigh the bal­ance when it comes to choos­ing how to get there.

Here’s a round up of the dif­fer­ent actions around the coun­try:

Mal­mo http://svt.se/svt/play/video.jsp?a=1057410
At the time of writ­ing sev­en activists are being held in cus­tody. It seems that the crime of run­ning about the coun­try­side dressed as a polar bear is frowned upon in the south of Swe­den. The sev­en were arrest­ed run­ning towards the perime­ter fence of Stu­rup air­port out­side of Mal­mo by the large police pres­ence. It seems that the boys in blue were out on a mass train­ing exer­cise at the time. The police should be hap­py to get a bit of real life train­ing. Attempt­ing to get onto run­ways whilst dressed as a polar bear is def­i­nite­ly one of the fastest going crimes of our time. An inter­est­ing high pub­lic­i­ty court case seems to be in the pipe line. At least one sol­i­dar­i­ty demon­stra­tion (Gothen­burg 2pm Gustaf Adolfs Torg) is planned on Sat­ur­day in Swe­den to demand the release of the Mal­mo sev­en.
Stockholm airport action
Stock­holm
The polar bears of Stock­holm were treat­ed to ice cream by the air­port author­i­ties at Brom­ma. A pleas­ant ges­ture but hard­ly mak­ing up for help­ing to destroy the bears norther­ly habi­tat. Sor­ry you fam­i­ly drowned but here’s a rasp­ber­ry rip­ple to make up for it,sort of thing. A die in was staged as oth­er peace­ful pro­test­ers with ban­ners and fly­ers roamed the ter­mi­nal rais­ing aware­ness of the envi­ron­men­tal harm caused by air trav­el. There are present­ly plans to enlarge Brom­ma air­port in Stock­holm. The ques­tion is what are the politi­cians and plan­ners think­ing. In a time and a coun­try where every nine year old knows about glob­al warm­ing and its caus­es, the author­i­ties get the idea of expand­ing air­ports. It might be time to let the kids take over the pow­er. They could hard­ly do a worse job than the cli­mate crim­i­nals doing the job now. But then the kids are self­ish­ly more wor­ried about their future than in the hon­est busi­ness of mak­ing short term finan­cial gains.

Gothen­burg
A die in was staged in front of the secu­ri­ty gate at Land­vet­ter air­port out­side of Gothen­burg. Twen­ty activists arrived at the air­port to stage the protest on Fri­day evening. The die in was for the ben­e­fit of pas­sen­gers on their way to emit the largest pos­si­ble amount of green­house gas­es whilst cov­er­ing the 300 or so miles to Stock­holm. After mirac­u­lous­ly reviv­ing them­selves the activists formed a ban­ner wall to wel­come three plane loads of arrivals from the cap­i­tal. The whole thing went down peace­ful­ly with the mas­sive police pres­ence (at least three cop­pers for every cli­mate cru­sad­er) stand­ing around look­ing bored.
Uppsala airport action
Upp­sala
The uni­ver­si­ty town of Upp­sala north of Stock­holm does­n’t have a nice warm pas­sen­ger air­port to stage an action in. The com­pa­ny Upp­sala Air is doing its best to change this. They want to pro­vide a pleas­ant pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal so that local cli­mate activists would have some­where warm to stage protests. In the best “make do with what you’ve got spir­it“, the Upp­sala activist cre­at­ed their own run­way in the city cen­ter to illus­trate how pleas­ant­ly an air­port can con­vert a bor­ing piece of coun­try­side into noisy pol­lut­ing cli­mate chal­leng­ing strip of asfalt.

This is just the start of the Swedish resis­tance against cli­mate crim­i­nal­i­ty. Watch this space for the next move. We think cars are also plane stu­pid. Hon­est!

http://klimatet.org/

Latest details: Earth First! Winter Moot 2008 — February 22nd – 24th 2008 — Nottingham

Join us for
Activist skill share
Plan­ning rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change,
Shar­ing ideas for the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Oppo­si­tion to the UK genet­ic crop tri­als and mega-dams in Ice­land
a chance to share info on your own cam­paign

Arrive from 5pm, Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 22nd 2008, with din­ner at 7 o’clock.
Open to all those who have been involved in rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action and to those who just want to find out more.

EF! fist tree 1Join us for
Activist skill share
Plan­ning rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change,
Shar­ing ideas for the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Oppo­si­tion to the UK genet­ic crop tri­als and mega-dams in Ice­land
a chance to share info on your own cam­paign

Arrive from 5pm, Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 22nd 2008, with din­ner at 7 o’clock.
Open to all those who have been involved in rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action and to those who just want to find out more.

Cost: £15 (to include accom­mo­da­tion and food)
Crèche and dis­abled access both avail­able,
but please call to let us know if you need either or if you have oth­er needs.

At The Sumac Cen­tre, Glad­stone Street Not­ting­ham, www.veggies.org.uk/sumac
For more info call 01508 531636 (num­ber not avail­able dur­ing the event)

Fri­day late after­noon and evening will be a chance to arrive, and for intro­duc­tions, plus a G8 talk & film, and an Intro­duc­tion to EF!

We’ll be kick­ing off ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing (9am break­fast) — start­ing with all shar­ing the most impor­tant rea­sons why we’ve come to Not­ting­ham, we’ll get on with some prac­ti­cal dis­cus­sions around the EF! Action Update, the web­site, and the sum­mer gath­er­ing.
From what we’ve all said, we’ll be able in the after­noon to move on to ‘where next?’, plus shar­ing cam­paigns we’re involved with & see­ing what they need, and get­ting togeth­er local­ly and region­al­ly with oth­er folk who are there.

On Sun­day we’ll move into groups to con­crete­ly take the ideas for­wards from the Sat­ur­day, from the cam­paigns we’re already work­ing on and what we want to do togeth­er. We’ll fin­ish at 4pm, after hav­ing shared what we’ve come up with. Hoorah.

Earth First! is not an organ­i­sa­tion, but a way of using non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­i­sa­tion and the use of direct action to con­front, stop and even­tu­al­ly reverse the forces that are respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of the Earth and its inhab­i­tants. For fur­ther info check out www.earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/

Plus
All day Fri­day 22nd Feb­ru­ary, Sav­ing Ice­land UK meet­ing, also at the Sumac Cen­tre. Open to those inter­est­ed in trav­el­ling to Ice­land or tak­ing part in sol­i­dar­i­ty actions against the con­struc­tion of large, wilder­ness wreck­ing dams in Ice­land.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion and essen­tial book­ing con­tact 01508 531636 or savingiceland@riseup.org

Sea Shepherd Launches Operation Migaloo II / Sharkwater Film released on Feb. 22 / Planktos Ocean Dumping Scheme Defeated

The Hunt for the Japan­ese Whale Poach­ers Resumes…

Press Release: 02/13/2008

After twelve days of repairs, refu­el­ing, re-crew­ing, re-sup­ply­ing and re-pro­vi­sion­ing, the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin is return­ing to the South­ern Ocean. The esti­mat­ed time for depar­ture is 2000 hours Mel­bourne time on Thurs­day Feb­ru­ary 14.

Sea Shepherd's Steve IrwinThe Hunt for the Japan­ese Whale Poach­ers Resumes…

Press Release: 02/13/2008

After twelve days of repairs, refu­el­ing, re-crew­ing, re-sup­ply­ing and re-pro­vi­sion­ing, the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin is return­ing to the South­ern Ocean. The esti­mat­ed time for depar­ture is 2000 hours Mel­bourne time on Thurs­day Feb­ru­ary 14.

“A spe­cial thank-you to Aus­tralia,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “You helped to send the Steve Irwin back to sea as a Valentine’s Day gift to the whales.”

Dona­tions of mon­ey for fuel, dona­tions of food and sup­plies flood­ed onto the decks of the whale con­ser­va­tion ship dur­ing the brief stay in Vic­to­ria dock­lands.

“We are anx­ious to return to the coast of Antarc­ti­ca,” said Sea Shep­herd cook Amber Paar­man from South Africa. “Every moment that we are not on the tail of the Japan­ese fleet means that the lives of the whales are in per­il.”

The Steve Irwin intends to harass and inter­vene against ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing for the next four to five weeks. This should stop them to the end of the whal­ing sea­son. The fleet’s oper­a­tions were shut down for more than three weeks in Jan­u­ary. Sea Shep­herd intends to shut them down again.

“In Jan­u­ary we pre­vent­ed them from slaugh­ter­ing whales for three weeks, we cost the Japan­ese over two mil­lion dol­lars in fuel dur­ing the pur­suit and we exposed their ille­gal whal­ing activ­i­ties world­wide and most impor­tant­ly we got the sto­ry into the Japan­ese media. This pro­voked a real debate in Japan on the cost of whal­ing to Japan’s rep­u­ta­tion,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son.

The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety does not intend to sur­ren­der the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary to the poach­ers. After this sea­son, Cap­tain Paul Wat­son is work­ing to secure a 2nd ship with the objec­tive of mount­ing a non-stop pur­suit for the 2008/2009 whal­ing sea­son.

The Steve Irwin dropped off 16 vol­un­teer crewmem­bers in Mel­bourne on Feb­ru­ary 2nd and 19 vol­un­teers have joined the crew. Eleven crewmem­bers have been with the cam­paign from the begin­ning.

The 32 crew, 8 women and 24 men return­ing to the South­ern Oceans rep­re­sent 10 dif­fer­ent nation­al­i­ties. In addi­tion to 15 Aus­tralians, crewmem­bers have joined from New Zealand, Cana­da, the U.S.A., Swe­den, South Africa, the Nether­lands, the U.K. Spain, and Japan.

http://www.seashepherd.org
================================

Award win­ning doc­u­men­tary Shark­wa­ter will have its the­atri­cal release in the Unit­ed King­dom on Feb­ru­ary 22. In the film, shark con­ser­va­tion­ist Rob Stew­art teams up with Cap­tain Wat­son and Sea Shep­herd to com­bat the shark fin mafia in Cos­ta Rica and the Gala­pa­gos.

“This is a film that will for­ev­er shat­ter the stereo­typ­i­cal myths that sur­round sharks. Where Jaws taught peo­ple to hate and fear sharks, Rob Stew­art’s pas­sion­ate mas­ter­piece will have peo­ple lov­ing and car­ing for these impor­tant ani­mals,” prais­es Cap­tain Wat­son.

Full details: www.sharkwater.com www.seashepherd.org

UK THEATRICAL RELEASE SCHEDULE
ALL VENUES PREMIERING 22nd FEBRUARY
Lon­don
Apol­lo Cin­e­ma
19 Regent Street Lon­don, SW1Y 4LR

Regions
Birm­ing­ham Show­case
Kings­bury Road (A38) Erd­ing­ton, Birm­ing­ham, B24 9QE

Bris­tol Show­case
Avon Meads, St. Phillips Cause­way, Bris­tol, BS2 0SP

Cardiff Show­case
Heol-Yr-Odyn, Park Nant­garw, Tre­f­for­est Indus­tri­al Estate, Nr Pon­typridd, CF15 7QX

Hull Odeon
Kingston Park, Kingston Street, Hull, HU1 2TX

Glas­gow East Show­case
Bar­rbridge Leisure Cen­tre, Coat­bridge, Glas­gow, G69 7TZ

Nor­wich Odeon
River­side Leisure Park, Wher­ry Road, Nor­wich, NR1 1XA

Not­ting­ham Show­case
Red­field Way, Lenton, Not­ting­ham, NG7 2UW

Leeds/Bradford Odeon
Gal­lagher Leisure Park, Thorn­bury, Brad­ford, BD3 7AT

Man­ches­ter Show­case
Hyde Road (A57), Bel­lVue, Man­ches­ter, M12 5AL

================================

Plank­tos Ocean Dump­ing Scheme Defeat­ed by Anti-Whalers

News release: Sea Shep­herd
02/14/2008

Our cam­paign against Plank­tos Inc. is over. The con­tro­ver­sial plan to dump hun­dreds of tons of iron ore dust into the ocean in a bizarre scheme to seed plank­ton blooms has been aban­doned by the Plank­tos cor­po­ra­tion of Cal­i­for­nia.

This is a vic­to­ry against a cor­po­rate car­bon trad­ing scheme that had no sci­en­tif­ic cred­i­bil­i­ty.

This is from the Feb­ru­ary 13th, 2008 edi­tion of the New York Times” ( http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/commercial-ocean-fertilization-project-
halted/index.html?ref=technology):

“Plank­tos, the Cal­i­for­nia com­pa­ny try­ing to turn a prof­it by fer­til­iz­ing the ocean with iron dust, pulled the plug on planned field tests on Wednes­day, cit­ing a lack of funds. At the com­pa­ny’s Web site, planktos.com, a sim­ple notice blamed the shut­down on a “high­ly effec­tive dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign waged by anti-off­set cru­saders.”

The busi­ness plan had been to sell “car­bon off­set” cred­its earned by trig­ger­ing blooms of phy­to­plank­ton that, in the­o­ry, would absorb a pre­dictable amount of the cli­mate-warm­ing gas car­bon diox­ide through pho­to­syn­the­sis and then sink to the seabed. The cred­its would be sold to com­pa­nies or indi­vid­u­als try­ing to com­pen­sate for unavoid­able emis­sions of car­bon diox­ide (from dri­ving, fly­ing, and the like).

Plank­ton blooms hap­pen nat­u­ral­ly when dust con­tain­ing iron set­tles on ocean waters where a lack of iron oth­er­wise pre­vents plank­ton from thriv­ing. Huge blooms have result­ed after dust from the Sahara Desert blows over the Atlantic, for exam­ple. But efforts to repli­cate the process arti­fi­cial­ly have met with strong oppo­si­tion from envi­ron­men­tal groups. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety, which for years has con­front­ed, and some­times rammed, whal­ing and fish­ing ves­sels had threat­ened to block a fer­til­iza­tion effort by Plank­tos last sum­mer near the Gala­pa­gos Islands, forc­ing it to change plans.

A num­ber of marine and cli­mate sci­en­tists have also opposed com­mer­cial fer­til­iza­tion efforts, for var­i­ous rea­sons. In a “joint pol­i­cy state­ment” pub­lished in the jour­nal Sci­ence last month, a group of researchers from around the world said trade in car­bon cred­its earned this way was pre­ma­ture “unless research pro­vides the sci­en­tif­ic foun­da­tion to eval­u­ate risks and ben­e­fits.”

The Plank­tos ves­sel Weath­er­bird II has been stuck in port on the Por­tuguese island of Madeira after months of revised plans and failed efforts to attract more investors. Finan­cial trou­bles had been mount­ing for months. On Wednes­day, the com­pa­ny said it had called back the ves­sel and its crew.

The Plank­tos state­ment said:
“Man­age­ment has also rad­i­cal­ly down­sized the com­pa­ny’s staffing while the board of direc­tors has formed a new com­mit­tee to explore all options cur­rent­ly avail­able. Options include a pos­si­ble re-launch of planned marine oper­a­tions, pend­ing addi­tion­al financ­ing or new part­ner­ships, as well as the pos­si­ble pur­suit of oth­er promis­ing busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties in the envi­ron­men­tal sphere.
The board of direc­tors con­tin­ues to believe in the urgent eco­log­i­cal neces­si­ty of its ocean restora­tion plans and the sci­en­tif­ic spe­cious­ness of objec­tions voiced to date. How­ev­er, ide­o­log­i­cal hos­til­i­ty to and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions of this work will con­tin­ue to stymie progress until the true grav­i­ty of our cli­mat­ic and ocean crises is more wide­ly under­stood.”

The Sea Shep­herd Posi­tion:
The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety opposed the iron ore dust dump­ing scheme because it was con­demned by the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency of the Unit­ed States and was in fact a vio­la­tion of Unit­ed States and Inter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions on the dump­ing of mate­ri­als at sea. The scheme was also opposed by the Gala­pa­gos Nation­al Park, the Charles Dar­win Foun­da­tion and the Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment of Ecuador.

Sea Shep­herd did not make any judg­ment on the sci­en­tif­ic mer­its, if any, of the scheme. We act­ed because the dump­ing was a vio­la­tion of Ecuado­ri­an, Amer­i­can and Inter­na­tion­al law.

In August of 2007, Sea Shep­herd blocked the plan in the Gala­pa­gos. In Novem­ber 2007, Sea Shep­herd con­front­ed the Plank­tos ves­sel in Bermu­da forc­ing it to move onto Madeira.
The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety would like to thank Plank­tos for acknowl­edg­ing our oppo­si­tion as the rea­son for the aban­don­ment of this scheme.

Will dump­ing iron ore dust into the sea stim­u­late plank­ton blooms? Will increased plank­ton blooms sequester more car­bon diox­ide? We don’t know but the answers need to be found in the lab before using the liv­ing ocean as a test­ing facil­i­ty. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety is not in a posi­tion to deter­mine sci­en­tif­ic mer­it. We can only act upon the rec­om­men­da­tions of sci­en­tif­ic bod­ies and law enforce­ment agen­cies. As a part­ner with the Gala­pa­gos Nation­al Park and the Ecuado­ri­an Nation­al Envi­ron­men­tal Police we act­ed in accor­dance to their oppo­si­tion to this scheme and we agreed with the EPA in the USA, and the Dar­win Research Cen­tre in the Gala­pa­gos, that the Plank­tos scheme lacked suf­fi­cient sci­en­tif­ic cred­i­bil­i­ty.

The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor this kind of activ­i­ty and will inter­vene if the plans do not demon­strate test­ed sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ments that show such plans are safe for marine life.

http://seashepherd.org

upcoming Shell to Sea protests — 14th, 23rd and big-up 29th Feb

12 Noon Feb­ru­ary 14th, Kil­dare Street Dublin 2.
On Thurs­day this week, there will be a protest at Lein­ster House in Dublin to bring atten­tion to the sweet­heart deal between the Irish Gov­ern­ment and the Cor­rib Part­ners (Shell, Statoil,and Marathon) for the exploita­tion of Ire­land’s nat­ur­al resources. Pro­test­ers will gath­er at Kil­dare Street at 12 noon. More info here: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86192

Shell sweethearts12 Noon Feb­ru­ary 14th, Kil­dare Street Dublin 2.
On Thurs­day this week, there will be a protest at Lein­ster House in Dublin to bring atten­tion to the sweet­heart deal between the Irish Gov­ern­ment and the Cor­rib Part­ners (Shell, Statoil,and Marathon) for the exploita­tion of Ire­land’s nat­ur­al resources. Pro­test­ers will gath­er at Kil­dare Street at 12 noon. More info here: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86192

1PM Feb­ru­ary 23rd, Shell Glas­nevin, Fin­glas Road Dublin 11
On Sat­ur­day 23rd of Feb­ru­ary there will be a pick­et of the Shell Ser­vice sta­tion oppo­site the main gate of Glas­nevin Ceme­tery. Although Shell no longer run the fore­court busi­ness, all the fuel sold in this and oth­er Shell garages is still sourced from Roy­al Dutch Shell. Pro­test­ers will be ask­ing motorists to boy­cott the sta­tion until con­cerns about the Cor­rib scheme are addressed by the company.The protest will start at 1PM sharp. More info here: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86187

The next large-scale protest in Mayo will be on Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 29th. Shell are set to announce the new route for the pro­duc­tion pipeline link­ing the gas field to the Bel­lan­aboy Refin­ery site some­time towards the end of Feb­ru­ary. Many peo­ple in Erris expect the com­pa­ny to apply for per­mis­sion to run the pipeline under the water of Sruth Fáda Conn, the inlet bay that runs along­side Ross­port. This will mean the Min­is­ter for the Envi­ron­ment will have to apply for per­mis­sion from the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment to break the rules which are designed to pro­tect endan­gered habi­tats and pro­tect­ed envi­ron­ments.

More details of the Feb­ru­ary 29th protest will fol­low near­er the time.

Keep up to date with Shell to Sea by check­ing indymedia.ie/mayo

You can see Shell to Sea videos on youtube here: www.youtube.com/shelltohell

For more infor­ma­tion call 0871323369.

Community halts Shell

Feb­ru­ary 12 2008

Sur­vey work was halt­ed
This morn­ing sur­vey work stopped when mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty ques­tioned Ollie Mur­ray (Shell Com­mu­ni­ty Lia­son Offi­cer) on whether he had the nec­es­sary per­mis­sion. He is a man of few words and our ques­tions were met with his mantra of ‘I don’t know, con­tact RPS’. ‘’Do you have the RPS num­ber? No. ‘’. It was a beau­ti­ful day and whilst we were wait­ing for the RPS engi­neer to ring back with details (at 22.00pm he still hasn’t), the sur­vey­or admired the view of the pris­tine bay in Glen­gad. No sur­vey work was under­tak­en. The bore hoels ille­gal­ly con­struct­ed 5 months ago are still there, despite Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley order­ing their removal asp.

BroadhavenFeb­ru­ary 12 2008

Sur­vey work was halt­ed
This morn­ing sur­vey work stopped when mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty ques­tioned Ollie Mur­ray (Shell Com­mu­ni­ty Lia­son Offi­cer) on whether he had the nec­es­sary per­mis­sion. He is a man of few words and our ques­tions were met with his mantra of ‘I don’t know, con­tact RPS’. ‘’Do you have the RPS num­ber? No. ‘’. It was a beau­ti­ful day and whilst we were wait­ing for the RPS engi­neer to ring back with details (at 22.00pm he still hasn’t), the sur­vey­or admired the view of the pris­tine bay in Glen­gad. No sur­vey work was under­tak­en. The bore hoels ille­gal­ly con­struct­ed 5 months ago are still there, despite Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley order­ing their removal asp.

Blockad­ing of trucks
Of course the com­mu­ni­ty are still attempt­ing to slow down con­struc­tion on the Shell refin­ery site. Block­ades hap­pen as much as pos­si­ble; last week work­ers were once again block­ad­ed and today lor­ries were blocked from enter­ing. When the author­i­ties fail to pro­tect the com­mu­ni­ty and the Spe­cial Pro­tect­ed Area, the com­mu­ni­ty have no choice but to active­ly do it our­selves. For rea­sons of health, safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, we can­not let this refin­ery be built at Bal­linaboy.

’Peo­ple are enti­tled to a healthy and pro­duc­tive life in har­mo­ny with nature. Envi­ron­men­tal issues are best han­dled with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of all con­cerned cit­i­zens. Devel­op­ment today must not under­mine the devel­op­ment and envi­ron­men­tal needs of present and future gen­er­a­tions.’ Local Agen­da 21

————–

12.2.08 Local peo­ple block Shell from ille­gal work in a SAC at Glen­gad, Erris for 4 hours until Gar­dai force through work­ers, injur­ing pro­test­ers.

At approx 8am this morn­ing, local res­i­dents became aware of a Shell con­tract­ed sur­vey team in the Glen­gad area on the SAC. To work in this area we under­stand that per­mis­sions must be obtained pri­or to any work being under­tak­en by Shell. Shell have still yet repaired the ille­gal work done last Octo­ber.

To our knowl­edge, they are only enti­tled to remove the ille­gal bore­holes, as ordered by Min­is­ter Gorm­ley. Our requests for evi­dence of oth­er per­mis­sion con­tin­ues to be ignored by both Shell, RPS and NPWS. Today’s sur­vey­ing had noth­ing to do with repair­ing the dam­age how­ev­er, despite claims to the con­trary by secu­ri­ty staff.

Despite con­tact­ing Shell’s sup­posed pub­lic lia­sons offi­cer in the last few days no attempt has been made by Shell to clar­i­fy if they have any oth­er of the required per­mis­sions.

A group of local peo­ple were forced to enter upon the land to stop this ille­gal work. Work was halt­ed between 8am until approx 12 noon when a force of over a dozen Gar­dai came to escort the sur­vey team back onto the SAC.

Despite explain­ing why the local com­mu­ni­ty had rea­son­able excuse to stop fur­ther dam­age being done, the Gar­dai very force­ful­ly removed all pro­test­ers from the entrance gate, ush­er­ing in the sur­vey team. In their zeal­ous pur­suit of Shell’s best inter­ests, the Gar­dai assault­ed many of the approx 10 pro­test­ers present at the time. 1 man was arrest­ed after being shoved onto a barbed wire fence, cut­ting his arm in sev­er­al places before hav­ing his head banged off the ground by sev­er­al Gar­dai. Oth­ers were dragged off, received kicks, shoves, had hair pulled, while the Gar­dai simul­ta­ne­ous­ly obstruct­ed the only cam­era from film­ing. The man who was arrest­ed was lat­er released with­out charge.

Bio-fuel protest North West — a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Around 20 activists, some dressed as wolves in sheep’s cloth­ing, vis­it­ed the D1 Oil refin­ery in Brom­bor­ough on the Wirral, on 2nd Feb­ru­ary 2008.

Bromborough biofuels protest 1Bromborough biofuels 2Around 20 activists, some dressed as wolves in sheep’s cloth­ing, vis­it­ed the D1 Oil refin­ery in Brom­bor­ough on the Wirral, on 2nd Feb­ru­ary 2008. They were there to high­light the dan­ger­ous con­se­quences of large-scale bio-fuel pro­duc­tion for the cli­mate and for peo­ple world­wide.

Video Video Footage — video/mp4 2.5M

The demon­stra­tors from Man­ches­ter and Liv­er­pool, inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action, erect­ed a 16 metre ban­ner read­ing, “Bio­fu­els cause Cli­mate Chaos” and anoth­er small­er ban­ner read­ing “Bio­fu­els + Big Busi­ness = Dis­as­ter”. The demon­stra­tion came at the end of a week of action called by Bio­fu­el­watch.

On arrival activists were told by secu­ri­ty that the plant was emp­ty and not oper­at­ing, how­ev­er when sev­er­al activists entered the site, at least twen­ty work­ers dressed in boil­er suits came out to meet them. Although the gates were shut cam­paign­ers remained for approx­i­mate­ly one hour to talk with staff and local res­i­dents. Police attend­ed but no arrests were made.

D1 Oils plc. have used palm, soya and rape­seed oil to make bio-diesel. Now they have joined forces with cor­po­rate giant BP, aim­ing to acquire and plant one mil­lion hectares of land with sup­posed ‘won­der crop’ Jat­ropha, with­in four years. For infor­ma­tion on the real impact of this crop and oth­er agro-fuels check out www.biofuelwatch.org.uk

Umea blockade

9 Feb­ru­ary. Some 30 activists put up a block­ade in the mid­dle of the high­way run­ning through Umeå, the largest city in north­ern Swe­den.

Umea blockade9 Feb­ru­ary. Some 30 activists put up a block­ade in the mid­dle of the high­way run­ning through Umeå, the largest city in north­ern Swe­den. Recent stud­ies have found the high­est con­cen­tra­tions of car­bon diox­ide ever record­ed in Umeå, due to increas­ing traf­fic, while Sweden’s car park remains the most fuel-guz­zling in the EU. Kli­max-Umeå demands a rapid expan­sion of pub­lic trans­porta­tion in the city and an end to sub­si­diz­ing new roads. The block­ade last­ed for half an hour, wreak­ing con­sid­er­able chaos in the inner city traf­fic