Category: Climate Chaos

National Grid feeling the pressure as time runs out on giant pipeline project (& video interviews)

Nation­al Grid’s pet pipeline is way behind sched­ule. They are in a pan­icked rush to get it built and avoid hefty fines, but a deter­mined protest cam­paign and the rugged welsh land­scape are gang­ing up on the ill-fat­ed pipe.

Nation­al Grid’s pet pipeline is way behind sched­ule. They are in a pan­icked rush to get it built and avoid hefty fines, but a deter­mined protest cam­paign and the rugged welsh land­scape are gang­ing up on the ill-fat­ed pipe.

Nation­al Grid will be penalised with hefty fines if they don’t com­plete the project on time, so they are pulling out the stops — dou­bling the num­ber of dig­gers they use from 200 to 400 and work­ing in 4 places at the same time.

Phase 1 of the project, from Mil­ford Haven to Ffe­lin­dre, is 90% com­plete, but phase 2, from Ffe­lin­dre to Tir­ley in Glouces­ter­shire, is far from.

“This is one of the biggest [projects] we have ever built,” says Kees Ezin­ga, head of oper­a­tions for con­trac­tor Nacap Land & Marine Joint Ven­ture. (Nation­al Grid have con­tract­ed them to do the actu­al build­ing bit.)
“Last year, we man­aged to [lay] 100 km of pipe in two spreads. But we have four spreads to go and are bring­ing in extra equip­ment,” says Ezin­ga. “Start­ing in April, we only have four months to [fin­ish] this job.”
Full arti­cle at…
http://enr.construction.com/news/transportation/archives/070226b.asp

Clear­ly its time to step up the protests and make it as hard as pos­si­ble for them to work. A con­cert­ed effort now could push the project far beyond the dead­line, cost­ing Nation­al Grid some seri­ous mon­ey and under­min­ing the via­bil­i­ty of the whole thing. Even if they do even­tu­al­ly get the thing built, it would be mas­sive­ly over-bud­get and, as hap­pened with the road-build­ing projects of the 90s, future destruc­tive and car­bon-inten­sive projects could be scrapped.

The protest camp in Bre­con is under imme­di­ate threat of an evic­tion, just when Nation­al Grid are start­ing to pan­ic. They need peo­ple to come and sup­port them, even if you can only come for the day. Its in the Bre­con Bea­cons Nation­al Park, in beau­ti­ful wood­land. You can find the lat­est news, pic­tures, and the site con­tact phone num­ber and direc­tions here:
http://risingtide.org.uk/node/193

There are lots of events com­ing up around the pipeline.

On Sat­ur­day 24th March, there will be a Car­ni­val against the Pipe, start­ing at 2pm in Tre­banos, near Swansea.
Details:
http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk/?m=200703

There will be a bike tour of the pipe, start­ing at the Car­ni­val and going all the way along the length to Glouces­ter­shire. Have a look at…
http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol/bikethepipe
to see the route and read more about it. The bike tour will be stop­ping to spread the word about the dodgy pipeline in the com­mu­ni­ties that it pass­es through.

On 20th-21st of April, Bath Cli­mate Camp, is tar­get­ting the offices of NACAP Joint Ven­ture Land & Marine, who are the con­trac­tors build­ing the pipe for Nation­al Grid…
They are inspired by the Cli­mate Camp at Drax last Sep­tem­ber.
More info : http://risingtide.org.uk/node/199

http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

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

With evic­tion at the camp look­ing immi­nent, cam­paign­ers appeal for peo­ple to join them in the fight against the pipe.

Video 76.1MB — video/mp4 76M

Video 138MB — video/x‑ms-wmv 30M

Video also on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNzWVsO-3k4

Geneva Motor Show: all arrested before demo

Paris, 19 March 2007: For the occa­sion of the clo­sure day of the Gene­va Motor Show, some 10 activists from dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions were plan­ning to do a small demo at the inside of the Gene­va motor show, deploy­ing a ban­ner to point out the hyp­ocrite dis­course of the car man­u­fac­tur­ers.

anti-4x4 logo 1Paris, 19 March 2007: For the occa­sion of the clo­sure day of the Gene­va Motor Show, some 10 activists from dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions were plan­ning to do a small demo at the inside of the Gene­va motor show, deploy­ing a ban­ner to point out the hyp­ocrite dis­course of the car man­u­fac­tur­ers.

As a pre­ven­tive mea­sure, Police Detec­tives of the Gene­va Can­ton have tak­en the whole group of activists and the cam­era crews in their pres­ence in cus­tody, and kept them for more than 8 hours for ques­tion­ing.
Jeroen Ver­ho­even, Coor­di­na­tor of the 4x4network and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the action, has been hand-cuffed and tak­en away to the police sta­tion for ques­tion­ing. The activists have been charged of being” the alleged authors of threats alarm­ing the pub­lic”, even if the action did not take place!

In order to avoid any dis­si­dent voice at the motor show, the activists have been phone-tapped, hand-cuffed, strip searched, their DNA and fin­ger­prints have been tak­en, and video mate­r­i­al, lap­tops and mobile phones have been seized by the Gene­va Police. The dis­pro­por­tion­ate char­ac­ter of the mea­sures tak­en to pre­vent a non-vio­lent action, gives rea­son to ques­tion the under­ly­ing motive of this inter­ven­tion of the Gene­va Police.

Jeroen Ver­ho­even strong­ly rejects the meth­ods of the Swiss Police Detec­tives, who use anti-ter­ror­ist laws to intim­i­date and muz­zle anti-4x4ac­tivists and says that: “Appar­ent­ly point­ing out the risks of cli­mate change is equal to alarm­ing the pub­lic and as such a crim­i­nal act under Swiss law”.
Only car man­u­fac­tur­ers seem to have the right to “inform” the gen­er­al pub­lic trough adver­tis­ing for cli­mate killing gas-guz­zlers.

Because Cli­mate Change is indeed a “threat which can alarm the gen­er­al pub­lic”, the Euro­pean groups unit­ed in the 4x4network will con­tin­ue, despite the intim­i­da­tions, to demand bind­ing leg­is­la­tion for the emis­sions of new­ly sold cars, with a tar­get of 120gC02/km by 2012.

Con­tact:
Jeroen Ver­ho­even +32.2 542 61 01 (mobile phone seized…)
http://www.4x4network.org/

Friday 8th June 2007 — International Day of Direct Action against Climate Change and the G8

Direct Action for Cli­mate Jus­tice — Resis­tance is Self Defense!

We all know the ter­ri­fy­ing sta­tis­tics: a mil­lion species extinct by 2050, 19 of the 20 hottest years on record since 1980, Green­land and Antarc­ti­ca melt­ing, droughts, floods, famines ? the G8 have had over 30 years to address cli­mate change and only suc­ceed­ed in pro­vid­ing tril­lions in sub­si­dies to the very indus­tries that are destroy­ing our plan­et and our future. And while the G8 con­tin­ues to line their pock­ets, island states dis­ap­pear and hun­dreds of thou­sands die as a result of the freak weath­er con­di­tions caused by their irra­tional and uncon­trol­lable obses­sion with nev­er end­ing eco­nom­ic growth.

Direct Action for Cli­mate Jus­tice — Resis­tance is Self Defense!

We all know the ter­ri­fy­ing sta­tis­tics: a mil­lion species extinct by 2050, 19 of the 20 hottest years on record since 1980, Green­land and Antarc­ti­ca melt­ing, droughts, floods, famines ? the G8 have had over 30 years to address cli­mate change and only suc­ceed­ed in pro­vid­ing tril­lions in sub­si­dies to the very indus­tries that are destroy­ing our plan­et and our future. And while the G8 con­tin­ues to line their pock­ets, island states dis­ap­pear and hun­dreds of thou­sands die as a result of the freak weath­er con­di­tions caused by their irra­tional and uncon­trol­lable obses­sion with nev­er end­ing eco­nom­ic growth.

We have a ten-year win­dow to act. As the mega­lo­ma­ni­ac G8 lead­ers meet in Ger­many, masked behind a bar­ri­er of fences and sol­diers, intent on lead­ing us fur­ther towards cat­a­stroph­ic and irre­versible cli­mate chaos, we must shout, scream and roar ‘no more’. Now is the time to take direct action and shut them down, them and their cli­mate crim­i­nal indus­try friends!

The 8th of June Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action Against Cli­mate Change and the G8 has been called by the Inter­na­tion­al Ris­ing Tide Net­work. This is a call for autonomous, decen­tral­ized actions appro­pri­ate for your town, city, or local area. Use this inter­na­tion­al day of action to sup­port local strug­gles against oil refiner­ies, gas pipelines, strip mines and coal-fired pow­er plants. Dis­rupt the finan­cial back­ers of the fos­sil fuel indus­try. Organ­ise work­shops to spread sus­tain­able post-petro­le­um liv­ing skills. Find a weak point in the infra­struc­ture of resource exploita­tion and throw a lit­er­al or sym­bol­ic wrench in the works. It’s time to vis­it your local pol­luters and give ’em hell!

We already know of actions planned across the UK, North Amer­i­ca, Ger­many, Cana­da and Aus­tralia and that’s just the start! By 8th June actions will be planned around the world. Pass this call out on to all envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, cli­mate action, rad­i­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and relat­ed move­ments in all the G8 coun­tries and the Glob­al South.

Ris­ing Tide will cre­ate a col­lec­tion of out­reach and agit-prop mate­ri­als (includ­ing this call out in five dif­fer­ent lan­guages) that can be used by groups around the world to organ­ise local­ly. These mate­ri­als will be down­load­able from www.risingtide.org.uk and http://risingtidenorthamerica.org.

Direct action and civ­il dis­obe­di­ence are the ratio­nal response in this time of cri­sis. Sup­port the 8th of June Inter­na­tion­al Day of Direct Action against Cli­mate Change and the G8! Tell us about planned actions for cli­mate jus­tice being planned in your com­mu­ni­ty. Con­tact us — info@risingtide.org.uk and contact@risingtidenorthamerica.org

In June 2007 the G8 will under­stand the mean­ing of rebel­lion, revolt and rev­o­lu­tion. Their recipe for cat­a­stro­phe will be met with our world­wide resis­tance!

Spring into Action provisional programme

The pro­vi­sion­al pro­gramme for Spring into Action is now avail­able. Check out the many excit­ing work­shops, from the sci­ence of cli­mate change, through food grow­ing to how to build a rock­et stove.

pro­gramme as pdf — application/pdf 62K

The pro­vi­sion­al pro­gramme for Spring into Action is now avail­able. Check out the many excit­ing work­shops, from the sci­ence of cli­mate change, through food grow­ing to how to build a rock­et stove.

pro­gramme as pdf — application/pdf 62K

The pro­vi­sion­al pro­gramme for Spring into Action is now avail­able. Check out the many excit­ing work­shops, from the sci­ence of cli­mate change, through food grow­ing to how to build a rock­et stove.

info@eastisdeclimateaction.org.uk
http://www.eastsideclimateaction.org.uk

Demonstration and Carnival against the Pipeline- Saturday 24th March, Trebanos

As part of the ongo­ing cam­paign against the pro­posed 150 mile liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas pipeline run­ning through South Wales at a dan­ger­ous­ly high pres­sure, there will be march through the affect­ed vil­lage of Tre­banos, fol­lowed by a ral­ly at Tre­banos RFC club­house.

Stop LNG pipeline bannerAs part of the ongo­ing cam­paign against the pro­posed 150 mile liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas pipeline run­ning through South Wales at a dan­ger­ous­ly high pres­sure, there will be march through the affect­ed vil­lage of Tre­banos, fol­lowed by a ral­ly at Tre­banos RFC club­house.

We invite any­one who wish­es to express their con­cern at the envi­ron­men­tal impact and safe­ty con­sid­er­a­tions of this devel­op­ment, or who wish­es to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple who’s lives are being affect­ed by it.

Meet 2pm at the Lidl Carpark in Pon­tar­dawe to LEAVE FROM THE BOTTOM OF GLYNMEIRCH ROAD AT 2:30PM

Please bring ban­ners, music, colour, flags, fan­cy dress, friends, fam­i­ly and pets.

For more info check out:
http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk
http://www.safehavenpembs.co.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk/bristol/pipeline

There will be a minibus from Cardiff, tak­ing peo­ple direct­ly to the start of the march.

Times from car park at the rear of Cardiff Cen­tral train sta­tion: 10.00 am & 12.00 noon.
Times from Tre­banos RFC club­house to Cardiff Cen­tral: 4.00 pm & 6.00 pm

Tick­ets for a return jour­ney are £5. Please con­tact Amy on 07828671422 or email neverwork@riseup.net to book your place on the minibus.

Please note: there is a lim­it­ed num­ber of places so please make sure your place in secured by no lat­er than Tues­day 20th. If mon­ey is a prob­lem for you, we still may be able to find you space — get in touch!
http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk

URGENT! PEOPLE NEEDED AT ANTI-PIPELINE TREE CAMP!

Lots more peo­ple are URGENTLY need­ed at the protest camp near Bre­con. Trees are now being felled in the area around the camp and evic­tion is expect­ed with­in the next two weeks. We need peo­ple, it does­n’t mat­ter if you can’t stay for long, we still want you!

Lots more peo­ple are URGENTLY need­ed at the protest camp near Bre­con. Trees are now being felled in the area around the camp and evic­tion is expect­ed with­in the next two weeks. We need peo­ple, it does­n’t mat­ter if you can’t stay for long, we still want you!

The ancient wood­land is sched­uled for dec­i­ma­tion by Nation­al Grid to clear a path for the 48″ high pres­sure gas pipeline. The pro­test­ers aim to stop the destruc­tion of yet more ancient wood­land by Nation­al Grid and it’s con­trac­tors.

Peo­ple on site are request­ing any dona­tions. Please send sup­plies of all sorts, espe­cial­ly beams for build­ing, tarp, rope, nails, D‑locks, heavy chains, stuff for lock-ons (sand, cement, grav­el.), har­ness­es and oth­er climb­ing gear, scrap met­al, cud­dles etc etc etc.
We can use almost any tat…

The spring is spring­ing, the flow­ers are start­ing to cov­er the wood­land and it’s the most beau­ti­ful time of year. As Nation­al Grid are sched­uled to be trash­ing this land in April, this is your last chance to see it.

DIRECTIONS:

The protest camp is in ancient wood­land at Pen­pont, 4 miles west of Bre­con on the A40 close to Bet­tws Pen­pont church.It is locat­ed at Ord­nance Sur­vey nation­al grid ref­er­ence SN9728728525. There is a bus going from Cardiff coach sta­tion to Bre­con town (X43, takes aprox 1hr, costs around £4). From the bus stop you get off at in Bre­con (the only one there) there is anoth­er bus that goes right past the camp (£1.60, aprox 10 mins- ask dri­ver for tree camp,you will prob­a­bly see ban­ners).

Map link :- http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?client=public&GridE=-3.49420&GridN=51.94540&lon=-3.49420&lat=51.94540&place=Penpont%2C%20Powys&db=freegaz&scale=100000&search_result=Penpont%2C%20Powys〈=&keepicon=true
http://www.churchinwales.org.uk/swanbrec/churches/brecon/5844.html

http://fightthepipe.co.uk

London Climate Campers update

Only four months to go till the 2007 Camp for Cli­mate Action — are you get­ting involved?

Get inspired, watch the Reclaim Pow­er movie about last years camp at the ram­pART social cen­tre tonight from 8pm. (see https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/03/364997.html). Copies are now avail­able on DVD in this coun­try from Ris­ing Tide and local groups work­ing towards this years cli­mate camp.

Only four months to go till the 2007 Camp for Cli­mate Action — are you get­ting involved?

Get inspired, watch the Reclaim Pow­er movie about last years camp at the ram­pART social cen­tre tonight from 8pm. (see https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/03/364997.html). Copies are now avail­able on DVD in this coun­try from Ris­ing Tide and local groups work­ing towards this years cli­mate camp.

The Lon­don cli­mate camp group had a meet­ing last tues­day and among the issues dis­cussed was the lack of strength in terms of peo­ple com­mit­ting at this stage. This raised the prospect of join­ing forces with oth­er groups from the South East to organ­ise a neigh­bour­hood rather than try to have Lon­don as an enti­ty in it’s own right. Con­tact has been made with the Brighton group but no fur­ther news yet on that.

The Lon­don group is plan­ning on organ­is­ing a fundrais­er for April 28th. If you can help or have con­tacts with good DJs, bands, etc to draw crowds; who know about good venues; etc get in touch!

The Lon­don group has vol­un­teered to organ­ise the May gath­er­ing and host it in Lon­don. The dates will be the 19th and 20th May so put it in your diary now. Venue is yet to be decid­ed. Help will be need­ed with the gen­er­al organ­i­sa­tion (kitchen, facil­i­ta­tion, etc), so step

In the mean­time, this week­end is the nation­al cli­mate camp gath­er­ing in Bris­tol. Min­utes of pre­vi­ous meet­ings can be found on the cli­mate camp web­site http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/meeting.htm

The next Lon­don meet­ing will be on Mon­day 26th March at the Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion cafe. Up to now the meet­ings have been fort­night­ly, but there are plans to skip April 10th as this will be East­er tues­day and then make the meet­ings week­ly from Tue­day 17th Apri. It would be great if more peo­ple could make the meet­ings so that Lon­don can have a vibrant gath­er­ing and neigh­bour­hood.

Earth First! Shut Down Aluminum Giant ALCOA in The Netherlands

Last night “Earth First!” closed Alcoa’s head­quar­ters in Drunen, the Nether­lands. Alcoa’s largest dutch fac­to­ry in Kerkrade was also shut. Entrance gates were locked with chains. The gates’locks them­selves were sab­o­taged with a liq­uid.
Alcoa is con­struct­ing new alu­minum smelters in Ice­land. Alcoa also plans to build new smelters in Trinidad and in the Ama­zon. There is fierce local and inter­na­tion­al oppo­si­tion to these plans. Effects on nature and cli­mate are dev­as­tat­ing. Var­i­ous planned smelters would be pow­ered by con­struct­ing new megadams that would flood large areas of unique wilder­ness.

Last night “Earth First!” closed Alcoa’s head­quar­ters in Drunen, the Nether­lands. Alcoa’s largest dutch fac­to­ry in Kerkrade was also shut. Entrance gates were locked with chains. The gates’locks them­selves were sab­o­taged with a liq­uid.
Alcoa is con­struct­ing new alu­minum smelters in Ice­land. Alcoa also plans to build new smelters in Trinidad and in the Ama­zon. There is fierce local and inter­na­tion­al oppo­si­tion to these plans. Effects on nature and cli­mate are dev­as­tat­ing. Var­i­ous planned smelters would be pow­ered by con­struct­ing new megadams that would flood large areas of unique wilder­ness.

With this action, we are declar­ing our sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Sav­ing Ice­land cam­paign. Sav­ing Ice­land has called out for an inter­na­tion­al week of action against heavy indus­try. This action has been done in response to that call.

Earth First! in Bel­gium and the Nether­lands is also called Groen Front!.
Earth First! is not an organ­i­sa­tion but an inter­na­tion­al ban­ner for direct action.

NO COMPROMISE IN DEFENCE OF MOTHER EARTH!

(Source of this report:
https://prod.indymedia.nl/nl/2007/03/43107.shtml)

Also rel­e­vant:
http://www.groenfront.nl
http://www.savingiceland.org

14 Landrovers covered in Paintstripper

Four­teen 4x4s were cov­ered in painstrip­per in a Land Rover Deal­er­ship near Here­ford in an action against cli­mate change. Slo­gans were also sprayed while the vehi­cles were left to ruin.

This action was tak­en to warn any deal­er­ship spe­cial­is­ing in these cars, that they are a tar­get. Dri­ving one of these vehi­cles is the equiv­e­lent to leav­ing the TV on for 32 years, cars like this must be stopped in their tracks.

Four­teen 4x4s were cov­ered in painstrip­per in a Land Rover Deal­er­ship near Here­ford in an action against cli­mate change. Slo­gans were also sprayed while the vehi­cles were left to ruin.

This action was tak­en to warn any deal­er­ship spe­cial­is­ing in these cars, that they are a tar­get. Dri­ving one of these vehi­cles is the equiv­e­lent to leav­ing the TV on for 32 years, cars like this must be stopped in their tracks.

Cli­mate Change is the most mas­sive glob­al­ly destruc­tive issue that is fac­ing us today, we can not wait for any­one else to take action but our­selves. The new dawn is com­ing for direct action in defence of the Earth. There will be no more tol­er­ance.

Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front

Climate Camp Meeting this weekend in Bristol, and Film

Last year saw 600 peo­ple gath­er in the shad­ow of Drax Pow­er Sta­tion for the ten day Camp For Cli­mate Action. This week­end in Bris­tol is the next nation­al plan­ning meet­ing, Sat­ur­day 17th and Sun­day 18th March. The venue is Bar­ton Hill Set­tle­ment which is 5 min from Lawrence Hill Sta­tion.

Last year saw 600 peo­ple gath­er in the shad­ow of Drax Pow­er Sta­tion for the ten day Camp For Cli­mate Action. This week­end in Bris­tol is the next nation­al plan­ning meet­ing, Sat­ur­day 17th and Sun­day 18th March. The venue is Bar­ton Hill Set­tle­ment which is 5 min from Lawrence Hill Sta­tion.

Any ques­tions, sug­ges­tions or pro­pos­als for the meet­ing can be sent to gath­er­ings [at] climatecamp.org.uk.

Last years camp was cap­tured on video and turned into a doc­u­men­tary by Cine Rebalde called Reclaim Pow­er. Copies are now avail­able on DVD in this coun­try from Ris­ing Tide and local groups work­ing towards this years cli­mate camp.

Those in Lon­don can check out the cli­mate camp film as part of two evenings of cli­mate chaos relat­ed films at the ram­pART social cen­tre (see http://rampart.co.nr for details). Also show­ing is the epic doc­u­men­tary The Plan­et, plus Glob­al Dim­ming and The Denial Machine. Addi­tion­al­ly there will be speak­ers and info.

More info on film at http://www.cinerebelde.org/site.php3?id_rubrique=22&lang=en
More info on camp for cli­mate action at http://climatecamp.org.uk