Category: Climate Chaos

USA: Six Arrested Blocking Road in front of Duke Energy HQ During DNC

Pro­test­ers sit­ting on a ban­ner that reads “Duke is destroy­ing our earth with tax­pay­er dol­lars” were arrest­ed Thurs­day after­noon at the inter­sec­tion of Try­on and Stonewall streets, near the Duke Ener­gy build­ing. Pho­to: Meghan Cooke

Six pro­test­ers were tak­en away in hand­cuffs ear­li­er Thurs­day near the cor­po­rate head­quar­ters for Duke Ener­gy. They had locked arms and were sit­ting on top of a ban­ner claim­ing that the ener­gy com­pa­ny was harm­ing the envi­ron­ment.

Two dozen offi­cers sur­round­ed them and even­tu­al­ly lift­ed up the pro­test­ers, who refused to move. They then put them into pris­on­er trans­port vans.

Just before her arrest, 26-year-old Christi­na Mounce of Casper, W. Vir­ginia, crit­i­cized the util­i­ty com­pa­ny for burn­ing coal and run­ning nuclear pow­er plants.

“We want Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to stop accept­ing their cam­paign mon­ey,” said Mounce, a marine biol­o­gist. “The pres­i­dent is set­ting a hor­ri­ble exam­ple by being linked with them.”

The demon­stra­tors at Stonewall and Try­on streets said they were demand­ing an audi­ence with Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Ener­gy.

The oth­ers arrest­ed were Amelia Camp­bell, 22, of Boul­der, Colo.; Audrey Camp­bell, 22, of Boul­der, Colo.; Richard French, 39, of Farm­ing­ton, N.M.; Matthew Good­sell, 56; and Michael Joseph Stew­art, 25, of Lake­wood, Colo. All were charged with imped­ing traf­fic.

Count­ing Thursday’s deten­tions, a total of 25 pro­test­ers were arrest­ed or tak­en away in hand­cuffs dur­ing the three-day con­ven­tion, which end­ed Thurs­day night.

 

Fracking on trial verdict

An envi­ron­men­tal activist who climbed a drilling rig in a protest against frack­ing in Decem­ber last year was today found guilty under the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act at Pre­ston Mag­is­trates Court. She was ordered to pay a £250 fine and £750 costs.

An envi­ron­men­tal activist who climbed a drilling rig in a protest against frack­ing in Decem­ber last year was today found guilty under the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act at Pre­ston Mag­is­trates Court. She was ordered to pay a £250 fine and £750 costs.

Yes­ter­day two oth­er defen­dants were cleared of charges of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass as part of the same court case. (1)

On 1 Decem­ber 2011, pro­tes­tors from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide occu­pied the test drilling rig, at Cuadrilla Resource’s Hes­keth Bank site, Lan­cashire, shut­ting it down for 13 hours. (2) (3)

Dur­ing the tri­al, it emerged that Cuadrilla had con­tin­ued drilling for two months after their plan­ning per­mis­sion had expired.

In her final sub­mis­sion, the defence bar­ris­ter, Far­raht Arshad said of her client:
“As a con­cerned cit­i­zen no oth­er avenues were open to her.”

She jus­ti­fied this state­ment by the evi­dence giv­en in the tri­al by DECC (4) and Lan­cashire Coun­ty Coun­cil. DECC, the licenc­ing author­i­ty, uses the off-shore oil reg­u­la­tions to licence on-shore frack­ing oper­a­tions and
stat­ed that they are not inter­est­ed in polic­ing breach­es of envi­ron­men­tal law which is the job of the local plan­ning author­i­ty and the Envi­ron­ment Agency.

The local coun­cil plan­ning offi­cer made it clear in his evi­dence that he only had lim­it­ed resources and few pow­ers to police devel­op­ers. The gen­er­al expec­ta­tion from these reg­u­la­tors is that com­pa­nies will reg­u­late
them­selves.

It was clear­ly estab­lished dur­ing tri­al that Cuadrilla Resources had flout­ed the peri­od of their plan­ning per­mis­sion by two months, and had failed to com­ply with their own method state­ment relat­ed to the pro­tec­tion
of birdlife from the near­by Site of Spe­cial Sci­en­tif­ic Inter­est. As a result they were poten­tial­ly in breach of the Wildlife and Coun­try­side Act. Nei­ther DECC nor the local coun­cil appeared to be con­cerned about tak­ing action to pre­vent this crime.

Despite these facts, Judge Ward reject­ed the defence’s argu­ment that the activists were pre­vent­ing a crime.

The con­vict­ed activist said:
“This ver­dict con­firms my view that the reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties are hope­less­ly inad­e­quate at their job and don’t have the pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment as a pri­or­i­ty. Com­pa­nies like Cuadrilla are allowed to flout their oblig­a­tions with impuni­ty, while con­cerned cit­i­zens are crim­i­nalised.”

Hydraulic frac­tur­ing is a method of extract­ing gas in shale rock. Huge amounts of water mixed with tox­ic chem­i­cals are forced into the ground at high pres­sure, a large pro­por­tion of which are nev­er recov­ered. In the
Unit­ed States numer­ous spills of these flu­ids have con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed irri­ga­tion water, affect­ing food sup­plies, and the health of sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. (5) (6) (7)

There are twelve licens­es to frack for shale gas in the UK, five of which are held by Cuadrilla resources in Lan­cashire. (8)

*Notes*

1. To have com­mit­ted the offence of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass (sec­tion 68 Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act 1994) it need­ed to be shown that the defen­dants had:
* Tak­en dis­rup­tive action beyond just tres­pass­ing on pri­vate prop­er­ty. The pros­e­cu­tion failed on this first point.
* Dis­rupt­ed a law­ful activ­i­ty, in this case the drilling oper­a­tions of Cuadrilla.

2.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2011/dec/01/fracking-lancashire-hesketh-bank-cuadrilla

3. Pho­tos of the action are avail­able at:  https://secure.flickr.com/photos/71113300@N08/

4. DECC – Depart­ment of Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change is the licenc­ing author­i­ty for frack­ing oper­a­tions and all fos­sil fuel exploita­tion in the UK.

5. ‘Cracks in the Façade: EPA Traced Pol­lu­tion of Under­ground Water Sup­ply to Hydraulic Frac­tur­ing’ (Aug 2011 – EWG)
 http://static.ewg.org/reports/2011/fracking/cracks_in_the_facade.pdf

6. ‘Methane con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of drink­ing water accom­pa­ny­ing gas-well drilling and hydraulic frac­tur­ing’ (May 2011 – Duke)
 http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/cgc/pnas2011.pdf

7. ‘Shale gas: a pro­vi­sion­al assess­ment of cli­mate change and envi­ron­men­tal impacts’ (Jan 2011 – Tyn­dall Cen­tre)
 http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/sites/default/files/coop_shale_gas_report_final_200111.pdf

8.  http://frack-off.org.uk/new-homepage/bad-guys/locations/

*For more infor­ma­tion see:*

www.risingtide.org.uk
www.frack-off.org.uk
www.frackingontrial.org

Protesters chained to fence outside Inergy gas facility in New York

[UPDATE: 3 arrest­ed for block­ade.]

[UPDATE: 3 arrest­ed for block­ade.]

I am chained to a fence out­side an Iner­gy facil­i­ty near Watkins Glen, New York, and I am not alone.

We are protest­ing the gasi­fi­ca­tion of New York. We don’t want frack­ing in this state (or any state), and we don’t like Inergy’s plans to build a gas stor­age hub in Seneca Lake salt cav­erns.

We believe that:

1. Inergy’s plans are reck­less and dan­ger­ous. Salt Cav­ern stor­age facil­i­ties are more acci­dent prone than any oth­er type of gas stor­age facil­i­ty. 

2. Even if noth­ing goes wrong, there will be plen­ty wrong. The Iner­gy project will change the char­ac­ter of our rur­al area by increas­ing the lev­els of traf­fic, noise and pol­lu­tion. Just the pol­lu­tion alone will kill peo­ple, and gas devel­op­ment will sure­ly harm our exist­ing win­ery, agri­cul­tur­al and tourism indus­tries.

3. Iner­gy can’t be trust­ed. Iner­gy has been caught in so many lies and is keep­ing so many secrets that it has no cred­i­bil­i­ty what­so­ev­er. It can­not be relied on as a guardian of pub­lic safe­ty.

4. The Iner­gy project is clear­ly meant to facil­i­tate the frack­ing of New York, Ohio and Penn­syl­va­nia. We adamant­ly oppose frack­ing and con­sid­er it cat­a­stroph­ic fol­ly. We want the Iner­gy project stopped because of its own lack of mer­it, and also as part of the larg­er effort to stop frack­ing.

5. We resent the fact that, even though we live here, we have been giv­en no say in what hap­pens to our area. We know, for exam­ple, that the DEC is keep­ing secrets for Iner­gy. And we know that the DEC sent pro­posed frack­ing reg­u­la­tions to the gas com­pa­nies for review, before final­iz­ing them and releas­ing them for pub­lic com­ment. No such oppor­tu­ni­ty was afford­ed to the industry’s oppo­nents. We can­not remain silent while a demon­stra­bly biased agency makes deci­sions behind closed doors that could for­ev­er change our way of life.

Australia. Climate Change activists step up opposition to coal in Hunter Valley protests from mine to port

A ban­ner drop at a con­struc­tion site for a new coal loader ter­mi­nal at the Port of New­cas­tle in the New South Wales Hunter Val­ley end­ed when police instruct­ed the 60 metre crane be low­ered to the ground.

A ban­ner drop at a con­struc­tion site for a new coal loader ter­mi­nal at the Port of New­cas­tle in the New South Wales Hunter Val­ley end­ed when police instruct­ed the 60 metre crane be low­ered to the ground. The Pro­tes­tors say they were not giv­en warn­ing of this action and alledged it imper­iled their lives.

“We are dis­mayed with the actions of police here today.” said spokesper­son Steve Phillips. “We con­duct­ed a peace­ful protest, with trained and expe­ri­ence climbers, and safe­ty as our pri­or­i­ty. NSW Police respond­ed with gross neg­li­gence and dere­lic­tion of duty, and placed two lives at risk. Our climbers were not even warned before the crane was low­ered.”

Coal Export Terminal construction obstructed

Activists entered the NCIG coal ter­mi­nal site in New­cas­tle before dawn to peace­ful­ly stop con­struc­tion of new coal port facil­i­ties. Two expe­ri­enced climbers scaled the 60 metre high con­struc­tion crane to unfurl a ban­ner read­ing “Stop the coal rush! For health, water & cli­mate.”

The two activists were both arrest­ed and charged with ‘enter enclosed land’. They have now been released and will appear in New­cas­tle local court on 9th Octo­ber. Both activists have been report­ed as safe and well, and are hap­py with the protest today which stopped work on the coal port ter­mi­nal site for two hours.

The protest was the fourth con­sec­u­tive stop-work action against NSW coal projects this week. Activists tar­get­ed expan­sions of the three major ele­ments of the coal chain – mines, rail­way, and port infra­struc­ture – to high­light the mas­sive expan­sion of coal min­ing and infra­struc­ture tak­ing place in NSW, and its impacts on pub­lic health and the envi­ron­ment.

“NSW is in the grip of a coal rush. Pub­lic health, water­ways, ecosys­tems, and the glob­al cli­mate are under assault,” said Steve Phillips. “Local com­mu­ni­ties are resist­ing the coal rush at every step of the way, chal­leng­ing new mines and port devel­op­ments that place the prof­its of coal com­pa­nies ahead of the pub­lic good.”

Accord­ing to Ris­ing Tide New­cas­tle who organ­ised today’s protest there are 34 coal mine pro­pos­als cur­rent­ly before the NSW Plan­ning Depart­ment, most of which would pro­duce coal for export through New­cas­tle. New­cas­tle is the largest coal export port in the world, and the port ter­mi­nal expan­sion will add 66 mil­lion tonnes per year export capac­i­ty if allowed to go ahead. In 2004, port through­put was around 78 mil­lion tonnes, or 10 per cent of the world’s total trade in coal

“But both State and Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ments have tak­en the side of the coal com­pa­nies. NSW Plan­ning Min­is­ter Brad Haz­zard and Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Tony Burke con­tin­ue to approve every coal project that arrives on their desks. Com­mu­ni­ties are cry­ing out for help, but gov­ern­ments are ignor­ing them.”

 

“Enough is enough. We need to stop the coal rush. It’s time for State and Fed­er­al gov­ern­ments to stop kow­tow­ing to the min­ing com­pa­nies, and get behind com­mu­ni­ty demands for a clean, renew­able future.”

A spokesper­son for Ris­ing Tide New­cas­tle said the actions of police today which imper­iled the lives of two activists will be report­ed to the NSW Ombuds­man.

 

Coal Crusher occupied at Boggabri coal mine

On Mon­day two activists did a ban­ner drop in cen­tral New South Wales, where activists scaled a coal-crush­ing plant at Bog­gabri Coal Mine on the Gunnedah basin.

Accord­ing to a media release by the pro­tes­tors the NSW Gov­ern­ment has recent­ly approved a four­fold expan­sion of the Bog­gabri Coal Mine. The two pro­tes­tors dropped a ban­ner say­ing: “Stop the Coal Rush: Pro­tect Health, Water, Cli­mate”. After more than 8 hours atop the coal-crush­er two pro­tes­tors were arrest­ed and tak­en to Narrabri Police Sta­tion. The men were protest­ing against the destruc­tion of Leard State For­est, in the Gunnedah Basin, for three open-cut coal mines. A major expan­sion of the Bog­gabri coal mine was approved by the NSW Gov­ern­ment in July despite com­mu­ni­ty and envi­ron­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions alledg­ing huge eco­log­i­cal impacts and over­whelm­ing com­mu­ni­ty oppo­si­tion.

At the same time on Mon­day activists from Quit Coal dropped a huge ban­ner over the the Vic­to­ri­an State Par­lia­ment entrance say­ing ‘Coal is the sin­gle great­est threat to civil­i­sa­tion and all life on our plan­et’ Prof. James Hansen, NASA. Why is Bail­lieu fund­ing coal?”

Tripod stops construction on coal railtrack expansion

Between today’s protest and the protest at Bog­gabri coal mine Ris­ing Tide New­cas­tle also protest­ed on Tues­day the upgrad­ing of rail infra­struc­ture and build­ing a third track in the Hunter Val­ley to increase the load capac­i­ty for export­ing more coal.

The Mait­land to Min­im­bah Third Track project is being con­struct­ed by Hunter 8 Alliance, which is a con­sor­tium of engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny GHD, con­struc­tion com­pa­ny John Hol­land, and the Fed­er­al­ly owned Aus­tralian Rail Track Cor­po­ra­tion. The project aims to lift coal haulage capac­i­ty on the Hunter rail cor­ri­dor to 200 mil­lion tonnes per annum. It includes con­struc­tion of 23km of new rail track, and recon­di­tion­ing of 9km of exist­ing track. The Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment grant­ed $114 mil­lion, through the ARTC, to the project.

Activists accessed a Hunter 8 Alliance site at Ruther­ford and erect­ed a wood­en tri­pod to block access to the site. Activist Ned Haughton scaled the 10 metre high struc­ture, where he remained for the next five and a half hours. Haughton was arrest­ed and charged with obstruc­tion.

Steve Phillips, spokesper­son for protest organ­is­ers Ris­ing Tide, said: “This rail­way con­struc­tion project is designed pure­ly for the ben­e­fit of coal cor­po­ra­tions, yet it is being paid for with tax­pay­ers mon­ey. Why are tax­pay­ers dol­lars being hand­ed over to rich min­ing cor­po­ra­tions, in order to prop up a pol­lut­ing indus­try that is destroy­ing human health and the envi­ron­ment?”

 

“There is a coal rush under way in NSW, and pub­lic health, water­ways, ecosys­tems, and the glob­al cli­mate are under assault. Mas­sive coal mine projects, coal haulage projects, and coal port projects are in the pipeline. If all these projects go ahead, the con­se­quences will be dev­as­tat­ing.” con­clud­ed Steve Phillips. “We call on State and Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ments to aban­don their infat­u­a­tion with min­ing com­pa­nies, and their addic­tion to fos­sil fuels. It’s time to take a stand and stop this coal rush before it’s too late.”

Sources:

Fracking on trial: lawfulness of Cuadrilla’s fracking operation remains in doubt

Yes­ter­day, three peo­ple from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide were on tri­al for a sec­ond day at Pre­ston Mag­is­trates Court fol­low­ing their action (1) which shut down Cuadrilla Resources’ hydraulic frac­tur­ing (2) site beside the Rib­ble Estu­ary in Lan­cashire in Decem­ber 2011.

Yes­ter­day, three peo­ple from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide were on tri­al for a sec­ond day at Pre­ston Mag­is­trates Court fol­low­ing their action (1) which shut down Cuadrilla Resources’ hydraulic frac­tur­ing (2) site beside the Rib­ble Estu­ary in Lan­cashire in Decem­ber 2011.

Two of the defen­dants went free when it became clear that the charges against them had been poor­ly framed. They had been charged with aggra­vat­ed tres­pass.

A defen­dant from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide com­ment­ed:
“It’s great to go free but the threat that frack­ing pos­es to com­mu­ni­ties and the envi­ron­ment has not gone away. It is very like­ly that Cuadrilla will be frack­ing at sites in Lan­cashire in the near future. Do we trust a com­pa­ny that is pre­pared to flout its plan­ning per­mis­sion to han­dle a very dan­ger­ous tech­nol­o­gy like frack­ing?”

To have com­mit­ted the offence of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass it need­ed to be shown that the defen­dants had:

· Tak­en dis­rup­tive action beyond just tres­pass­ing on pri­vate prop­er­ty. The pros­e­cu­tion failed on this first point.

· Dis­rupt­ed a law­ful activ­i­ty, in this case the drilling oper­a­tions of Cuadrilla.

On Tues­day in court, the Head of Plan­ning from Lan­cashire Coun­ty Coun­cil, Alyn Peri­go, con­firmed that Cuadrilla were oper­at­ing out­side the peri­od of their plan­ning per­mis­sion. Cuadrilla had in fact con­tin­ued to drill two months beyond their agreed time lim­it. Mr Peri­go also con­firmed that by drilling in win­ter they had failed to meet a key con­di­tion to safe­guard bird life from the adja­cent Rib­ble Estu­ary Site of Spe­cial Sci­en­tif­ic Inter­est. The defence argued that this may have result­ed in a breach of the Wildlife and Coun­try­side Act.

Yes­ter­day the pros­e­cu­tion had hoped to call Pat War­ing, (3) an Ecol­o­gist employed by Cuadrilla Resources, to attempt to demon­strate that Cuadrilla had not been oper­at­ing unlaw­ful­ly at the time of the protest. In the event Mr War­ing was not pre­pared to appear for the pros­e­cu­tion. This left the pros­e­cu­tion with the chal­lenge of try­ing to demon­strate ‘law­ful­ness’ with­out an expert wit­ness. In the event this was left unde­ter­mined as the pros­e­cu­tion had already failed on the first point.

The case against a third defen­dant will con­clude this morn­ing. She faces a dif­fer­ent charge under sec­tion 69 Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act 1994, which is fail­ing to leave land as soon as prac­ti­ca­ble when direct­ed to do so by the senior offi­cer at the scene.

Notes

1. On Decem­ber 1st 2011, activists from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide occu­pied a drilling rig oper­at­ed by Cuadrilla Resources at Hes­keth Bank beside the Rib­ble Estu­ary. The action stopped drilling for 13 hours before the occu­piers came down of their own accord. Pho­tos of the action are avail­able at https://secure.flickr.com/photos/71113300@N08/

2. Hydraulic frac­tur­ing is a method of extract­ing gas in shale rock. Huge amounts of water mixed with tox­ic chem­i­cals are forced into the ground at high pres­sure, a large pro­por­tion of which are nev­er recov­ered. In the Unit­ed States numer­ous spills of these flu­ids have con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed irri­ga­tion water, affect­ing food sup­plies, and the health of sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. There are twelve licens­es to frack for shale gas in the UK, five of which are held by Cuadrilla resources in Lan­cashire.

3. Ear­ly in 2011, Pat War­ing of Ecol­o­gy Ser­vices UK Ltd, was employed by Cuadrilla to pro­duce the doc­u­ment: Method State­ment – Birds, set­ting out how Cuadrilla could min­imise dis­tur­bance to the over­win­ter­ing and nest­ing birds that fre­quent Hes­keth Bank beside the Rib­ble Estu­ary SSSI. The pro­duc­tion of this doc­u­ment, and com­pli­ance with its con­tents, is a require­ment of Con­di­tion 22 of Cuadrilla’s Plan­ning Per­mis­sion for the explorato­ry drilling oper­a­tion.

For more infor­ma­tion see:

www.risingtide.org.uk
www.frack-off.org.uk
www.frackingontrial.org

Fracking on trial — again!

The safe­ty of frack­ing will be chal­lenged at Pre­ston Mag­is­trates Court today, as 3 peo­ple go on tri­al fol­low­ing a protest at Cuadrilla’s Hes­keth Bank site, Lan­cashire, in Decem­ber last year. (1) The tri­al is expect­ed to last until Thurs­day.

 

The safe­ty of frack­ing will be chal­lenged at Pre­ston Mag­is­trates Court today, as 3 peo­ple go on tri­al fol­low­ing a protest at Cuadrilla’s Hes­keth Bank site, Lan­cashire, in Decem­ber last year. (1) The tri­al is expect­ed to last until Thurs­day.

 

On 1 Decem­ber 2011, pro­tes­tors from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide occu­pied the test drilling rig, shut­ting it down for 13 hours. (2) (3)

Hydraulic frac­tur­ing is a method of extract­ing gas in shale rock. Huge amounts of water mixed with tox­ic chem­i­cals are forced into the ground at high pres­sure, a large pro­por­tion of which are nev­er recov­ered. This flu­id also leach­es arsenic out of rocks, cre­at­ing a dan­ger­ous cock­tail that’s dif­fi­cult to dis­pose of. In the Unit­ed States numer­ous spills of these flu­ids have con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed irri­ga­tion water, affect­ing food sup­plies, and the health of sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. (4) (5) (6)

Rachel Green­wood from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide said: “Once frack­ing takes place con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of land and water, and the dev­as­ta­tion of local ecosys­tems, is inevitable. You can­not do it safe­ly, and reg­u­la­tion of frack­ing is total­ly inef­fec­tive. Cuadrilla were able to con­tin­ue drilling after their plan­ning per­mis­sion had expired. If frack­ing is allowed to go ahead in Lan­cashire it could hap­pen through­out the UK.”

There are twelve licens­es to frack for shale gas in the UK, five of which are held by Cuadrilla resources in Lan­cashire. (7)

Cuadrilla’s activ­i­ties are opposed both by local groups (8) (9) and cli­mate cam­paign­ers. On 10th July 2012, three peo­ple were found guilty of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass fol­low­ing an occu­pa­tion of the Cuadrilla Resources test drilling site at Banks. (10) On 18 June, 20 peo­ple block­ad­ed Cuadrilla Resource’s drilling rig at PR Marriot’s com­pound in Chester­field, lock­ing them­selves to the gates to pre­vent the rig from being moved to Cuadrilla’s site in Lan­cashire. (11)

UK Methane recent­ly announced their inten­tion to apply for plan­ning per­mis­sion to drill a Coal Bed Methane bore­hole in Keyn­sham, Bris­tol. (12)

Coal Bed Methane involves drilling into coal seams to extract gas in a sim­i­lar man­ner to frack­ing. A wide vari­ety of tech­niques are used depend­ing on the nature of the coal seam. If the seam is per­me­able enough, pump­ing water out of the seam will be enough to start gas flow­ing from the well, but if not, some sort of stim­u­la­tion will be need­ed. Often this is hydraulic frac­tur­ing.

Because the coal seams tend to be rel­a­tive­ly close to the sur­face, and because such large quan­ti­ties of water are pumped out of the coal seam (water that has been mari­nad­ing in coal for thou­sands of years), prob­lems with water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and leak­ing methane tend to occur regard­less of whether frack­ing is per­formed. (13)

There is cur­rent­ly plan­ning per­mis­sion for around 60 Coal Bed Methane wells in Britain. (14)

Notes for edi­tors

1. Two of the defen­dants are charged with aggra­vat­ed tres­pass (sec­tion 68 Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act 1994). The oth­er is charged with an offence under sec­tion 69 Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act 1994, which is fail­ing to leave land as soon as prac­ti­ca­ble when direct­ed to do so by the senior offi­cer at the scene.

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2011/dec/01/fracking-lancashire-hesketh-bank-cuadrilla

3. Pho­tos of the action are avail­able at: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/71113300@N08/

4. ‘Cracks in the Façade: EPA Traced Pol­lu­tion of Under­ground Water Sup­ply to Hydraulic Frac­tur­ing’ (Aug 2011 – EWG)
http://static.ewg.org/reports/2011/fracking/cracks_in_the_facade.pdf

5. ‘Methane con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of drink­ing water accom­pa­ny­ing gas-well drilling and hydraulic frac­tur­ing’ (May 2011 – Duke)
http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/cgc/pnas2011.pdf

6.‘Shale gas: a pro­vi­sion­al assess­ment of cli­mate change and envi­ron­men­tal impacts’ (Jan 2011 – Tyn­dall Cen­tre)
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/sites/default/files/coop_shale_gas_report_final_200111.pdf

7. http://frack-off.org.uk/new-homepage/bad-guys/locations/

8. Res­i­dents Action on Fylde Frack­ing: http://stopfyldefracking.org.uk/

9. Rib­ble Estu­ary Against Frack­ing: http://reafg.blogspot.co.uk/

10. The defence was sup­port­ed by a num­ber of wit­ness­es, includ­ing aca­d­e­mics from the UK and US and mem­bers of the local com­mu­ni­ty, who tes­ti­fied regard­ing the con­se­quences of shale gas extrac­tion, in terms of cli­mate change, water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, earth­quakes and severe health effects. For more infor­ma­tion see: http://frackingontrial.org/

11. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/jun/18/fracking-protest-chesterfield-cuadrilla-hesketh-bank

12. UK Methane have con­tact­ed Tran­si­tion Keyn­sham to announce that they will apply for plan­ning per­mis­sion to drill a Coal Bed Methane bore­hole in Keyn­sham: http://www.frackfreesomerset.org

13. http://frack-off.org.uk/coal-bed-methane-the-evil-twin-of-shale-gas/

14. http://frack-off.org.uk/bad-guys/locations/

For more infor­ma­tion see:
www.risingtide.org.uk
www.frackfreesomerset.org
www.frack-off.org.uk
www.frackingontrial.org

Climate Sirens drop banner on Tower Bridge

Today Cli­mate Siren activists scaled Tow­er Bridge to drop a mas­sive ban­ner above the Par­a­lympic sym­bol which read “Cli­mate Change our Next Chal­lenge”.

Today Cli­mate Siren activists scaled Tow­er Bridge to drop a mas­sive ban­ner above the Par­a­lympic sym­bol which read “Cli­mate Change our Next Chal­lenge”. Their blog con­tains ‘an open let­ter to the world’ (see below) where they ask us all to focus on the “chang­ing cli­mate and the threat it pos­es to our civilisation’s very exis­tence on this beau­ti­ful plan­et” After the drop Tow­er bridge was evac­u­at­ed for “safe­ty rea­sons” the activist arrest­ed and tak­en to Bish­ops­gate where their sup­port­ers fol­lowed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Peo­ple of the World,

The 2012 Olympics were a huge inspi­ra­tion as to how we can come togeth­er to over­come chal­lenges and achieve suc­cess – at many lev­els; as par­tic­i­pants, as spec­ta­tors, as com­peti­tors, even as a host nation. No doubt the Par­a­lympics will equal or sur­pass this.

But these Games can be an inspi­ra­tion for us to con­front the biggest chal­lenge our species has ever faced – per­haps will ever face: The chang­ing cli­mate and the threat it pos­es to our civilisation’s very exis­tence on this beau­ti­ful plan­et.

Cli­mate change is hap­pen­ing now. Don’t be fooled by those whose vest­ed inter­ests ensure that they would have you think oth­er­wise. Or by cold­er win­ters. Cli­mate change unfolds uneven­ly over time and is not uni­form across all areas of the globe. Think of the stock mar­ket:

“Any com­pe­tent finan­cial advi­sor will tell you that the road to secure retire­ment is paved with mar­ket drops. Any com­pe­tent cli­mate sci­en­tist will tell you that our road to a hot­ter plan­et will be paved with cold snaps, even record-break­ers.” – Prof. Lau­rence Smith

Even those for­mer­ly scep­ti­cal come round to the irrefutable evi­dence even­tu­al­ly, as Prof. Muller has recent­ly shown. We may not under­stand the phys­i­cal sci­ence of the Earth well enough to accu­rate­ly pre­dict how the cli­mate will change over long peri­ods, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the region­al lev­el, but then we don’t under­stand mete­o­rol­o­gy well enough to deter­mine whether it will be rain­ing or not in Chica­go next 15th April. Doesn’t mean that it will not be rain­ing in Chica­go come 15/04/13!

But our mod­els are get­ting bet­ter. Twen­ty years ago, sci­en­tists had to ‘write-in’ com­plex, irreg­u­lar cli­mate vari­abil­i­ty events such as El Niño/La Niña cycles. Nowa­days, they arise spon­ta­neous­ly with­in our mod­els: a clear indi­ca­tor that we are get­ting more and more accu­rate in our pre­dic­tions.

Even with­out the mod­els, the field of pale­o­cli­ma­tol­ogy gives us irrefutable and chill­ing evi­dence of how rapid­ly and enor­mous­ly the glob­al cli­mate can and has changed. Ice cores tell us that around 11,500 years ago, sur­face tem­per­a­ture in Green­land increased by 8.3°C in a sin­gle decade. In the Pliocene, when sea lev­els were 25 metres high­er than they are now, the C02 con­tent of the atmos­phere was just 100 parts per mil­lion (ppm) more than they are now. Our annu­al rate of increase is cur­rent­ly about 2.07ppm and ris­ing.

We are already com­mit­ted to a 0.6°C rise on 1990 lev­els, sim­ply from the long-term warm­ing effects of what we’ve already put in the atmos­phere. Even the IPCC (noto­ri­ous for under­es­ti­mat­ing glob­al cli­mate change to achieve sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus) in its most opti­mistic SRES sce­nario – known as ‘B1’ – sees us approach­ing close to a 2°C rise in glob­al tem­per­a­ture by 2100. In this mod­el, norther­ly lat­i­tudes, includ­ing the Arc­tic, would see ris­es any­where between 3.5 – 6°C by century’s end. That might not sound like so much until you realise that the tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­ence between a giant ice sheet cov­er­ing Edin­burgh, Berlin, Moscow and New York was only 5°C low­er than now, dur­ing the last Ice Age. 

The biggest chal­lenge is not in phys­i­cal­ly doing what is nec­es­sary – we have the tech­nol­o­gy and skills to tran­si­tion to a sus­tain­able soci­ety with­out a huge amount of dif­fi­cul­ty. The chal­lenge is in over­com­ing the doubts and con­fu­sion sown by those with vest­ed inter­ests in pre­vent­ing change. To over­come our fears and take that first step into new ter­ri­to­ry. It is the chal­lenge of con­fronting the forces of demog­ra­phy, glob­al­i­sa­tion and cli­mate change and ask­ing seri­ous ques­tions about the way we organ­ise our economies, soci­eties and local com­mu­ni­ties, the way we use our Earth’s nat­ur­al resources, how we dis­trib­ute them and how we pre­serve them for future gen­er­a­tions. 

In truth, our biggest chal­lenge is a moral chal­lenge. 

And we face it now.

clisir

Australia: Climate activists do Banner drops in Boggabri and Melbourne against coal rush

Activists from Quit Coal were able to get a mes­sage across this morn­ing: with a ban­ner drop over the main entrance of the Vic­to­ri­an State par­lia­ment house. The ban­ner said “ ‘Coal is the sin­gle great­est threat to civil­i­sa­tion and all life on our plan­et’ Prof. James Hansen, NASA.

Activists from Quit Coal were able to get a mes­sage across this morn­ing: with a ban­ner drop over the main entrance of the Vic­to­ri­an State par­lia­ment house. The ban­ner said “ ‘Coal is the sin­gle great­est threat to civil­i­sa­tion and all life on our plan­et’ Prof. James Hansen, NASA. Why is Bail­lieu fund­ing coal?” At the same time activists in cen­tral NSW at Bog­gabri climbed a coal-crush­er and dropped a ban­ner which said “Stop the Coal Rush: Pro­tect Health, Water, Cli­mate”

Relat­ed: Fur­ther sub­si­dies for Vic­to­ri­an coal by Vic­to­ri­an and Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ments | Quit Coal pho­tos: Par­lia­ment House Ban­ner Drop & Lock On

“Why is Baillieu funding coal?” demand climate activists

Four activists elud­ed secu­ri­ty and were able to climb the scaf­fold­ing at the back of par­lia­ment house to the roof to drop the ban­ner just after 9am. Two chained them­selves on the roof while two more dropped down with the ban­ner on ropes. Nine oth­er peo­ple chained them­selves on the steps of par­lia­ment house. Pro­tes­tor Dominic O’D­wyer said from the roof: “We are plan­ning on stay­ing here until the gov­ern­ment does some­thing recog­nis­ing the threat that cli­mate change pos­es. We would like the gov­ern­ment to take the threat of cli­mate change seri­ous­ly.”

 

The ban­ner was present for a few hours before police peace­ful­ly escort­ed the pro­tes­tors away. Bolt cut­ters had to be brought in to cut the chains of peo­ple on the steps. Accord­ing to a police spkeswoman no charges have been laid at this stage.

MR Bail­lieu when asked about the protest by reporters com­ment­ed “It will be a mat­ter for the pres­i­dent and the speak­er. Those peo­ple have endan­gered them­selves but they have also endan­gered oth­er peo­ple.”

Ener­gy min­is­ter Michael O’Brien called the protest a “stu­pid and dan­ger­ous stunt”.

Dominic O’D­wyer, who chained him­self on the roof, told AAP reporter and report­ed in the Her­ald Sun “We’re dis­ap­point­ed that the gov­ern­ment is not tak­ing action on cli­mate change and they’ve got their head in the sand. That’s why we’re here today, we’re not here today because we enjoy this. We’ve seen record ice melts in the Arc­tic this year, that means more bush­fires, more severe droughts, worse flood­ing, which affects mil­lions of Vic­to­ri­an fam­i­lies.”

Gavin Jen­nings, Deputy Leader of the Oppo­si­tion in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil and Shad­ow Min­is­ter of Health, tweet­ed dur­ing the protest:

 

One of the rea­sons pro­tes­tors iden­ti­fied for the action was the State gov­ern­ment deci­sion to put $45 mil­lion into fund­ing ‘clean coal’ ini­tia­tives along with anoth­er $45 mil­lion from the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment. Mr O’D­wyer said “For a start they should with­draw that mon­ey”.

Protest against coal expansion Gunnedah Basin, NSW

While the protest at the Vic­to­ri­an Par­lia­ment House was occur­ring there was also a protest and ban­ner drop in cen­tral New South Wales, where activists scaled a coal-crush­ing plant at Bog­gabri Coal Mine on the Gunnedah basin.

Accord­ing to the media release the NSW Gov­ern­ment has recent­ly approved a four­fold expan­sion of the Bog­gabri Coal Mine. The two pro­tes­tors dropped a ban­ner say­ing: “Stop the Coal Rush: Pro­tect Health, Water, Cli­mate”. After more than 8 hours atop the coal-crush­er two pro­tes­tors were arrest­ed and tak­en to Narrabri Police Sta­tion. The men were protest­ing against the destruc­tion of Leard State For­est, in the Gunnedah Basin, for three open-cut coal mines.

Sources:

USA: Earth First! Blockades Florida’s Dirtiest Power Plant protesting Mitt Romney’s Acceptance Speech

Apol­lo Beach, FL—In the cli­max of the 2012 Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion, pro­tes­tors with Earth First! have blocked access roads to TECO’s Big Bend coal plant on the east­ern shore of Tam­pa Bay. The envi­ron­men­tal action group is cit­ing cor­po­rate influ­ence in pol­i­tics and eco­log­i­cal impacts of fos­sil fuel depen­den­cy as rea­sons for the dis­rup­tion.

Apol­lo Beach, FL—In the cli­max of the 2012 Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion, pro­tes­tors with Earth First! have blocked access roads to TECO’s Big Bend coal plant on the east­ern shore of Tam­pa Bay. The envi­ron­men­tal action group is cit­ing cor­po­rate influ­ence in pol­i­tics and eco­log­i­cal impacts of fos­sil fuel depen­den­cy as rea­sons for the dis­rup­tion.

Report from Indy­bay IMC: A30 Earth First! Lock­down at Tam­pa’s Big Bend Coal Plant Dur­ing 2012 RNC
| Youtube video: Envi­ron­men­tal Protest in Tam­pa Bay dur­ing RNC , Pro­tes­tors chained togeth­er, Protest ends peace­ful­ly

This year’s RNC was fund­ed by an esti­mat­ed $55 mil­lion in cor­po­rate pay-offs, with cor­po­ra­tions includ­ing the Tam­pa based-TECO Ener­gy, along with Chevron, Duke Ener­gy and Exxon Mobil.

Accord­ing to a report by Nat­ur­al Resources Defense Coun­cil (NRDC) last year, Flori­da is among the dirt­i­est states in pow­er plant pol­lu­tion. NRDC found TECO’s Big Bend plant to be in the state’s, “top three most pol­lut­ing smoke stacks.”

Earth First! activists chose this day for their protest in order to high­light Mitt Rom­ney’s plan to expand what the group calls the “ener­gy empire” which favors the inter­est of big donors in oil, gas and coal indus­tries.

Romney’s top ener­gy pol­i­cy advi­sor is the wealth­i­est oil­man in the coun­try and accord­ing to data ana­lyzed by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, Rom­ney has already raised more from min­ing inter­ests than Bush or McCain raised from these indus­tries in their entire cam­paigns.

Local­ly, TECO’s Big Bend plant has a long his­to­ry of pol­lu­tion. Along with being declared Flori­da’s num­ber one dirt­i­est pow­er plant by Flori­da Con­sumer Action Net­work, they were also doc­u­ment­ed dis­charg­ing waste into Cobia Bay in Apol­lo Beach in years past.

But that’s not all. TECO has been called one of the nation’s worst offend­ers when it comes to moun­tain­top removal coal min­ing. In coal min­ing regions of the Appalachi­an Moun­tains, TECO has ruined entire com­mu­ni­ties to max­i­mize their prof­its. Ken­tucky coal­field res­i­dent Doug Jus­tice worked in the coal mines for 22 years and said “I have nev­er seen an out­fit treat a com­mu­ni­ty the way TECO Coal has done us.”

In response to the dev­as­ta­tion from floods caused be TECO’s min­ing in 2002, Granville Burke of Letch­er Coun­ty, Ken­tucky, had this to say: “I wish TECO had nev­er start­ed min­ing above our home. Pro­tec­tion for fam­i­lies like ours is sup­posed to come from the state and fed­er­al reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, but instead they look the oth­er way as coal com­pa­nies destroy entire com­mu­ni­ties for the sake of prof­it.”

“Dirty ener­gy becomes dirty pol­i­tics. We can’t afford to stand by and watch it any­more. We have to fight back.” Said Rachel Kijew­s­ki, an orga­niz­er with the Earth First! move­ment in Flori­da.

xxx

 

Twyford Down anti-road protests gathering, September

There is going to be a Twyford Down anti-roads protest reunion to mark that it is 20 years since the protests start­ed.  It’s on 29–30 Sept, when it’ll be the Har­vest Moon.  

There is going to be a Twyford Down anti-roads protest reunion to mark that it is 20 years since the protests start­ed.  It’s on 29–30 Sept, when it’ll be the Har­vest Moon.  

There will be a camp run along the same lines as 20 years ago (bring what you expect to find… water butts, tents, food, etc).  That said, there will be some domes and the @ teapot are going to be doing cater­ing (Sat din­ner and Sun break­fast) — hur­rah!  Camp loca­tion to be on top of St Cather­ine’s Hill, near Win­ches­ter.

There will also be a protest / pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty about this cur­rent Gov­ern­men­t’s mania of road­build­ing. 

 Please spread this amongst your con­tacts who you think may be inter­estd.  There is a Face­book page if you do such things called Twen­ty Years Since Twyford: http://www.facebook.com/events/344190508996315/

More details and fly­er down­load­able at http://bettertransport.org.uk/blogs/roads/100912-twyford-20