Category: Climate Chaos

Shell Deliveries Halted by Road Protest

Tues­day 25th Octo­ber at 8am, peo­ple gath­ered for what has become the week­ly local protest at gate one of Shel­l’s refin­ery. After some tea and scones, peo­ple decid­ed to stop a Shell truck. For about 30 min­utes peo­ple stood in front of the truck with­out has­sle, let­ting traf­fic pass on the oth­er side of the road. Even­tu­al­ly the Gar­daí removed peo­ple, in some cas­es being quite rough. One per­son was pinned to the ground for 5–10 min­utes, immo­bilised. Oth­er peo­ple were thrown off the road into ditch­es. The Gar­daí did not hold back against one elder­ly pro­test­er who is almost 80, throw­ing him around with­out a sec­ond thought. After 10 or 15 min­utes of peo­ple get­ting pulled off the road by guards, the truck inch­ing for­ward as more peo­ple got in front of it and then once again get pulled off the road in a con­tin­u­ous rolling block­ade, one per­son got up on top of the truck. She said she would­n’t have done this except that she was sick of see­ing peo­ple get­ting thrown around on the road and she knew get­ting on top of the vehi­cle would defuse the sit­u­a­tion by halt­ing things until she either came down her­self or could be removed Gar­daí. After stay­ing up on top of the truck for about 30 min­utes, the pro­test­er climbed down and then was arrest­ed, brought to Bel­mul­let Gar­da sta­tion and released with­out charge lat­er that day. Shell are sched­uled to begin remov­ing peat from the Augh­oose tun­nelling com­pound at the end of Octo­ber or ear­ly Novem­ber, which will mean hun­dreds of truck move­ments a day. Come up any­time and sup­port the actions, or sim­ply to vis­it the area and see for your­self what is going on. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is open to vis­i­tors and is locat­ed in a field in Augh­oose, between Bel­lan­aboy and Pul­lath­omas. This Hal­loween week­end the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is host­ing a week­end of direct action train­ing work­shops. Also there will be a Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty on the 11th of Novem­ber 2011, at the Augh­oose com­pound. It will mark 5 years since the baton charge on pro­tes­tors at Bel­lan­aboy. Please come and offer your sol­i­dar­i­ty to the com­mu­ni­ty who have been protest­ing against the Cor­rib Gas project. To con­tact the camp, ring 085 114 1170 or email rossportsolidaritycamp[at]gmail[dot]com

Video of day

More blockades at proposed gas hub in Walmadan, Western Australia

22.10.11

A PROTESTER has tied him­self to a com­mu­ni­ca­tions tow­er near a pro­posed gas hub site in the Kim­ber­ley in a bid to stop sur­vey work for the con­tro­ver­sial project.

22.10.11

A PROTESTER has tied him­self to a com­mu­ni­ca­tions tow­er near a pro­posed gas hub site in the Kim­ber­ley in a bid to stop sur­vey work for the con­tro­ver­sial project.

The pro­test­er scaled the 30-metre tow­er at around 4am today and is sus­pend­ed by a rope between the top of the tow­er and the ground near James Price Point [Wal­madan]. Anti-gas hub pro­test­er Joseph Roe has told AAP the rope cross­es an access road and any attempt to cut it to allow Wood­side Petro­le­um con­trac­tors in would endan­ger the pro­test­er.

Police are at the site about 60km north of Broome where pro­test­ers have gath­ered to sup­port the man up the tow­er. “If they cut the rope there will be a ter­ri­ble acci­dent. The police don’t know what to do,” said Mr Roe, a Jabirr Jabirr-Goolara­booloo man who has pur­sued exten­sive legal action against the project.

The pro­test­er up the tow­er, Scott Daines, has said he would stay there “for as long as it takes for Wood­side to leave”.

Wood­side con­trac­tors have been car­ry­ing out geot­ech­ni­cal sur­vey work around the site of the pro­posed $30 bil­lion liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) precinct, with pro­test­ers keep­ing a con­stant vig­il on the access road.

Mr Roe said he want­ed answers from the Broome shire coun­cil about approvals for the tow­er to be changed from a weath­er obser­va­tion sta­tion to a com­mu­ni­ca­tions point for the Wood­side project.

He said the gas hub project was a land grab by WA Pre­mier Col­in Bar­nett who was “hell-bent on indus­tri­al­is­ing our tra­di­tion­al lands”.

The Kim­ber­ley Land Coun­cil, on behalf of tra­di­tion­al landown­ers, has signed off on the deal which would deliv­er $1.5 bil­lion in ben­e­fits to the region’s Abo­rig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ties.

But the pro­posed gas hub has divid­ed the Kim­ber­ley Abo­rig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ty and Broome res­i­dents. A final sign-off for the project by Wood­side and its joint ven­ture part­ners is expect­ed by the mid­dle of next year.

All Shell Deliveries Halted for the Morning

Week­ly Tues­day morn­ing protest turns into a sucess­ful block­ade

Out­side the gates of Shel­l’s Bel­lan­aboy refin­ery in Mayo on Tues­day 18th Octo­ber, some­one got on top of a trac­tor, block­ing all Shell deliv­er­ies for the morn­ing.

Week­ly Tues­day morn­ing protest turns into a sucess­ful block­ade

Out­side the gates of Shel­l’s Bel­lan­aboy refin­ery in Mayo on Tues­day 18th Octo­ber, some­one got on top of a trac­tor, block­ing all Shell deliv­er­ies for the morn­ing.

At 8am on Tues­day, about 15 peo­ple gath­ered at the gates of Bel­lan­aboy refin­ery for the week­ly local protest that has been hap­pen­ing the last cou­ple months.

The first trac­tor that Shell tried to bring out was stopped by the pro­test­ers, and one per­son got onto the cab. This blocked all Shell traf­fic but local traf­fic was still able to squeeze by, as guards and pro­test­ers direct­ed them around the stopped trac­tor. All the trucks of stone which Shell have begun bring­ing to the Augh­oose com­pound were also stopped and turned back in the direc­tion they came.

Even­tu­al­ly the per­son on the trac­tor got down and was not arrest­ed. Peo­ple stayed in the road block­ing the trac­tor for the rest of the morn­ing protest, until 10:30am.

There haven’t been as many actions com­ing from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp late­ly, as there has been so much work to do mov­ing the camp from the field it has been in for the sum­mer and set­ting up the win­ter camp down the road. How­ev­er Shell has said it expects to begin peat removal from the tun­nelling com­pound at the end of Octo­ber, which will mean up to 475 truck move­ments a day (so stay tuned).

Come up and see the cozy new win­ter camp, vis­i­tors are always wel­come! We are still locat­ed in Augh­oose but fur­ther down the road towards Pul­lath­omas, near Augh­oose church. There is still plen­ty of work build­ing the new camp to be done along with actions.

On the Hal­loween week­end, there will be a week­end of direct action themed work­shops at the new Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp.  If you are inter­est­ed in com­ing down or even run­ning a work­shop, let us know by email on rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com

Also there will be a Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty on Fri­day, the 11th of Novem­ber to mark 5 years since the baton charge and the major cam­paign of Gar­da vio­lence began here in Mayo. Please come and show your sup­port.

Thomson protesters strip to reveal the Naked Truth about biofuels

6.10.2011

3 pro­test­ers dis­rupt­ed the launch of Birm­ing­ham airport’s first bio­fu­el pow­ered flight by strip­ping to reveal slo­gans opposed to the con­tro­ver­sial new depar­ture.

6.10.2011

3 pro­test­ers dis­rupt­ed the launch of Birm­ing­ham airport’s first bio­fu­el pow­ered flight by strip­ping to reveal slo­gans opposed to the con­tro­ver­sial new depar­ture.

The Plane Stu­pid pro­test­ers min­gled with pas­sen­gers before calm­ly remov­ing their clothes. Dressed in noth­ing but red body paint that declared ‘bio­fu­els aren’t green’ they called on Thom­son to recon­sid­er their plans.

Thom­son claim that bio­fu­els offer a green­er future for avi­a­tion, but respect­ed envi­ron­men­tal and social jus­tice organ­i­sa­tions from Friends of the Earth to The World Devel­op­ment Move­ment and Chris­t­ian Aid believe that they will make the prob­lems of glob­al warm­ing worse.

Today’s launch fol­lows a delay of some months, after Thom­son found they couldn’t source enough used cook­ing oil. Even for one short haul flight a week from one air­port.

Pro­test­er Jo Turn­er said-
“It’s not sur­pris­ing that Thom­son have strug­gled to find enough recy­cled oils for their stunt. Demand for recy­cled road trans­port bio­fu­els already far out­strips sup­ply. Sad­ly, any­one with basic maths can see that used veg oils will nev­er be a viable solu­tion. They’re just a way of soft­en­ing up the mar­ket to make way for the real nas­ties like palm oil and jat­ropha. Bio­fu­els are a dev­il in dis­guise — a mas­sive­ly inef­fi­cient way of mak­ing fuel that destroys the very ecosys­tems we need to con­trol run­away cli­mate change.”

Pro­test­er Chris Coop­er added-
“Thomp­son seem to be acknowl­edg­ing that we can’t con­tin­ue busi­ness as usu­al in the face of the cur­rent cli­mate emer­gency. It’s a shame their solu­tion is to make mat­ters worse. Vast tracts of rain­for­est, ecosys­tems vital to halt­ing cli­mate change, are cur­rent­ly being trashed to make way for bio­fu­el plan­ta­tions.

Land that grows food is being stolen from some of the world’s poor­est peo­ple so that it can start feed­ing planes. It’s a dis­as­ter.”

All three have been arrest­ed and are await­ing charges.
Con­tact Emi­ly Simon 07864643650 for inter­views and more infor­ma­tion.

Notes to edi­tors:

1. The avi­a­tion indus­try talks about ‘nov­el’ bio­fu­els which won’t com­pete with food and forests. While major con­cerns remain around these process­es, includ­ing their use of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, none are wide­ly avail­able. Palm oil appears to be the only real­is­tic choice for com­mer­cial avi­a­tion bio­fu­els over the next few years, it’s wide­ly recog­nised for it’s destruc­tive impact.

2. Cur­rent­ly palm oil plan­ta­tions for a vari­ety of uses cov­er 12 mil­lion hectares of land. The avi­a­tion indus­try claims that bio­fu­els rep­re­sent ‘zero car­bon growth’. Bio­fu­el watch cal­cu­late that by 2030 avi­a­tion would need 45 Mil­lion hectares of land to meet their growth goals. For more infor­ma­tion see www.biofuelwatch.org.

3.On 1st July 2011 com­mer­cial air­lines got per­mis­sion to use 50% bio­fu­els made from spe­cial­ly refined veg­table oils as well as oth­er plant oils and ani­mal fat in their engines.

4. Plane Stu­pid is a grass roots group that uses direct action to oppose air­port expan­sion.

London September critical mass — pics and short report

sept 30 crit­i­cal mass. police allow motorist to leave the scene of an assault and refuse to take details despite wit­ness­es. did you wit­ness the assault?

the balmy indi­an sum­mer weath­er ensured a good turn-out for the crit­i­cal mass bike ride last fri­day evening, and hun­dreds of cyclists enjoyed a joy­ous ride round lon­don despite the occa­sion­al psy­cho­path­ic motorist and a cou­ple of crazy cops. the crit­i­cal mass bicy­cle ride, now in in its 17th year, takes place on the last fri­day of each month through­out the year.

sept 30 crit­i­cal mass. police allow motorist to leave the scene of an assault and refuse to take details despite wit­ness­es. did you wit­ness the assault?

the balmy indi­an sum­mer weath­er ensured a good turn-out for the crit­i­cal mass bike ride last fri­day evening, and hun­dreds of cyclists enjoyed a joy­ous ride round lon­don despite the occa­sion­al psy­cho­path­ic motorist and a cou­ple of crazy cops. the crit­i­cal mass bicy­cle ride, now in in its 17th year, takes place on the last fri­day of each month through­out the year.

the crit­i­cal mass bicy­cle ride, now in in its 17th year, takes place on the last fri­day of each month through­out the year. cyclists meet from about 6pm on the south bank under water­loo bridge near the nation­al film the­atre, and nor­mal­ly set off on a ride by about 7.

the ride has no offi­cial organ­is­ers, and the route is nev­er agreed in advance, rely­ing instead on a ‘crit­i­cal mass’ of front run­ners per­suad­ing the rest of the crowd to fol­low in any par­tic­u­lar direc­tion.

on fri­day, the con­voy of four or five hun­dred cyclists (also includ­ing an increas­ing con­tin­gent of skate­board­ers) head­ed north over the bridge, and unusu­al­ly took the under­pass into kingsway before head­ing west and on to oxford street.

as the main pur­pose of the mass is to cel­e­brate human propul­sion over car­bon, reclaim the streets, and show that cyclists have as many rights as dri­vers, it is some­times a lit­tle con­tentious when the route includes oxford street so ear­ly in the evening, as it most­ly dis­rupts pub­lic trans­port rather than gen­er­al traf­fic (which isn’t allowed onto oxford street until lat­er in the evening). how­ev­er, the mass kept up the pace and only stopped briefly at oxford cir­cus before head­ing to mar­ble arch and down park lane.

by this time, cyclists had spread out a lit­tle and so it was hard­er to take all four lanes of the road. so despite the neon sign at the start of park lane warn­ing motorists ‘delays pos­si­ble’, some of them were frus­trat­ed to find cyclists in their path (even though they were quite like­ly to get held up again at a traf­fic jam at the south end of the high­way), and among these motorists there was a police car, whose dri­ver reck­less­ly kept chang­ing lanes with­out sig­nalling, and delib­er­ate­ly cut across cyclists forc­ing them to veer to the left, and seri­ous­ly risk­ing injury.

fur­ther down park lane, there had been some sort of alter­ca­tion, and a woman claimed she had been assault­ed and pushed over by a motorist. the police car had stopped and the offi­cers got out, but instead of inves­ti­gat­ing the assault, one of them was mak­ing com­ments loud­ly that “you cyclists are pests”. the young woman, along with wit­ness­es to the assault, kept telling the police that she want­ed to make a com­plaint and press charges, but the cops just ignored her, return­ing to their vehi­cle and wind­ing their win­dows up. they also for a while refused to give any of their own details until sev­er­al cyclists sur­round­ing the car kept ask­ing for their badge num­bers, with which they even­tu­al­ly com­plied. they how­ev­er refused to take any details of the alleged inci­dent. the young woman is con­sid­er­ing an offi­cial police com­plaint. if any­one wit­nessed the assault or took pics/video, please con­tact me and i’ll put you in touch. i only have the clip of the police ignor­ing her requests.

some­times after an inci­dent like this, the mass gets stretched out or split, but this time, the front run­ners were cycling round and round the duke of welling­ton arch at hyde park cor­ner, so every­one recon­vened and hun­dreds of bicy­cles once again rode togeth­er east along pic­cadil­ly, com­plete­ly trap­ping a red diplo­mat­ic police car at one point, and on into pic­cadil­ly cir­cus, trafal­gar square (where a cou­ple of cyclists jumped into the foun­tains to cool off), and down white­hall to par­lia­ment square. there, one rid­er briefly hitched a lift on the back of a lor­ry before we all head­ed up to buck­ing­ham palace, back to hyde park cor­ner and then down to sloane square.

two hours in, and although num­bers were begin­ning to lessen, when i left the ride there were still at least a hun­dred rid­ers head­ing west down the king’s road.

the next ride will be 28th octo­ber.

http://www.criticalmasslondon.org.uk/main.html
More pic­tures and videos at http://london.indymedia.org/articles/10323

Check out if there’s a Crit­i­cal Mass in your town — or start one

Hinkley Point blockaders declare victory over EDF Energy

3/10/2011
For about nine hours, we block­ad­ed the nuclear pow­er sta­tion with up to 400 peo­ple. This was the biggest anti nuclear pow­er action in Britain for quite some years. It marked the begin­ning of a new anti nuclear pow­er move­ment in this coun­try, and you all made this pos­si­ble.

3/10/2011
For about nine hours, we block­ad­ed the nuclear pow­er sta­tion with up to 400 peo­ple. This was the biggest anti nuclear pow­er action in Britain for quite some years. It marked the begin­ning of a new anti nuclear pow­er move­ment in this coun­try, and you all made this pos­si­ble.
This time, the block­ade was tol­er­at­ed by EDF and the police. Only one per­son was arrest­ed when walk­ing on the pub­lic foot­path along the fence.
He was stopped and searched by police, and arrest­ed for pos­ses­sion of a craft knife. Luck­i­ly, he was lat­er released from Taunton police sta­tion with­out charge.

Those of you who came to the camp after the action are aware of a police inci­dent: a mobile CCTV vehi­cle of Avon & Som­er­set police drove onto the camp site, film­ing all the time. After a while it was pos­si­ble to per­suade them to leave the site.
Stop New Nuclear sees this as a provo­ca­tion, and we made it very clear that this inci­dent destroyed a lot of the trust between the police and the cam­paign that had been built in the run-up to the block­ade.
The police Sil­ver Com­mand has since sent an ‘apol­o­gy email’ that says they’ve delet­ed the mate­r­i­al.

The camp, demon­stra­tion, and block­ade of Hink­ley Point was not a one-off, nor was it the end — it should be the begin­ning of a pow­er­ful and cre­ative anti nuclear pow­er move­ment in Britain, that will stop the plans for eight new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in its tracks. To make this hap­pen, we need you!
We are there­fore organ­is­ing a Stop New Nuclear gath­er­ing in Bris­tol in Novem­ber (unfor­tu­nate­ly, we have not been able to set the date yet), to dis­cuss and plan the next cam­paigns and actions against nuclear new build in Britain. Please get involved — we need to grow as a move­ment, and this means we need more peo­ple organ­is­ing our actions. Please check back for updates and reg­is­ter for the Stop New Nuclear gath­er­ing at http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/gathering2011. More infor­ma­tion will be avail­able soon.

If you have any ideas for action, please share them in our ideas forum at http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/ideasforum.

News from Hink­ley Point
The Envi­ron­ment Agency has extend­ed the dead­line for objec­tions to EDF’s envi­ron­men­tal per­mit appli­ca­tion until 15 Decem­ber. This means we now have much more time to col­lect hun­dreds or even thou­sands of objec­tions. Please down­load the objec­tion sheet from http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/objections-discharges, print it, sign it, and send it of to: PSC, PO Box 4404, Sheffield, S9 4WF

Press release:

Anti-nuclear pro­test­ers have declared the mass block­ade at Hink­ley Point today as a vic­to­ry over EDF Ener­gy. The nine-hour block­ade in Som­er­set attract­ed sup­port­ers from all over the UK. Sev­er­al came from as far afield as Ire­land, Ger­many and Bel­gium.

Stop New Nuclear spokesper­son, Andreas Speck, said the block­ade has put the gov­ern­ment and EDF on the back foot. ‘Fol­low­ing the inter­est this block­ade has attract­ed, both region­al­ly and nation­al­ly, the gov­ern­ment and EDF can no longer claim that the we need nuclear ener­gy to keep the lights on.’

He con­tin­ued: ‘Ger­many has com­mit­ted to a nuclear-free future with­out buy­ing nuclear pow­er from France or build­ing new coal-fired pow­er sta­tions. The Ger­man gov­ern­ment is look­ing at a decen­tralised ener­gy mod­el with a mix of renew­ables and Com­bined Heat and Pow­er (CHP) to bridge the gap left by with­draw­al from nuclear. If Ger­many can do it, why can’t we?’

Ang­ie Zel­ter, who hit the head­lines in 1996 when she and oth­er activists attacked a Hawk jet des­tined to sup­press protests in East Tim­or (and was sub­se­quent­ly cleared of crim­i­nal dam­age by a jury), blast­ed EDF’s claims that Hink­ley Point is sus­tain­able.

She added: ‘Over its life­time, Hink­ley will con­sume more ener­gy than it pro­duces — if you take into account the ener­gy used to extract ura­ni­um and the pow­er need­ed to store radioac­tive waste for hun­dreds of years. It doesn’t add up.’

Zel­ter said the risk of flood­ing is an increas­ing wor­ry. ‘Locals are well aware of the con­stant dan­ger of flood­ing around Hink­ley,’ she con­tin­ued. ‘We have infor­ma­tion from work­ers there that sev­er­al years ago, flood­wa­ter breached the plant’s retain­ing walls.’

She added that this was a par­tic­u­lar con­cern now that EDF wants to build two new mega reac­tors at Hink­ley. ‘Radioac­tive waste from the pro­posed new ERP reac­tors will be so tox­ic that it will have to be stored on the site for over 100 years. With the growth in extreme weath­er con­di­tions there is no guar­an­tee that this waste can be stored safe­ly.’

And Zel­ter blast­ed the gov­ern­ment for claim­ing that nuclear is the only solu­tion to com­bat­ing cli­mate change. ‘If the gov­ern­ment can spend bil­lion renew­ing Tri­dent mis­siles and fight­ing Gaddafi in Libya, why can’t they find the mon­ey to build tru­ly sus­tain­able ener­gy sys­tems that would cre­ate a great many more jobs than the nuclear sec­tor can?’

The mass block­ade was described by Stop New Nuclear organ­is­er, Andreas Speck, as a, ‘cel­e­bra­tion of dis­sent’ with pro-nuclear sup­port­ers being enter­tained by a Welsh choir and pop­u­lar fes­ti­val band, Seize The Day.

A man arrest­ed on a foot­path close to the block­ade was lat­er released with­out charge.

—

Reports, pic­tures and video.
More pho­tos
Camp pho­tos
Bridg­wa­ter demon­stra­tion
Block­ade of Hink­ley Point
Some pho­tos and some more
CND uploaded pho­tos here
We are slow­ly upload­ing videos

new EF! Action Update

In an end of the sum­mer com­pact EF!AU, find news about kick­ing shell in the teeth in Ross­port again and then some more, sol­i­dar­i­ty with the com­mu­ni­ty at Dale Farm, and anti-GM resis­tance — Spuds you Don’t Like demo in Eng­land, sab­o­tage in Ger­many, France and Scot­land.

In an end of the sum­mer com­pact EF!AU, find news about kick­ing shell in the teeth in Ross­port again and then some more, sol­i­dar­i­ty with the com­mu­ni­ty at Dale Farm, and anti-GM resis­tance — Spuds you Don’t Like demo in Eng­land, sab­o­tage in Ger­many, France and Scot­land.

On top of the usu­al con­tacts and dates, read about sol­i­dar­i­ty with jailed Swiss nan­otech activists, resis­tance against steel plants, mobile phone masts, min­ing and ener­gy projects here & across the world — stay angry and don’t car­ry on as usu­al!

The quar­ter­ly EF!AU, August 2011

VILLAGERS RESIST POWER PLANT, DRILLING VEHICLE BURNED, TURKEY

report­ed by activists in Turkey:

report­ed by activists in Turkey:

“On 5th of Sep­tem­ber, drilling vehi­cles of Anadolu Group (this group is the biggest part­ner of McDon­alds Turkey, Coca Cola Turkey) which tries to build a ther­mic pow­er plant to Gerze-Sinop tried to enter Yayk­il vil­lage. Local peo­ple and eco-activists bar­ri­cad­ed the roads to vil­lage for defend­ing their land, but police and gen­darme attacked peo­ple with tear gas, pep­per spray, water can­nons and batons. Activists answered this attack with stones and slo­gans. Dur­ing the police attack some build­ings, barns, farms and bush­es caught fire; 25 activists and 4 police­men injured.

Because of their resis­tance, drilling vehi­cles left the vil­lage. At night police took 6 activists in cus­tody from their homes.

At night of Sep­tem­ber 6, a drilling vehi­cle which was wait­ing in a gas sta­tion near the vil­lage was burned by unknown peo­ple. The vehi­cle is total­ly destroyed. Gen­darme and local police is still search­ing for the arson­ists in Gerze.

For pic­tures you can check out: http://www.gerzegundem.com/son-dakika/yaykilda-kan-akti-h545.html

For the video of police attack:
http://webtv.sabah.com.tr/webtv/videoizle/gerzede-polisten-cevrecilere-sert-mudahale

Ani­mal and Earth Lib­er­a­tion Sup­port­ers from Turkey”

German coal blockade during climate camp

30.08.2011
Since 10.30 this morn­ing a group of over 50 activists have been blockad­ing a coal trans­port rail­way in the Cologne area. The action takes place at the same time as the near­by inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Camp, protest­ing the open-cast min­ing of brown coal (www.klimacamp2011.de)

30.08.2011
Since 10.30 this morn­ing a group of over 50 activists have been blockad­ing a coal trans­port rail­way in the Cologne area. The action takes place at the same time as the near­by inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Camp, protest­ing the open-cast min­ing of brown coal (www.klimacamp2011.de)

The activists peace­ful­ly blocked the line ear­ly this morn­ing, erect­ing ban­ners and green­wash­ing the rail­way tracks. The protest is aimed at ener­gy giant RWE, which oper­ates a num­ber of pow­er sta­tions in the area and is respon­si­ble for about 10% of Ger­many’s car­bon diox­ide emis­sions.

The protest is being kept well-sup­plied with blan­kets and food by mem­bers of the cli­mate camp, and is cur­rent­ly prepar­ing for a night on the tracks.

The inter­na­tion­al cli­mate camp is sit­u­at­ed in the vil­lage of Man­heim which is sched­uled to be destroyed in order to enlarge a brown coal strip mine. Brown coal, or lig­nite, is a less pure form of coal and is there­fore much less ener­gy-effi­cient and cre­ates greater emis­sions than reg­u­lar coal.

The inter­na­tion­al cli­mate camp includes guests from as far afield as Colom­bia and Azer­bai­jan and aims to build links with­in the inter­na­tion­al cli­mate jus­tice move­ment, call­ing for urgent sys­tem change, not cli­mate change.

Workshop for Actions and Alternatives — all-year-climate-camp

There’s some­thing strange about cli­mate change: It’s well-known, there’s no need for gen­er­al edu­ca­tion. Every­body sup­ports approach­ing the prob­lem and stop­ping human-caused cli­mate change.

There’s some­thing strange about cli­mate change: It’s well-known, there’s no need for gen­er­al edu­ca­tion. Every­body sup­ports approach­ing the prob­lem and stop­ping human-caused cli­mate change.
Although gov­ern­ments promise answers and solu­tions, we’re just watch­ing a rapid increase of the cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe. Thus the sus­pi­cion comes to mind, that the right solu­tions haven’t been found – or rather that they’re not accept­able for econ­o­my and gov­ern­ments.
The ques­tion aris­es, if our world can wait for a solu­tion. Peo­ple in regions, where it comes to food short­age, scer­tain­ly not. At first, peo­ple in poor regions won’t be able to adapt to changes. Droughts or floods will force them to flee. Most­ly var­i­ous rea­sons urge peo­ple to flight, yet cli­mate change will play an increas­ing­ly impor­tant role.
This fact by itself ques­tions the dis­tri­b­u­tion of raw mate­ri­als and food on this world – or why the poor­est, who con­tributed the small­est part of cli­mate-rel­e­vant green­house-gas­es so far, shall bear most of the dam­age.
Europe guards itself: Legal bar­ri­ers for flee­ing per­sons are intol­er­a­bly high and on the Mediter­ranean Sea, the Euro­pean police force “fron­tex” pro­vides a hard­ly pass­able block­ade. We see this sit­u­a­tion as cyn­i­cal and dis­sat­is­fy­ing – for the flee­ing it’s rather fatal. On the basis of this exam­ple we want to illus­trate that it’s about more than ener­gy-sav­ing lamps and recy­cled paper. Nei­ther do we see the nuclear phase­out in Ger­many, linked to a half-heart­ed ener­gy tran­si­tion, as a solu­tion. There’s a lot to do…

This fly­er address­es to all per­sons, who are not will­ing to wait for a solu­tion “from above” any­more. The aim shall be to take the ini­tia­tive your­self, to see your­self as an active per­son in this “polit­i­cal pow­er game”, in which we usu­al­ly just should move as con­sumers. Let’s cre­ate deter­mined, pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics togeth­er from below – for an entire­ly dif­fer­ent cli­mate.

Why in the Rhen­ish brown coal-min­ing region?
In this region, brown coal is mined in three open­cast mines, main­ly for six gigan­tic coal-fired pow­er sta­tions, where­by the vast bulk of CO2 in Europe is emit­ted. What “Wend­land” is for nuclear ener­gy, the Rhen­ish brown coal-min­ing region has to become for car­bon ener­gy. We want to work togeth­er with con­cerned locals – whole vil­lages are forced to reset­tle – in sol­i­dar­i­ty against destruc­tion.
We want to present a live­ly counter-image to cap­i­tal­ist destruc­tive­ness! Here, exper­i­men­tal liv­ing of a cli­mate-neu­tral future, over there the tear-off edge, the hole – square-kilo­me­tres of destruc­tion. Decide now!

Space for learn­ing
Cours­es and sem­i­nars shall be pro­vid­ed in a Do-It-Your­self cul­ture. Themes turn around cli­mate-neu­tral life, non-hier­ar­chi­cal meth­ods and forms of organ­i­sa­tion, diverse kinds of the­o­ret­i­cal stuff and meth­ods of resis­tance. And since we nei­ther belief in homo­ge­neous con­cepts from above against cli­mate change, nor find them desir­able, we con­sid­er a debate from below nec­es­sary. A debate, in which every­one is invit­ed to take part, which isn’t build up on expert’s hier­ar­chies, which doesn’t seek uni­fi­ca­tion, but which can stand dif­fer­ent posi­tions, in hope that there will arise syn­the­ses out of ten­sions in between.

And action…
The work­shop shall serve as a plat­form for dif­fer­ent actions against destruc­tion of the envi­ron­ment and liv­ing space. There­by we focus on devel­op­ing putting into prac­tice meth­ods of actions, which we togeth­er do with per­sons from there and else­where, which aim at the eman­ci­pa­tion of the sin­gle indi­vid­u­als.

The Work­shop for Actions and Alter­na­tives is being built up from Sep­tem­ber (2011) on in
52355 Düren, Kalls­gasse 20

How to get there and lat­est infos:
waa.blogsport.de

If you feel appealed by this text, there are diverse pos­si­bil­i­ties how you can take part:
— Come and see what we’re doing
— Con­tribute your ideas and tal­ents (of organ­i­sa­tion for exam­ple)
— Get in touch if you want to teach or learn some­thing
— Dis­trib­ute this fly­er
— Offer your abil­i­ties: Lay-out­ing, writ­ing, do research
— Dona­tions of mon­ey would also help:
account of dona­tion: