Category: Climate Chaos

Transition Heathrow turns wasteland into community garden

1/3/2010
Com­mu­ni­ty activists from the group Tran­si­tion Heathrow have tak­en over an aban­doned mar­ket gar­den threat­ened by the third run­way. Around lunchtime, 20 peo­ple “swooped” on the land in Sip­son, one of the vil­lages due for demo­li­tion if the third run­way at Heathrow goes ahead.

1/3/2010
Com­mu­ni­ty activists from the group Tran­si­tion Heathrow have tak­en over an aban­doned mar­ket gar­den threat­ened by the third run­way. Around lunchtime, 20 peo­ple “swooped” on the land in Sip­son, one of the vil­lages due for demo­li­tion if the third run­way at Heathrow goes ahead.

More pho­tos on Tran­si­tion Heathrow’s Flickr stream.

After secur­ing the site, the group imme­di­ate­ly informed their new neigh­bours and local res­i­dents of their inten­tion to reopen the old mar­ket gar­den for the ben­e­fit of the local com­mu­ni­ty. The ‘Grow Heathrow’ project aims to encour­age and sup­port local­ly grown pro­duce in an area that once had some of the most fer­tile soils in Britain.

Tran­si­tion Heathrow has launched the project to high­light the need for a com­mu­ni­ty con­trolled food sup­ply in order to remain resilient to the impacts of peak oil and cli­mate change. It intends to use the old mar­ket gar­den not only for grow­ing, but also for activ­i­ties such as bike work­shops, clothes mak­ing, sol­i­dar­i­ty sup­port for local work­ers and direct action work­shops for peo­ple try­ing to stop the third run­way.

Tran­si­tion Heathrow mem­ber and local res­i­dent Joe Rake, described the events of the day. “Around lunchtime, a group of us walked onto the site. Once we had secured the gate, we set about telling local res­i­dents why we were there and invit­ing them to join in. We also had to start tidy­ing up as it appeared to have been used for scrap­ping cars. Since the last ten­ants were evict­ed, the site has attract­ed unsavoury char­ac­ters, so we want­ed to restart the mar­ket gar­den for the good of the local com­mu­ni­ty.”

Many of those involved in the ‘swoop’ see today’s action as a pos­i­tive way of resist­ing the third run­way whilst build­ing an alter­na­tive com­mu­ni­ty solu­tion in its place. Heathrow res­i­dent Amy Sum­mer said “We’ve been fight­ing the threat of the third run­way for years, and its blight­ed our com­mu­ni­ty. This kind of action not only helps stop expan­sion but also helps regen­er­ate the area, pro­vid­ing local skills, green jobs and organ­ic pro­duce instead.”

“This form of direct action is just as impor­tant as sit­ting on a run­way, blockad­ing the bull­doz­ers or strik­ing for more green jobs. There’s no point in grow­ing your own veg if it’s going to be cov­ered in tar­mac by BAA. At the same time there’s no point in com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance if there’s no com­mu­ni­ty left to defend. We have to do both,” she added.

Climate Camp Invades Lewes Tesco

28.02.2010

Lewes Tesco protest28.02.2010
Cli­mate change activists teamed up with local res­i­dents to invade the Tesco super­store in Lewes, East Sus­sex on Sat­ur­day in protest at plans to increase the size of the super­mar­ket by 50%. More than 80 pro­test­ers took part, enter­ing the store and embark­ing on a game of Tesco Whirl. The idea is to grab a trol­ley keep it emp­ty and form up with oth­ers to cre­ate a giant con­ga chain.

The point of not actu­al­ly shop­ping was to high­light that for every £3.00 spent on retail in Lewes, £2.00 is spent in Tesco.

By increas­ing the size of the store, mon­ey will be drained from the inde­pen­dent shops, harm­ing the town’s local econ­o­my. But police had received a tip off about the action and were on hand to pre­vent some pro­test­ers enter­ing the shop while eject­ing those who attempt­ed to form a chain. Still a chain of 10 trol­leys at a time did form.

As activists were thrown out of the store a par­ty formed at the entrance with music and danc­ing from activists in endan­gered ani­mal masks.

Cli­mate Camp activist and Lewes res­i­dent Mari­na Pep­per said: “Tesco is more expen­sive than peo­ple realise, thanks to their mis­lead­ing adver­tis­ing cam­paigns. They also rip off farm­ers and destroy local com­mu­ni­ties by under­cut­ting and bank­rupt­ing com­pe­ti­tion lead­ing to high unem­ploy­ment and board­ed up town cen­tres.

“Tesco has a strong foothold in Lewes. It’s only the robust­ness of the local econ­o­my that has saved it so far. But these expan­sion plans are mad­ness and could spell the end, destroy­ing so much that our town holds dear – name­ly our inde­pen­dent shops which pro­vide us with choic­es as to how we shop and what we buy.

“This action today was only the launch of a cam­paign that will see Cli­mate Camp work­ing side by side with com­mu­ni­ty groups to ensure one way or anoth­er Tesco’s growth plans are thwart­ed. We implore peo­ple to con­tact their local coun­cilors, espe­cial­ly those on the plan­ning com­mit­tee and tell them a big­ger Tesco is unwel­come here. Ever y lit­tle extra will hurt.”

The activ­i­ties of mas­sive super­mar­kets like Tesco involve scan­dalous waste, pol­lu­tion and envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion.

Super­mar­ket food trav­els vast dis­tances, prod­ucts are over pack­aged and cus­tomers trav­el ever greater dis­tances once local shops are dri­ven out of busi­ness. This leads to an increase in road con­ges­tion, acci­dents, noise, air pol­lu­tion and CO2 emis­sions which con­tribute to cli­mate change.

Super­mar­ket demands are also behind the con­tin­u­ing indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of agri­cul­ture. Big farm­ers are get­ting big­ger to sur­vive while small farm­ers are going bust. This leads to increased dis­ease among live­stock and cru­el fac­to­ry farm prac­tices.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion.

Tesco stores erode local choice as small­er, inde­pen­dent shops strug­gle to com­pete. Inde­pen­dent stores in the UK shut at the rate of 2,000 a year in recent years. Over 17,000 inde­pen­dent shops closed in Eng­land and Wales last year.

Large super­mar­kets like Tesco also:
• Siphon mon­ey away from local com­mu­ni­ties and towards dis­tant cor­po­ra­tions
• Increase traf­fic and con­ges­tion from lor­ry move­ments and cus­tomers
• Destroy local jobs and under­mine local job mar­kets
• Every large out­let caus­es the net loss of 276 local jobs on aver­age
• Gen­er­ate waste and over-pack­age their prod­ucts
• Exploit sup­pli­ers and dam­age the envi­ron­ment
• Cyn­i­cal­ly manip­u­late prices to fleece shop­pers

Tesco is the largest retail­er in the UK:
• Over £1 in every £7 (14.3%) of UK retail sales is spent at Tesco
• It has tak­ings of more than £1 bil­lion a week
• It made prof­its of over £3 bil­lion last year
• It has £30 mil­lion turnover in Lewes com­pared to £17m for all oth­er shops

southcoast@climatecamp.org.uk
http://climatecamp.org.uk/get-involved/local-groups/south-coast

Camp Bling back up and awaiting chainsaws — chopping on Sunday?

27.2.2010
Impor­tant Update

Cuckoo Corner tent27.2.2010
Impor­tant Update

6pm — so far, so good at Camp Cuck­oo; food dona­tions com­ing in but still need more peo­ple; lat­est twit­ter updates on PPPS web­site below or SKIPP face­book page.

Var­i­ous sources have now con­firmed that the Coun­cil will be felling the trees on Pri­o­ry Cres­cent dur­ing Sun­day. The affect­ed stretch of Pri­o­ry Cres­cent is going to be closed to traf­fic between mid­night and 8pm Sun­day.

There will be peo­ple climb­ing the trees to pre­vent them being felled — if you feel up to it, please vol­un­teer! We also need as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble on the ground to lend sup­port, wit­ness the Coun­cil’s, pri­vate secu­ri­ty and Police’s actions and so on.

Please come down to lend your sup­port. Peo­ple have been cam­paign­ing against this road widen­ing since 1972 and it’s all com­ing to a head tonight.

Addi­tion­al from SKIPP: Urgent notice — help need­ed NOW! Tree felling begins tonight in Pri­o­ry Cres­cent, any­one who can please come down to site, your help is des­per­ate­ly need­ed, if pos­si­ble please can­cel what ever you are doing, it is now or nev­er, pas­sive or active, you can help save the trees if we act togeth­er NOW… SKIPP Com­mit­tee Con­tact: 07799414887 — mark 07747755205 — pat­sy Please let us know if you can help.

—-

After years of patient occu­pa­tion and appar­ent vic­to­ry, Southend activists have had to reoc­cu­py land to pre­vent the coun­cils new road build­ing scheme. Evic­tions are expect­ed immi­nent­ly and crew are urgent­ly need­ed.

Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil has reneged on the agree­ment made last April with Bling and Park­life which result­ed in an agree­ment with the res­i­dents to vacate the site.

Local Group SKIPP has since been cam­paign­ing to pre­vent the revised plan from becom­ing a real­i­ty, last week SKIPP joined force with Park­life, and Blingers to occu­py a site in Pri­o­ry Cres­cent with a view to pre­vent­ing tree felling which is due in the next few days.

This morn­ing a source with­in the Coun­cil informed us, that tree felling and evic­tion is now immi­nent.

Sup­port is urgent­ly need­ed, the site is sit­u­at­ed in Pri­o­ry Cres­cent on land adja­cent to the Cuck­oo Cor­ner Round­about; by car head into Southend using the A127, fol­low­ing the town cen­tre signs, by train the near­est sta­tion is Prit­tlewell on the Liv­er­pool Street Line.

(for back­ground please refer to: www.campbling.org / www.ppps.org.uk / on face­book search for Sax­on King In Pri­o­ry Park.

Lim­it­ed accom­mo­da­tion is avail­able on site in the form of tents, please bring warm cloth­ing and harness/lock on gear if poss, same old things need­ed; peo­ple, climb­ing gear/lock on gear, her­ras fenc­ing, scaff bar/clips, kit and dona­tions.

On Fri­day a coun­cil meet­ing was halt­ed for 20 min­utes fol­low­ing protests over the new plans.

Fossil Fools Day 2010

Cli­mate change is no laugh­ing mat­ter – but that doesn’t mean we can’t con­front the Fos­sil Fuel Empire with sub­ver­sive humour.

WHAT: Direct actions, prac­ti­cal jokes and throw­ing a span­ner in the works to stop the fos­sil fools.
WHERE: Your street, town or city.
WHEN: April 1st, 2010.

FFD graphic - bigCli­mate change is no laugh­ing mat­ter – but that doesn’t mean we can’t con­front the Fos­sil Fuel Empire with sub­ver­sive humour.

WHAT: Direct actions, prac­ti­cal jokes and throw­ing a span­ner in the works to stop the fos­sil fools.
WHERE: Your street, town or city.
WHEN: April 1st, 2010.

Last Decem­ber in Copen­hagen, the politi­cians sold us out to the fos­sil fools, cor­po­rate lob­by­ists and big banks. Now we’re left with “green cap­i­tal­ism,” a deeply unjust car­bon mar­ket and con­tin­ued assaults on our com­mu­ni­ties and ecosys­tems. If we’re going to stop cli­mate chaos, the only real solu­tion is to keep fos­sil fuels in the ground.

The stakes couldn’t be high­er: desta­bil­i­sa­tion of the glob­al cli­mate, local com­mu­ni­ties destroyed by dirty ener­gy extrac­tion and com­bus­tion, dev­as­tat­ing freak storms, droughts, floods, the list goes on …

This April 1st, join Ris­ing Tide in some cre­ative direct action … use the sim­ply sub­ver­sive to the down­right dis­rup­tive: office occu­pa­tions, ban­ner drops, clown­ish parades, road block­ades, spoof web­sites, sub­ver­tis­ing, street the­atre, leaflets, lock-ons or laugh-ins. What­ev­er works for you and your group.

Join us this Fos­sil Fools Day and hatch some hare­brained schemes that will strike a blow to cli­mate crim­i­nals every­where!

WANT MORE? Fos­sil Fools Day also marks the launch of the BP Tar Sands Fort­night of Shame: a two-week cam­paign cul­mi­nat­ing in actions sur­round­ing BP’s AGM on April 15th. The goal? To stop BP from going into the Cana­di­an Tar Sands – the biggest, dirt­i­est fos­sil fuel project on earth. Find out more: Tar Sands in Focus.. And a word to BP: be afraid… be very afraid.

NEED A HAND? If you would like ideas for actions, graph­ics for leaflets or web­sites, advice on deal­ing with the press, etc., send us an email and we’ll do our best to help out: info@risingtide.org.uk

For more infor­ma­tion see: Fos­sil Fools Day.

In the words of that mas­ter of pranks: “That’s All Folks”.

RBS attacked with rocks & fire over Tar Sands project

In the ear­ly hours of Tues­day 23rd Feb­ru­ary 2010, anar­chists attacked the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land HQ in the heart of devel­op­ing Bris­tol, UK.

Despite road traf­fic and prox­im­i­ty of secu­ri­ty, the mob suc­ceed­ed in break­ing win­dows, smash­ing paint-bombs against upper floors and set­ting fire to tyres in the mid­dle of the road.

In the ear­ly hours of Tues­day 23rd Feb­ru­ary 2010, anar­chists attacked the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land HQ in the heart of devel­op­ing Bris­tol, UK.

Despite road traf­fic and prox­im­i­ty of secu­ri­ty, the mob suc­ceed­ed in break­ing win­dows, smash­ing paint-bombs against upper floors and set­ting fire to tyres in the mid­dle of the road.

A litany of abus­es by RBS or any oth­er bank could con­tin­ue for pages, but it is enough to state that every bank is part of the finan­cial prison which incar­cer­ates and impov­er­ish­es all of us.

These actions will esca­late and mul­ti­ply.

We ded­i­cate this action to all indige­nous fight­ers and their allies strug­gling against the Tar Sands project in Kana­da which RBS is an investor in, and also all those who fight against the 2010 Win­ter-Olympics.

This action is also in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Alfre­do M. Bonan­no, Chris­tos Stratigopou­los, Polykar­pos Geor­giades, Vagge­lis Chriso­hoides, Gian­nis Dim­i­trakis, Gabriel Pom­bo da Sil­va, the entire Lon­don G20 defendants/prisoners and all oth­er pris­on­ers in strug­gle.

For inter­na­tion­al strug­gle against cap­i­tal­ism and the state.

Shell retreats as solidarity with Pat O’Donnell continues

23rd Feb 2010
Round up of events in Dublin and a per­son­al view of the progress of the cam­paign

23rd Feb 2010
Round up of events in Dublin and a per­son­al view of the progress of the cam­paign

The week before last Erris fish­er­man Pat O’Don­nell was jailed for sev­en months for his part in the com­mu­ni­ties ongo­ing resis­tance to Shel­l’s attempt to impose an exper­i­men­tal gas pipeline on them. Across the coun­try local Shell to Sea groups have been hold­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty protests and oth­er events for Pat. In Dublin this has includ­ed two protests and a pub­lic meet­ing in UCD. Mean­while Shell have been forced to admit a tem­po­rary defeat in the face of local oppo­si­tion and call off the con­struc­tion they have planned for Glen­gad this year.

The first of the Dublin protests was Tues­day last week when cam­paign­ers gath­ered out­side Shell HQ to high­light the role of Shell in Pat’s jail­ing. Because Pat has the fish­ing rights along the pipeline route he has been repeat­ed­ly tar­get­ed for deten­tion when­ev­er Shell has need­ed to car­ry out con­struc­tion work. And back in June, just before the arrival of Shel­l’s pipeline ship the Soli­taire, Pat’s boat was board­ed at night by four armed and masked men and sunk, an event rem­i­nis­cent of how oil cor­po­ra­tions have dealt with local protests around the world.

On Wednes­day a well attend­ed pub­lic meet­ing was held in UCD, speak­ers include Andy Storey chair­per­son of Afri (http://www.afri.ie/), Caoimhe Kerins from Dublin Shell to Sea and Mau­ra Har­ring­ton, who like Pat has been impris­oned for resist­ing Shel­l’s exper­i­men­tal gas pipeline. A report and pic­tures from that meet­ing can be found at http://www.indymedia.ie/article/95771 Below I’ve attached audio record­ings of the meet­ing includ­ing the ques­tion and answer ses­sions after the speak­ers pre­sen­ta­tions.

On Sat­ur­day Dublin Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers joined friends of Pat’s who had trav­eled from Mayo for a protest at the GPO. Ban­ners high­light­ed not only the injus­tice of Pat’s impris­on­ment but also the fact that the Irish state is giv­ing bil­lions of gas & oil to the ener­gy cor­po­ra­tions with­out them pay­ing any roy­al­ties. This at a time when health, edu­ca­tion and pay is being slashed to save a tiny per­cent­age of the sums that are to be giv­en away. Thou­sands of the ‘Some­day Inde­pen­dent’, the leaflet that explains the issues around the cam­paign in detail were dis­trib­uted to the pub­lic dur­ing the protest. This is a 30 sec­ond video of this protest at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE-irZ-0CFA

Before the protest anoth­er 1,000 copies had been dis­trib­uted door to door in the Lib­er­ties. You can read the text of the leaflet at http://www.dublins2s.com/content/120000-all-facts-leafl…buted

Three years ago Shell thought it was all over. The mil­lions spent on the media cam­paign along with the fact that most of the media is either state owned or owned by those who are also in oil & gas explo­ration meant that all crit­i­cal voic­es in the press had been silenced. The Gar­dai use of vio­lence against protests had been used to smash and demor­al­ize the oppo­si­tion in the area allow­ing refin­ery con­struc­tion to pro­ceed with only the occa­sion­al inter­rup­tion. It appears at that point it was decid­ed the gloves could come off to smash those who were still hold­ing out and hun­dreds of pri­vate secu­ri­ty guards were deployed who intim­i­dat­ed, abused and videoed local res­i­dents. Pat O’Don­nel­l’s boat was sunk at sea and Willie Cor­duff was beat­en in the Shell com­pound at Glen­gad. These tac­tics back­fired in the Spring when it was dis­cov­ered that not only were some of these secu­ri­ty from east Euro­pean fas­cist organ­i­sa­tions but that sev­er­al had been involved in an attempt to spark a civ­il war in Bolivia, see http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92865

Resis­tance is fer­tile

Despite the ongo­ing attempt to sup­press and silence the cam­paign spir­its are high. The pres­sure cre­at­ed by the cam­paign meant that An Bord Pleanala felt unable to rub­ber stamp Shel­l’s plan’s for run­ning the exper­i­men­tal gas pipeline through the vil­lage of Ross­port and instead point­ed out the obvi­ous safe­ty issues that cam­paign­ers had been high­light­ing for years (e.g. peo­ple liv­ing in the blast zone) and gave Shell two months to address these. Of course when Shell proved unable to do so that dead­line was extend­ed for a fur­ther four months but this has forced Shell to call off con­struc­tion at Glen­gad this sum­mer.

This is a sig­nif­i­cant if tem­po­rary vic­to­ry over Shell but Dublin Shell to Sea spokesper­son Caoimhe Kerins warned that “Although this announce­ment is a sig­nif­i­cant vic­to­ry for the local com­mu­ni­ty, oth­er major works will still be going ahead, while fish­er­man Pat O’Donnell is out of Shell’s way in prison. This means that 2010 is set to be anoth­er year of dis­rup­tion for the com­mu­ni­ty, con­tin­ued harass­ment and intim­i­da­tion by Gar­dai and Shell secu­ri­ty, as well as the unlaw­ful arrest and the tar­get­ed jail­ing of key cam­paign­ers. There are no options left for Shell, except to process the gas at sea, which is stan­dard prac­tice around the world. This is what local peo­ple have been demand­ing for almost a decade. It’s still not to late to do the right thing.”

The An Bord Pleanala deci­sion has also start­ed to break apart Shel­l’s well fund­ed media cam­paign with some of the more coura­geous jour­nal­ists dar­ing to stand up to Shell and pub­lish arti­cles ques­tion­ing the project. As might be expect­ed these jour­nal­ists are now being tar­get­ed in the media for doing so. Shell them­selves seem scared of debat­ing the issues with Shell to Sea, at least two TV debates have been can­celed due to Shell or pro-Shell jour­nal­ists pulling out at the last minute in recent weeks.

As the scale of the Great Oil & Gas give­away has been revealed more and more peo­ple are tak­ing a stand against Shell. In the last cou­ple of months new Shell to Sea groups have sprung up around the coun­try, the recent­ly formed Kil­dare group has been leaflet­ting in Kil­dare town. You can help in a wide range of ways from sim­ple things like send­ing a sol­i­dar­i­ty let­ter to Pat in prison to let him know he is not alone to get­ting copies of the ‘Some­day Inde­pen­dent’ off Dublin Shell to Sea (con­tact details on their web site) to join­ing or form­ing a local Shell to Sea group to do this and more.

Please write to Pat in prison. His address is: Pat O’Don­nell, Castlerea Prison, Har­ris­town, Castlerea,Co.Roscommon. Alter­na­tive­ly you can email mayoshelltosea@gmail.com and they will pass on your email to Pat. The Dublin Shell to Sea page can be found at http://www.dublins2s.com/

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/cat/rossport

Local Democracy Dumped! — Sizewell nuclear plant blockaded again

22.02.2010
As gov­ern­ment ends flawed con­sul­ta­tion on nuclear pow­er, anti-nuclear pow­er activists step up resis­tance and block­ade Sizewell nuclear pow­er sta­tion in Suf­folk, Eng­land.

Sizewell democracy!22.02.2010
As gov­ern­ment ends flawed con­sul­ta­tion on nuclear pow­er, anti-nuclear pow­er activists step up resis­tance and block­ade Sizewell nuclear pow­er sta­tion in Suf­folk, Eng­land.

Since 6.40am this morn­ing, anti-nuclear pow­er activists from the ‘Peo­ple Pow­er not Nuclear Pow­er Coali­tion’ [1] have been blockad­ing Sizewell pow­er sta­tion in protest against the flawed gov­ern­ment con­sul­ta­tion on nuclear new build, which ends today, and the dump­ing of local democ­ra­cy.

Sizewell is one of ten sites nom­i­nat­ed for nuclear new build; and, togeth­er with Hink­ley in Som­er­set, one of the two most like­ly sites for one of the first new nuclear reac­tors to be built by EDF Ener­gy.

In prepa­ra­tion for new nuclear reac­tors, the gov­ern­ment intro­duced the 2008 Plan­ning Act [2] to lim­it the local plan­ning pro­ce­dure to rel­a­tive­ly unim­por­tant mat­ters, and cen­tralise sit­ing and nuclear design deci­sion on the nation­al lev­el. Today, the seri­ous­ly flawed con­sul­ta­tions end on the Nation­al Pol­i­cy State­ments for ener­gy, includ­ing nuclear pow­er, [3] designed to give the go ahead for ten new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in the UK.

“In order to build new nuclear pow­er sta­tions, gov­ern­ment dumped local democ­ra­cy”, Mell Har­ri­son, 38 from Gelde­ston and a cam­paigns work­er for the Cam­paign for Nuclear Dis­ar­ma­ment (CND) said.

“We are blockad­ing Sizewell today, to show that the gov­ern­ment will not achieve its aim to fast track nuclear pow­er. If local democ­ra­cy is dumped, then non­vi­o­lent direct action will be our answer. Any new build will be met with resis­tance, and this block­ade today is just the begin­ning.”

She con­tin­ued:

“The gov­ern­ment and the nuclear indus­try present nuclear pow­er as low car­bon ener­gy and a neces­si­ty to com­bat cli­mate change; but nuclear pow­er is dan­ger­ous, expen­sive and does not deliv­er any sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tions in car­bon emis­sions. It locks us into a cen­tralised ener­gy sys­tem, and is part of the prob­lem of cli­mate change, not part of the solu­tion.”

“Chip­per”, 44, a male activist from Stop Hink­ley added:

“The gov­ern­ment and the nuclear indus­try approach the prob­lem of nuclear waste with wish­ful think­ing, as the con­clu­sion of the Nation­al Pol­i­cy State­ment for Nuclear Pow­er Gen­er­a­tion shows.” [4]

Andreas Speck, 45, from Lon­don, orig­i­nal­ly from Ger­many, added:

“Just to wish away the prob­lem of nuclear waste is high­ly irre­spon­si­ble. Spent nuclear fuel is high­ly tox­ic and remains radioac­tive for tens of thou­sands of years. Here at Sizewell, a new dry stor­age facil­i­ty is planned, to store spent fuel rods for more than 100 years in casks. How­ev­er, how long these last is unknown, and prob­lems with sim­i­lar casks at Gor­leben in Ger­many after only a few years show that this is no solu­tion. There is no final safe stor­age [for high lev­el radioac­tive waste] in exis­tence any­where in the world. The respon­si­ble thing to do is to shut down all nuclear pow­er sta­tions imme­di­ate­ly and stop pro­duc­ing yet more nuclear waste.” [5]

Notes:

[1] The Peo­ple Pow­er not Nuclear Pow­er Coali­tion is a non-hier­ar­chi­cal cam­paign­ing coali­tion of groups and indi­vid­u­als to pro­mote and encour­age vis­i­ble and effec­tive action against nuclear pow­er in the UK and world­wide, to leave a nuclear-free, safe and healthy envi­ron­ment for future gen­er­a­tions. More infor­ma­tion at: http://stopnuclearpower.blogspot.com

[2] The Plan­ning Act 2008 intro­duced a new stream-lined sys­tem for deci­sions on appli­ca­tions to build nation­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant infra­struc­ture projects (NSIPs) in Eng­land and Wales. The new sys­tem for nation­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant infra­struc­ture cov­ers appli­ca­tions for major ener­gy gen­er­a­tion, rail­ways, ports, major roads, air­ports and water and waste infra­struc­ture. Nation­al pol­i­cy will be set out by Min­is­ters in a series of Nation­al Pol­i­cy State­ments (NPSs), there­by dump­ing local democ­ra­cy. Fore more infor­ma­tion, see Friends of the Earth:

Plan­ning Act removes demo­c­ra­t­ic deci­sion mak­ing, http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/fair_future/news/planningbill_law_17248.html

[3] For more infor­ma­tion, see Friends of the Earth press release from 22 Jan­u­ary 2010: Legal warn­ing to Gov­ern­ment over ener­gy pol­i­cy state­ments, http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/nps_22012010.html

[4] See para­graph 3.8.20, page 25 of the Draft Nation­al Pol­i­cy State­ment for Nuclear Pow­er Gen­er­a­tion (EN‑6), Novem­ber 2009, https://www.energynpsconsultation.decc.gov.uk/nuclear/nps/

‘Hav­ing con­sid­ered this issue, the Gov­ern­ment is sat­is­fied that effec­tive arrange­ments will exist to man­age and dis­pose of the waste that will be pro­duced from new nuclear pow­er sta­tions. As a result the IPC (Infra­struc­ture Plan­ning Com­mis­sion) need not con­sid­er this ques­tion.’

[5] The exist­ing stor­age facil­i­ty for spent fuel at Sizewell will be full in 2015. In addi­tion, a dry stor­age facil­i­ty is to be built to cre­ate new stor­age capac­i­ty. In there, spent fuel rods will be stored in stor­age casks in a sim­ple 110m stor­age hall with nat­ur­al air cool­ing. Sim­i­lar stor­age casks in Ger­many showed prob­lems with the mon­i­tor­ing of pres­sure after only a few years (see http://www.contratom.de/news/newsanzeige.php?newsid=19588 — in Ger­man)

Activists tak­ing part in this morn­ing’s action include:

- Mell Har­ri­son. 38 from Gelde­ston. Mell works for CND and is a mem­ber of Shut Down Sizewell and the Sizewell Block­aders. She was recent­ly acquit­ted for aggra­vat­ed tress­pass at Sizewell A and B for a block­ade that took place in 2008.

- Andreas Speck, 45, from Lon­don. Andreas works for War Resisters’ Inter­na­tion­al. He was involved in the anti-nuclear pow­er move­ment in Ger­many from the 1980s, until his move to Lon­don.

- “Chip­per”, 44, from Wilt­shire. He is a mem­ber of Stop Hink­ley and CND.

- “Zig­gy”, 39, an artist and his­to­ri­an from Ipswich, Suf­folk. He is a mem­ber of CND and Shut Down Sizewell.

- Helen Swanston, 35, a milliner from Cromer. Helen is a mem­ber of Tri­dent Ploughshares.

- Jus­tus, 23, a stu­dent from Lon­don. He is involved in the Camp for Cli­mate Action.

- Irene Willis, 65, from Wales. Irene is a Sizewell Block­ad­er and a mem­ber of Tri­dent Ploughshares.

- Nicky, 39, an envi­ron­ment edu­ca­tion work­er from Bun­gay. She was also recent­ly acquit­ted fol­low­ing the Sizewell Block­aders’ action at Sizewell in 2008.

Nuclear Peo­ple Pow­er
vd2012-npp [at] yahoo.co.uk
http://stopnuclearpower.blogspot.com

Updates:

10:44
One of the block­aders, Chip­per, was get­ting the chills after lying in the rain for sev­er­al hours and decid­ed to self release. He was imme­di­ate­ly arrest­ed with­out warn­ing on sus­pi­cion of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass and tak­en to Low­est­oft police sta­tion. The remain­ing block­aders are still in posi­tion as of 10.40am. At least one TV crew is on the scene.

Main­stream cov­er­age: http://bit.ly/d9ALSd

12:10pm

Anoth­er man arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass. Two more block­aders still being cut out of lock-ons by police.

Fol­low on Twit­ter: http://twitter.com/NukePeoplePower

1:20pm

The two remain­ing block­aders (a female in her six­ties and a male in his twen­ties) are still being drilled out of a con­crete block lock-on. The police cut­ting team say it will take them at least anoth­er hour.

The pair have now been in the road for near­ly sev­en hours, in wet, cold con­di­tions.

Twit­ter updates: http://twitter.com/NukePeoplePower

2:40pm

Last block­ad­er just drilled out and arrest­ed after 8 hours in the cold and wet. Four peo­ple arrest­ed in total.

Lat­est update, plus more pics

Approx. 9.30pm on Mon­day evening: The four arrestees are released after being inter­viewed and held in police cus­tody for up to 11 hours. They have been bailed to return to Low­est­oft police sta­tion on 30th March, at 2pm.

More pho­tos from yes­ter­day’s block­ade: http://tinyurl.com/Sizewell22Feb10

Support the Local Campaign Against Bradley Proposed Open-cast

This years EF! win­ter moot was held in Dip­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, which looks over the pro­posed site for an open-cast at Bradley. Mem­bers of the local cam­paign against the mine have asked if peo­ple who attend­ed the moot, (as well as those who did­n’t) would write in their objec­tion to the devel­op­ment.

This years EF! win­ter moot was held in Dip­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, which looks over the pro­posed site for an open-cast at Bradley. Mem­bers of the local cam­paign against the mine have asked if peo­ple who attend­ed the moot, (as well as those who did­n’t) would write in their objec­tion to the devel­op­ment.

UK Coal’s appli­ca­tion is expect­ed to be heard by the plan­ning offi­cials in the near future. The local cam­paign would appre­ci­ate it if peo­ple would write in let­ters of objec­tion to the fol­low­ing address, stat­ing the APPLICATION No. CMA/1/37

Mrs C.L.Teasdale
Plannng Devel­op­ment Con­trol Team
Regen­er­a­tion and Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment
Durham Coun­ty Coun­cil
Durham
DH1 5UQ

Appar­ent­ly let­ters hold more weight if you say that you have vis­it­ed the area.

The facts about this pro­posed mine:
UK Coal has applied to sur­face mine 556,000 tonnes of coal from a coal seem cov­er­ing 22,000 acres.
The cur­rent ver­sion of the appli­ca­tion is has not yet gone to the Plan­ning Author­i­ty.
The appli­ca­tion is being resist­ed by The Pont Val­ley Net­work www.pontvalley.net
If the appli­ca­tion goes ahead the res­i­dents are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about the loss of their her­itage sites.
The final des­ti­na­tion for the coal is either the steel indus­try or a pow­er sta­tion gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­i­ty.
Burn­ing this coal will release over 2 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 being released into the atmos­phere.
UK coal say the mine will cre­ate 38 jobs. Mr Cory of UK Coal says that there will be no new jobs but peo­ple will be trans­ferred to this site.
The mine will need 3 lor­ry trips per hour, each way.
UK coal and oth­er sur­face min­ing com­pa­nies have appli­ca­tions at the plan­ning stages for a fur­ther 13 mines in the area and a fur­ther 5 have been grant­ed in the area.
The near­est planned site also cur­rent­ly at the plan­ning stages is Skons Park, which Hall con­struc­tion are apply­ing to extract half a mil­lion tonnes of coal fire clay. This appli­ca­tion was last refused in 2007 but Halls have since reap­plied this year.

The Bradley site is 10 miles south of New­cas­tle in a beau­ti­ful area. The pro­posed site can be seen from New­cas­tle and Cheviot on a clear day. A mine would scar the land­scape; cause habi­tat destruc­tion which would affect many species, includ­ing Great Crest­ed Newts and Red Kites; con­tribute to glob­al warm­ing; increase traf­fic local­ly and destroy the remains of wag­on-ways and bell pit and shaft mines in the area. Res­i­dents are also con­cerned that if the mine is giv­en the go ahead then they will see fur­ther exten­sions applied for and grant­ed.

For more infor­ma­tion about the site and to add strength to let­ters of objec­tion please see http://pontvalley.net under NOTT cam­paign on the left hand side.

Tar Sands protests (Brighton & London)

Cli­mate Camp Invades BP Petrol Sta­tions Over Tar Sands

Cli­mate Camp Invades BP Petrol Sta­tions Over Tar Sands
On Sat­ur­day 13th Feb­ru­ary activists from the South Coast neigh­bour­hood of the Camp for Cli­mate Action invad­ed the three BP petrol sta­tions in Brighton, on the Lewes Rd, Ditch­ling Rd and Lon­don Rd, to protest at BP’s plans to invest in the Alber­ta Tar Sands in Cana­da. Mov­ing by bicy­cle 8 activists car­ried a ban­ner read­ing ‘Tar Sands Oil Is Blood Oil’. They hand­ed out infor­ma­tion on the Cana­di­an tar sands and BP’s plans to invest in it to cus­tomers and urged them to boy­cott BP.

Many of BP’s cus­tomers where shocked to hear about BP’s pro­posed involve­ment in one of the dirt­i­est busi­ness­es on earth, espe­cial­ly in the light of its past attend to project a green image, and in some cas­es left imme­di­ate­ly left to get their fuel some­where else. This action is the start of a cam­paign, which is hoped will spread across the UK. A one of the Brighton activists said: “We hope that oth­er con­cerned local peo­ple across the UK will fol­low our exam­ple and begin putting the pres­sure on BP in their areas. Tar sands are an appalling exam­ple of plac­ing insane greed ahead of the whole plan­et and every­one on it.”

Tar sands are deposits of tar, sand and clay under the forests of Alber­ta in west­ern Cana­da. Tar sands extrac­tion is an eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter, some­times referred to as ‘The biggest envi­ron­men­tal crime in his­to­ry’. Oil pro­duced from tar sands is the filth­i­est most car­bon inten­sive oil (over 3 times as much CO2 to pro­duce as con­ven­tion­al oil). The Athabas­ca tar sands oper­a­tions are the largest sin­gle indus­tri­al emit­ter of CO2 on the plan­et. Enough nat­ur­al gas is used every day extract­ing this oil to heat 3.2 mil­lion Cana­di­an homes.

Tar sands extrac­tion involves the whole­sale destruc­tion of vast tracts of ancient for­est over an area the size of Eng­land and Wales and the use of huge amounts of water that is left so con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed that it must be stored in giant ponds. The tox­ic tail­ings ponds are so vast they can be seen from space. Leaks for these ponds are poi­son­ing local rivers and the indige­nous peo­ples that live there. The rush to extract oil from tar sands is also tram­pling on the rights of the local indige­nous peo­ples.

While the tar sands are in Cana­da, much of the financ­ing is com­ing from UK com­pa­nies. BP which once tried to rebrand itself as ‘Beyond Petro­le­um’ to give itself a green image is plan­ning on invest­ing $10billion in the Sun­rise Project a tar sands extrac­tion project in Alber­ta. This week a num­ber BP’s share­hold­ers have start­ed a revolt and are pres­sur­ing BP to stop. Oth­er UK com­pa­nies that are involved in tar sands include Shell, RBS and Bar­calys.

Pho­tos:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4048/4354992582_a300eeb4fb_b_d.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/4354252823_1123bd6cd9_b_d.jpg

Tar sands info:
http://www.ienearth.org/tarsandsinfo.html

Press:
BP faces protest over oil sands devel­op­ment
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article7018483.ece
Share­hold­er group calls on BP to rethink oil sands project
http://business.scotsman.com/business/Shareholder-group-calls-on-BP.6050650.jp

Con­tact:
E‑mail: southcoast@climatecamp.org.uk
Web: http://climatecamp.org.uk/get-involved/local-groups/south-coast

—

Tar Sands banner LondonOil-ympics Come To Trafal­gar Square
On Sat­ur­day, 13 Feb­ru­ary at 12 noon, UK and Cana­di­an envi­ron­men­tal activists opened the ‘Oil-ympics’ at Cana­da House in Trafal­gar Square. The event, timed to coin­cide with the open­ing of the 2010 Win­ter Olympics in Van­cou­ver, high­light­ed the role of British com­pa­nies in the sin­gle biggest indus­tri­al project on earth, the Cana­di­an Tar Sands (1).

The Oil-ympics event saw activists divid­ed into three teams: BP, Shell and RBS, all ready to ‘Race to the Tar Sands’. Tra­di­tion­al win­ter sports were sub­vert­ed to illus­trate the irony of Cana­da por­tray­ing the Van­cou­ver Win­ter Olympics as an event which cel­e­brates Cana­di­an indige­nous cul­ture and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, while in the neigh­bour­ing province of Alber­ta, Cana­di­an First Nations are find­ing that their lands, com­mu­ni­ties and health are being dev­as­tat­ed by the Tar Sands (2).

BP received spe­cial atten­tion after it recent­ly unveiled plans to embark on its first Tar Sands extrac­tion project. BP had pre­vi­ous­ly sold its poten­tial stake in Alber­ta in 1999, when BP’s chief exec­u­tive at the time, Lord Browne, deemed Tar Sands extrac­tion to be eco­nom­i­cal­ly unvi­able and envi­ron­men­tal­ly unpleas­ant. How­ev­er, BP’s new chief exec­u­tive, Tony Hay­ward, is now set to make BP a major play­er in the Tar Sands with a part­ner­ship with Canada’s Husky Ener­gy – a ven­ture that is fac­ing sharp crit­i­cism from BP’s own share­hold­ers (3, 4).

Alice Har­g­reaves, of the UK Tar Sands Net­work, said: “BP has been try­ing to prove that they are ‘Beyond Petro­le­um’ for years, but with their entry into the Tar Sands project, we can see the truth: Beyond Petro­le­um is noth­ing more than a Bro­ken Promise.(5) BP share­hold­ers are rebelling over this betray­al, and so are we. Over the next two months, we’ll be putting the pres­sure on to make sure BP get the mes­sage – stay out of the Tar Sands!”

Shell has been sin­gled out as it is already a major oper­a­tor in the Tar Sands, and RBS as it is the 7th biggest glob­al investor in the Tar Sands. (6)

tarsandsinfocus@gmail.com

http://tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com/

(1) Deposits of Tar Sands are spread out over 54,000 square miles of prime for­est in north­ern Alber­ta, an area the size of Eng­land and Wales com­bined. Pro­duc­ing crude oil from the Tar Sands gen­er­ates up to five times more car­bon diox­ide, the prin­ci­pal glob­al warm­ing gas, than con­ven­tion­al drilling: see

Envi­ron­ment Cana­da, 2007, Nation­al Inven­to­ry Report Green­house Gas Sources and Sinks in Cana­da 1990–2005, http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/inventory_report/2006_report/som-sum_eng.cfm

(2) This action is in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Cana­di­an First Nations who have called for a mora­to­ri­um on the Tar Sands. For more infor­ma­tion see the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work: http://www.ienearth.org/cits.html

(3) BP has entered a joint ven­ture with Husky Ener­gy to devel­op a Tar Sands facil­i­ty which will be capa­ble of pro­duc­ing 200,000 bar­rels of crude a day by 2020. In return for a half share of Husky’s Sun­rise field in the Athabas­ca region of Alber­ta, the epi­cen­tre of the Tar Sands indus­try, BP has sold its part­ner a 50 per cent stake in its Tole­do oil refin­ery in Ohio. The com­pa­nies plan to invest $10 bil­lion in the project, mak­ing BP a major play­er in Tar Sands extrac­tion. The final invest­ment deci­sion will be made in the next few months.

http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=2012968&contentId=7038865

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=aGw2sL7JwHG8

(4) A coali­tion of share­hold­ers has tabled a res­o­lu­tion for BP’s AGM on April 15 high­light­ing the envi­ron­men­tal and social risks of Tar Sands extrac­tion. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article7018483.ece

(5) http://tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com/bpbrokenpromises/

(6) For Shell Invest­ments see http://www.foei.org/en/resources/publications/pdfs-members/economic-justice/shells-big-dirty-secret/view?searchterm=shell%27s%20big%20dirty%20secret

For RBS invest­ments see http://understory.ran.org/2010/01/31/banks-ranked-and-spanked-on-tar-sands/

UK Tar Sands Net­work
tarsandsinfocus@googlemail.com
http://www.tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com

Climate Change Activists: Join the Vancouver Convergence

A coali­tion of envi­ron­men­tal activists led by GatewaySucks.org is call­ing on cli­mate change activists to join the con­ver­gence at the 2010 Olympic Games in Van­cou­ver.


A coali­tion of envi­ron­men­tal activists led by GatewaySucks.org is call­ing on cli­mate change activists to join the con­ver­gence at the 2010 Olympic Games in Van­cou­ver.

When the 2010 Win­ter Olympics start a cou­ple of weeks from now in Van­cou­ver, BC the ath­letes and spec­ta­tors will be joined by orga­ni­za­tions with some of the worst records on cli­mate change.

Gen­er­al Motors is a nation­al part­ner for the games, and one of the lead­ing cor­po­rate oppo­nents of effec­tive action on cli­mate change. Only two years ago, a vice-chair­man of GM called glob­al warm­ing a “total crock of shit.” GM is sup­ply­ing a large fleet of vehi­cles for the games, almost all of which are gas-guz­zling SUVs.

Petro-Cana­da, anoth­er Nation­al Olympic Part­ner, is the retail arm of the largest extrac­tor of Oil Sands bitu­men. The Oil Sands are Canada’s biggest ghg emis­sions point source.

RBC (the Roy­al Bank of Cana­da) in addi­tion to being a promi­nent Olympic spon­sor is the largest com­mer­cial bank fun­der of the Oil Sands,. Tran­sCana­da pipelines, whose pipelines con­nect to the Oil Sands, is also an offi­cial sup­pli­er.

The gov­ern­ment of British Colum­bia is the main fun­der and pro­mot­er of the games. They kicked off a mas­sive plan to add over 1,000 km of new high­way lanes (an increase of over 2,000,000 annu­al tonnes of CO2e emis­sions ) with the Sea-to-Sky High­way expan­sion for the Olympics. These plans include the con­tro­ver­sial Gate­way Pro­gram. It con­tin­ues to heav­i­ly sub­si­dize the oil and gas indus­try which result­ed in it being the only Cana­di­an province to see ghg emis­sions from indus­tri­al sources increase in 2008.

The Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment of Cana­da which con­sis­tent­ly earned “Fos­sil Awards” at the most recent inter­na­tion­al cli­mate talks also is a major fun­der for the Olympics.

These cor­po­ra­tions and gov­ern­ments want to fool the world with their claim that these are the “Green­est Games Ever” despite the links to cli­mate change deniers, high­way expan­sion and the Oil Sands.

If you would like to endorse this call-out or get involved direct­ly please con­tact info@gatewaysucks.org.

MORE INFORMATION:

Con­ver­gence Info: http://olympicresistance.net/

Wel­com­ing Com­mit­tee: http://2010welcoming.wordpress.com/

Green Olympic Watch: http://2010greenwatch.org/

GatewaySucks.org: http://www.gatewaysucks.org/

2010 Cli­mate Crime Scene: http://2010climatecrime.org