Category: Oil

Mon­day Morn­ing Cli­mate Camp Action Roundup

For the lat­est, see the Camp for Cli­mate Action twit­ter and the North­ern IMC time­line.

Sum­maris­ing some of the mate­r­i­al from twit­ter and IMC time­line.

Today Mon­day 23rd actions against cli­mate change and the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land are tak­ing place across Edin­burgh, as well as at their Gog­a­r­burn HQ.

Oil explo­ration com­pa­ny Cairn Ener­gy, off Loth­i­an Road, have tak­en deliv­ery of an oil-like sub­stance from a giant pig, unfor­tu­nate­ly cre­at­ing a 60 litre oil spill. (Obvi­ous­ly Cairn would­n’t be respon­si­ble for such a thing).

Down in Lei­th, the Forth Ener­gy place is the tar­get of agro­fu­els-relat­ed action, with 7 peo­ple atop the build­ing.

The Nichol­son Street branch of RBS is block­ad­ed by folk with signs read­ing “ask me why I won’t bank with RBS”. As at mid­day the two hour long block­ade had result­ed in the bank shut­ting its doors.

And at RBS in South Gyle the exec­u­tive car park is blocked by 7 peo­ple with super­glued hands.

A report has just come in that demon­stra­tors have pitched a tent out­side RBS on North Bridge.

Mean­while the main RBS bank in St Andrews Square is being guard­ed by police, includ­ing a CCTV van, and pri­vate secu­ri­ty. In a neo-lib­er­al ver­sion of 1984 the pub­lic are only being allowed in if they show secu­ri­ty the cor­rect bank card!:

• More info on what the Cli­mate Camp is and why peo­ple are tak­ing action against cli­mate change
• Info on why the Cli­mate Camp are tak­ing action against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land
• Ban­ner drop on the A8: ““RBS: Using our mon­ey to fuck the plan­et”

UPDATES 3pm Five arrests at Forth Ener­gy. Action con­tin­ues at RBS Nichol­son Street, with lock-ons and demo out­side. Pro­tes­tors on Roy­al Mile high­light destruc­tive RBS-backed Tar Sands project in Cana­da. Del­e­gates from the indige­nous peo­ple direct­ly affect­ed denounce that “RBS are killing our peo­ple.” More info on Tar Sands project and actions today against it

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Press release of the day’s actions so far: RBS Oper­a­tions Closed for the Day as Activists Tar­get Sites around Edin­burgh — August 23, 2010

Action Round-up for the Cli­mate Camp day of mass action tar­get­ing RBS
and the fos­sil fuel indus­try: Mon­day 23 August

Activists at the Camp for Cli­mate Action are cel­e­brat­ing a suc­cess­ful day tar­get­ing var­i­ous cli­mate crim­i­nals- hold­ing direct actions, demon­stra­tions and street the­atre con­fronting the role of finan­cial insti­tu­tions like RBS in bankrolling cli­mate change.

A group of pro­tes­tors occu­pied the head offices of Forth Ener­gy, a com­pa­ny plan­ning to build four new bio­mass pow­er sta­tions in Scot­land. Three pro­tes­tors chained them­selves to the front of the build­ing, two occu­pied the inside of the office, and two more dropped a ban­ner from the roof of the office. Five arrests were made.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, sev­en pro­tes­tors block­ad­ed the RBS exec­u­tive carpark at the Gyle Indus­tri­al Estate by super-glu­ing them­selves togeth­er.

A group of demon­stra­tors dropped a two metre long pig­gy bank brand­ed with the RBS logo filled with 60 litres of oil-like sub­stance (molasses) out­side the head­quar­ters of Cairn Ener­gy, a com­pa­ny which is com­ing under fire for its Arc­tic oil drilling oper­a­tions. The Green­peace ship Esper­an­za is cur­rent­ly engaged in a sit­u­a­tion with the Dan­ish Navy off the coast of Green­land with regards to Cairn Energy’s drilling oper­a­tions.

A group of pro­tes­tors, includ­ing Fringe per­form­ers, shut down the Nicol­son Street RBS branch. Three indi­vid­u­als super-glued them­selves across the front door­way, while anoth­er group played music and danced while hand­ing out leaflets. There were three arrests.

After the pre­vi­ous group of pro­tes­tors was removed by police, a group of “tar-cov­ered” pro­tes­tors shut down the Nicol­son St RBS branch a sec­ond time, as sev­er­al activists locked them­selves onto the build­ing.

Activists lay siege to RBS HQ with a six metre tall mock siege tow­er on wheels with a life-size papi­er mache rhi­noc­er­os head mount­ed on the front.

A ban­ner was dropped from a build­ing read­ing “oil tar sands = envi­ron­men­tal chaos”, there were two arrests.

Anoth­er ban­ner was dropped over the A8 which read “RBS: using our mon­ey to fuck the plan­et”

Above a tent protest by North Bridge, demon­stra­tors scaled two storeys of scaf­fold­ing to drop a ban­ner which read “RBS funds and prof­its from cli­mate chaos”

Actions in pre­vi­ous days have includ­ed:

* Hun­dreds of activists in boil­ers suits stormed the RBS head­quar­ters, cat­a­pult­ing oil-like sub­stance (molasses) onto the build­ing and attempt­ing to get inside the build­ing. There were two arrests.
* A group of activists caused the clo­sure of RBS bank branch­es in town by per­form­ing a spoof song-and-dance ver­sion of Lady Gaga’s num­ber one hit “Pok­er­face”, rewrit­ing the lyrics to talk about RBS’ fund­ing of fos­sil fuels. They invad­ed an RBS-spon­sored stage on the Roy­al Mile and per­formed the rout­ing for passers by.
* A group of 40–50 street the­atre activists exposed how RBS’ PR masks the real­i­ty of its invest­ments by per­form­ing “Green­wash Guer­ril­la” street the­atre at Gog­a­r­burn and the Roy­al Mile.
* On Sat­ur­day, sev­er­al hun­dred activists launched an incur­sion into the RBS HQ com­plex and held a dance par­ty in the foy­er as one activist gained access to the recep­tion area and super­glued her­self to the front desk.

So far, there have been 14 arrests through­out the dura­tion of the camp (from Wednes­day evening through Mon­day after­noon).

The Cli­mate Camp have expressed bewil­der­ment as to police claims of oil being spilled on a main road, and have no knowl­edge who was respon­si­ble for it if the inci­dent did take place.

Har­ry Reynolds who took part in the actions said:

“No one came to work today at the RBS Gog­a­r­burn head­quar­ters. Since we had already effec­tive­ly shut that down, we decid­ed to con­cen­trate our ener­gies tar­get­ing RBS and its fos­sil fuel affil­i­ates in the Edin­burgh city cen­tre. We’ve done a lot to dis­rupt RBS dirty ener­gy oper­a­tions today, but we are com­mit­ted to keep­ing up the pres­sure until we man­age to cut off the flow of cap­i­tal from the banks to the fos­sil fuel indus­try.”

Natal­ie Swift, a spokesper­son for Cli­mate Camp, com­ment­ed on the day of action:

“Today we have seen peo­ple tack­ling RBS’ respon­si­bil­i­ty for the bil­lions of pounds it pro­vides to envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive and dan­ger­ous fos­sil fuel projects. We are being failed by the gov­ern­ment and finan­cial insti­tu­tions, and we are cre­at­ing a vibrant social move­ment that takes direct action against the caus­es of cli­mate change when politi­cians and bankers fail to do so.”

Pho­tos:
Pho­tos of the camp and actions are avail­able at:
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/actions/edinburgh-2010/photography
They will be updat­ed through­out the day with fur­ther pho­tos from actions.

Videos:
The mak­ing of the Tro­jan Pig used at Cairn Ener­gy action
http://www.youandifilms.com/2010/08/ribs-the-trojan-pig-makes-a-mess-at-cairn-energy/
Rais­ing a Ruckus- a short film cov­er­ing the site take and the first
incur­sion into RBS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATJwdb4b2Tc&feature=player_embedded

Twit­ter:
Updates from actions through­out the day of action, includ­ing pho­tos
and videos, are avail­able on the Cli­mate Camp Twit­ter stream:
twitter.com/climate camp

Press releas­es from through­out the day can be found at:
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/press

Main­stream TV footage
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Tar Cov­ered Cli­mate Activists Shut Down Bank

A group of ‘tar’ cov­ered activists from the Camp for Cli­mate Action have locked them­selves to the RBS branch on Nichol­son Street, shut­ting the bank down. This is the sec­ond time that the Nichol­son Street bank branch has been shut down by protests today, as sev­er­al activists who had block­ad­ed the bank entrance by super­glu­ing them­selves togeth­er in front of it had just been removed by the police, result­ing in three arrests.

Anoth­er group of activists is demon­strat­ing with ban­ners and leaflets out­side the bank branch and on the streets of Edin­burgh today tar­get­ing RBS branch­es and spon­sored events to expose the extent of Fes­ti­val spon­sor RBS’s involve­ment in cli­mate crimes.

The activists are call­ing for a mora­to­ri­um on all new invest­ment and loan financ­ing in Tar Sands and oth­er fos­sil fuels projects. Roy­al Bank of Scot­land is the UK’s largest investor in com­pa­nies oper­at­ing in the Tar Sands and financed 7.5 bil­lion US dol­lars worth of loans between 2007 and 2009. One of these com­pa­nies is Enbrgide, whose con­tro­ver­sial pro­posed North­ern Gate­way Pas­sage would be laid through British Colum­bia, across more than fifty First Nation ter­ri­to­ries and pris­tine eco-sys­tems.

The Gate­way project will cross over 1000 rivers and streams. No oil extrac­tion is safe and secure but giv­en Enbridge has a his­to­ry of spills from its pipelines this project pos­es a seri­ous risk to endan­gered salmon pop­u­la­tions which use these rivers to spawn. Any spill will also con­t­a­m­i­nate the plants and ani­mals that local First Nations depend upon for food and med­i­cine.

The action is in sol­i­dar­i­ty with First Nation peo­ples who expe­ri­ence the harsh­est and most imme­di­ate effects of RBS’s invest­ments. The activists are con­cerned that any con­t­a­m­i­na­tion could mir­ror the hor­rif­ic health impacts, includ­ing rare can­cers, seen in First Nation com­mu­ni­ties who live near Tar Sands extrac­tion zones. Two mem­bers of the First Nation com­mu­ni­ties have been at Cli­mate Camp this week, speak­ing of the destruc­tion of their ter­ri­to­ry and the trag­ic human cost of the Tar Sands mega project.

Jas­mine Thomas, a mem­ber of the frog clan from Saik’uz, which is part of the Car­ri­er Nation, said “Tar Sands is a glob­al phe­nom­e­non. It is the largest indus­tri­al project in the world. It is also the dirt­i­est. Tar Sands pro­duces three times as much CO2 per bar­rel as con­ven­tion­al oil. There’s enough under­ground to push us over the edge into run­away cli­mate change. It should be every­one’s con­cern”.

Daniel Bal­la, one of the activists involved, com­ment­ed “We feel com­pelled to take action against RBS as it is now 84% owned by the UK tax­pay­er. Peo­ple may be unaware that the insti­tu­tion using vast amounts of pub­lic mon­ey is invest­ing in the most destruc­tive car­bon-emit­ting indus­tries in the world. Since the bank was bailed out by the British Gov­ern­ment, 99% of RBS’s financ­ing of the ener­gy sec­tor has been pumped into fos­sil fuels. The future RBS is cur­rent­ly fund­ing will be fur­ther pol­lut­ed,
oil-addict­ed and incur a trag­ic loss of Indige­nous Peo­ples and degra­da­tion of the envi­ron­ment”.

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RBS branch shut down with super­glue and music

Peo­ple opposed to Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s invest­ments in oil tar sands have super-glued them­selves to its Edin­burgh Nichol­son Street branch, sit­u­at­ed at the cen­tre of the City. They were joined by per­form­ers angry at RBS’ spon­sor­ship of the Edin­burgh Fringe.

One par­tic­i­pant, Jen­ny South, said “Cli­mate change kills 400,000 peo­ple every year. RBS invests in oil from Cana­di­an tar sands – the most cli­mate-bust­ing fuel on the plan­et, and one which is dev­as­tat­ing local indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties. We are stand­ing togeth­er with those com­mu­ni­ties to resist this 21st cen­tu­ry atroc­i­ty, to make a pas­sion­ate call for cli­mate jus­tice, and to has­ten a much-need­ed fos­sil fuel-free future.”

The action is one part of a mass day of direct action called by The Camp for Cli­mate Action, which has been camped oppo­site RBS’ glob­al head­quar­ters in Gog­a­r­burn for the last week.

ENDS

For more infor­ma­tion about Cli­mate Camp and RBS’ invest­ment in tar sands vis­it www.climatecamp.org.uk

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Cli­mate Camp art activists cause ‘oil’ spill out­side Cairn Ener­gy

An ‘oil’ spill was caused out­side the offices of Cairn Ener­gy in cen­tral Edin­burgh this morn­ing. Activists tar­get­ed the Scot­tish ener­gy com­pa­ny because it used pub­lic mon­ey from RBS to help it start drilling for oil off the coast of Green­land last month.

The art activists who met at the Cli­mate Camp car­ried a two metre long pig­gy bank brand­ed with the RBS logo filled with 60 litres of an oil like sub­stance towards Cairn Ener­gy’s offices. Trig­gered by a gold­en coin rep­re­sent­ing the pub­lic mon­ey used to bail out the bank, the RBS ‘pig­gy bank’ unleashed its con­tents, believed to be molasses, cov­er­ing the entrances and the street. Activists also sprayed ‘oil’ on the out­side of the build­ing with fire extin­guish­ers.

It was revealed yes­ter­day that Cairn Ener­gy received £117 mil­lion of loans and equi­ty last year from RBS, almost half of which direct­ly enabled the drilling off the Green­land coast to start. This drilling is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­tro­ver­sial because the area has­n’t been exploit­ed for oil before and has only been made pos­si­ble as cli­mate change has caused ice­bergs in this region to melt. The BP Deep­wa­ter oil spill has clear­ly shown the dan­gers of off­shore drilling and it’s argued that Cairn don’t have the expe­ri­ence to deal with acci­dents in the pre­vi­ous­ly pris­tine and extreme­ly envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive Arc­tic. (A spill in the area would be almost impos­si­ble to clean up due to the thick ice.)

Alex Wil­son, one of the activists who under­took the action said:

“RBS does­n’t just spon­sor the Edin­burgh Fringe, it spon­sors the oil com­pa­nies who destroy the lives of hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple around the world through oil spills, war, drought and floods.

“Risky drilling in the Arc­tic by Cairn Ener­gy has only been made pos­si­ble by finan­cial involve­ment by RBS. This is an out­ra­geous use of over a hun­dred mil­lion pounds of pub­lic mon­ey giv­en the eco­nom­ic and cli­mate crises that we are fac­ing.”

The activists say that this is the start of a new focus on tak­ing direct action against the oil indus­try. A mass day of action dubbed ‘The Crude Awak­en­ing’ is already being planned and is set to take place in Octo­ber in Lon­don.

Rachel Stone said:

“We have got the oil indus­try in our sights. We will be tar­get­ing the pumps, air­ports and fac­to­ries that oil flows through. We will be tak­ing direct action to switch off oil because it is at the heart of the cli­mate cri­sis that we are all fac­ing.”

ENDS

For more infor­ma­tion, inter­views or print qual­i­ty pho­tos please call 07040 900 905

Pho­tos: http://tweetphoto.com/40862372

Notes to edi­tors

* Accord­ing to Bloomberg fig­ures released yes­ter­day Cairn Ener­gy received £117 mil­lion in equi­ty and loans.
* For more infor­ma­tion on the Camp for Cli­mate Action see www.climatecamp.org.uk.
* For more infor­ma­tion about the Crude Awak­en­ing – day of action in Octo­ber go to www.crudeawakening.org.uk

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DAY OF MASS ACTION BEGINS WITH CAR PARK BLOCKADE AND OFFICE OCCUPATION

The day of mass action tar­get­ing RBS and the fos­sil fuel indus­try is kick­ing into full swing as two groups of pro­tes­tors stage direct actions at the site of two cli­mate crim­i­nals. Sev­en pro­tes­tors have super­glued them­selves to the exec­u­tive car park of the RBS indus­tri­al estate, while anoth­er group of sev­en have tak­en over the offices of Forth ener­gy in Lei­th.

PROTESTORS RISK ARREST TO DROP BANNERS AND OCCUPY FORTH ENERGY HEAD OFFICE UNTIL DEMANDS ARE MET

Video live stream of the action is avail­able at qik.com/sinbad68

Leith—A group of 7 activists have just tar­get­ed the office of the head­quar­ters of Forth Ener­gy. Two have scaled the roof of the build­ing and have hung ban­ners read­ing ‘BIO MASS HEALTH HAZARD’ and ‘BIO MASS = CLIMATE CHANGE’. Three are inside, and two have chained them­selves to the front of the build­ing. The activists, part of the Cli­mate Camp out­side of RBS head­quar­ters in Edin­burgh, are tar­get­ing Forth Ener­gy because of their plans to build four envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive bio­mass (wood-burn­ing) ener­gy pow­er sta­tions in Scot­land. The office takeover began at 8 am this morn­ing.

Loca­tion: 1 Prince of Wales, Dock, Lei­th, EH6 7DX

Why are envi­ron­men­tal activists risk­ing arrest by tak­ing such dras­tic action? Forth Ener­gy, which labels itself a ‘green’ ener­gy com­pa­ny, is mis­lead­ing­ly push­ing bio­mass as a solu­tion to cli­mate change. In real­i­ty these pow­er sta­tions will increase car­bon emis­sions, pol­lute local air, increase defor­esta­tion and lead to the dis­place­ment of native peo­ples in the glob­al south. Wood burned in the pro­posed Lieth, Grange­mouth, Rosyth Port and Dundee Port sites will be fed pri­mar­i­ly from wood chip freight­ed in from abroad.

Bio­mass pow­er sta­tions are more cli­mate dam­ag­ing than tra­di­tion­al fos­sil fuel pow­er sta­tions because of the destruc­tion of vir­gin wood­lands that they inevitably require. If built these pow­er sta­tions will mean even more wood imports from abroad and even more destruc­tion of rain­forests and old growth forests to be replaced with plan­ta­tions of euca­lyp­tus in places like South Amer­i­ca. For exam­ple, the smoke­stack CO2 emis­sions from a bio­mass pow­er sta­tion are com­mon­ly around 1.5 times greater than those from a coal pow­er sta­tion with the same ener­gy out­put.

In addi­tion to harm­ing the glob­al cli­mate, these pow­er sta­tions will severe­ly impact the health of the com­mu­ni­ties where they are built. All bio­mass burn­ing releas­es sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ties of nitro­gen oxides, sul­phur diox­ide, car­bon monox­ide, volatile organ­ic com­pounds and haz­ardous air pol­lu­tants (HAPs). Such pol­lu­tion increas­es the risks of res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases, heart dis­ease, can­cer and pre­ma­ture mor­tal­i­ty includ­ing infant mor­tal­i­ty and mis­car­riage. Lei­th pow­er sta­tion alone would gen­er­ate nitro­gen oxide and par­tic­u­lates equiv­a­lent to 100,000 more cars while Edin­burgh and Grange­mouth pow­er sta­tions are 200m to the near­est home and Dundee pow­er sta­tion just 100m.

Demand for import­ed wood will also mean native peo­ples and peas­ant farm­ers could be dis­placed from their land and intim­i­dat­ed, killed, injured or enslaved to make room for new mono cul­ture wood plan­ta­tions as rou­tine­ly hap­pens in many devel­op­ing coun­tries.

Despite all the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence to the con­trary, the UK and EU gov­ern­ments class bio­mass pow­er sta­tions as renew­able, green ener­gy. Forth ener­gy will receive £300 mil­lion in sub­si­dies annu­al­ly for their four bio­mass pow­er sta­tions and this is to be fund­ed through an increase on util­i­ty bills.
Mary­la Hart, spokesper­son for the group of Cli­mate Camp activists “Bio­mass is exac­er­bat­ing cli­mate change, destroy­ing pre­cious forests and pulling mon­ey away from real, sus­tain­able solu­tions like ener­gy effi­cien­cy mea­sures, wind, solar and tidal pow­er. Forth Ener­gy can expect grow­ing oppo­si­tion until they scrap the idea of bio­mass alto­geth­er’.

For more infor­ma­tion about bio­mass and the cam­paign against it, please vis­it www.biofuelwatch.org.uk, http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/Biomess.

Notes to edi­tor:
— The four pow­er sta­tions which will pro­duce a total 560MW will burn a total of 5.6 mil­lion tones of wood a year.
— The four pow­er sta­tions would burn approx­i­mate­ly the equiv­a­lent of 2/3 of all the wood the UK cur­rent­ly pro­duces every year.
— The UK’s total demand for wood for pulp, paper and bio­mass is already alto­geth­er unsus­tain­able as the UK relies on net imports for over 80% for its wood and wood prod­ucts.