Category: Transport

7.12.2007
Women have this morn­ing block­ad­ed the Depart­ment for Trans­port pre­vent­ing staff from get­ting to work and car­ry­ing out their poli­cies which are cat­a­pult­ing us towards dan­ger­ous run-away cli­mate change. This action comes in response to the Trans­port Sec­re­tary Ruth Kel­ly con­firm­ing the gov­ern­men­t’s inten­tions to build a third run­way and a sixth ter­mi­nal at Heathrow and co-incides with the open­ing of their first ‘con­sul­ta­tion’ exhi­bi­tion.

This protest is part of a grow­ing direct action move­ment against cli­mate change inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action (1). On Wednes­day over 30 cli­mate activists includ­ing the colum­nist George Mon­biot invad­ed and occu­pied Britain’s biggest ever open-cast coal mine at Ffos-y-fran in South Wales. On 28th Novem­ber, pro­test­ers from cli­mate action group Plane Stu­pid dis­rupt­ed the pro­ceed­ings of the Trans­port Select Com­mit­tee who were hear­ing evi­dence from BAA boss, Steven Nel­son and Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter, Jim Fitz­patrick in protest at the Heathrow expan­sion plans. This week­end thou­sands of peo­ple will march on the streets of Lon­don to protest about cli­mate change. This protest is a call to all to stand up and take action against the gov­ern­ments and cor­po­ra­tions who are fuel­ing cli­mate chaos.

Why the DfT?

Trans­port is the fastest grow­ing source of cli­mate change gas­es in the UK, now account­ing for 26% of emis­sions (2). In a time when we des­per­ate­ly need to reduce emis­sions, the DfT plans to build more roads and more air­ports encour­ag­ing us to dri­ve and fly more. The DfT was tar­get­ted dur­ing the Camp for Cli­mate Action in August, and women have returned today to re-empha­sise the role of our gov­ern­ment in dan­ger­ous trans­port expan­sion plans. Groups will con­tin­ue to return to the DfT until the gov­ern­ment reviews its poli­cies.

Why women?

Women have act­ed today in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the res­i­dents of Sip­son, espe­cial­ly the women who con­tin­ue to cam­paign to pro­tect their homes, despite bul­ly­ing and pres­sure from BAA, and the women all over the world who fight every­day to sur­vive in the face of increas­ing cli­mate chaos.

NO 3rd run­way at Heathrow

Avi­a­tion is already the fastest grow­ing source of UK car­bon diox­ide emis­sions (3), and these emis­sions are released high in the atmos­phere mean­ing we feel their effects imme­di­ate­ly. Heathrow is already the busiest air­port in the world. Build­ing a third run­way will lead to even more flights and more pol­lu­tion. Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty recent­ly con­clud­ed that it will be impos­si­ble to meet the gov­ern­men­t’s own tar­get for a 60 per cent car­bon reduc­tion by 2050 with­out curb­ing avi­a­tion growth (4)

NO M1 Widen­ing

The DfT is build­ing a £5 bil­lion 115 mile long expan­sion of the M1 with an increase of 186,092 tonnes of CO2 every year (5). Is this tak­ing cli­mate change seri­ous­ly? We call for a scrap­ping of the cur­rent and pro­posed schemes up and down the length of the M1.

NO green wash

We call for a reduc­tion in trans­port, and reject dan­ger­ous green wash such as ‘bio­fu­els’ and car­bon off­set­ting. We can­not con­tin­ue with relent­less growth on a finite plan­et. We all need to reduce con­sump­tion, and our car­bon emis­sions. (6)

Jane Wil­son, on the protest says, “The gov­ern­ment does not like to admit it , but we can­not sus­tain our cur­rent lev­els of con­sump­tion or the growth econ­o­my and stop cli­mate change. Its time to stop tin­ker­ing at the edges and wake up to the real­i­ty of the threat & take seri­ous and dras­tic action. We have to cre­ate a soci­ety that is less depen­dent on ener­gy, and that is more local­ly self-suf­fi­cient.”

Notes for Edi­tors:

1 The Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 (www.climatecamp.org.uk) was a large protest and edu­ca­tion­al event at Heathrow this year, high­light­ing the link between the avi­a­tion indus­try and cli­mate change.

2 The Cam­paign for Bet­ter Trans­port (www.bettertransport.org.uk)

3 Cam­paign for Bet­ter Trans­port

4 Cam­paign for Bet­ter Trans­port

5 Bio­fu­el­watch (www.biofuelwatch.org.uk)

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Update and out­come

In the end: Hav­ing shut the DFT for over two hours, eight women who were locked or glued to the doors of the DFT were arrest­ed, held all day in Bel­gravia Police Sta­tion and then released on bail.

They are all charged with offences under SOCPA (seri­ous organ­ised crime and police act). At least one more was sum­moned to appear under SOCPA, although not arrest­ed.

Total amount of women involved was around twen­ty. They’re all ace and of course this is only the begin­ning of women pitch­ing in to stop cli­mate chaos on their own terms.

–

One of these women, hav­ing been released on bail for SOCPA, was rear­rest­ed at the Dec 8 March in Lon­don, for being in the SOCPA zone!!

She was held until Mon­day 10th when the court saw her and threw out the bail-breach on the grounds that she should nev­er had had such bail con­di­tions.

Anoth­er exam­ple of the MET endear­ing them­selves to us then.