Category: East Midlands

East Mid­lands

Bacton, Norfolk. Locals show solidarity with Shell to Sea

3.08.2007
Today a small group of local cam­paign­ers vis­it­ed Shel­l’s pro­cess­ing plant at Bac­ton on the North Nor­folk Coast to demon­strate sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties strug­gling against Shell in Co. Mayo, Eire. Bac­ton is one of the major land­fall loca­tions for North Sea gas in Eng­land and Shel­l’s refin­ery has been includ­ed in the recent SOCPA leg­is­la­tion.

bacton3.08.2007
Today a small group of local cam­paign­ers vis­it­ed Shel­l’s pro­cess­ing plant at Bac­ton on the North Nor­folk Coast to demon­strate sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties strug­gling against Shell in Co. Mayo, Eire. Bac­ton is one of the major land­fall loca­tions for North Sea gas in Eng­land and Shel­l’s refin­ery has been includ­ed in the recent SOCPA leg­is­la­tion.

Camp for Climate Action — all the info you need to get there with the right stuff, take action & do workshops

The Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 — Tues­day 14th August to Tues­day 21st August
Check out Indy­media for news dur­ing the camp — this web­site will not get updat­ed for the dura­tion — site occu­pied: come on down.

Key infor­ma­tion for peo­ple com­ing
Avenge the Plan­et — www.reclaimtheskies.com — infor­ma­tion for action
24 Hours of Mass Action
Location/getting there
Work­shop pro­gramme
Toolk­it for cli­mate action
Injunc­tion: all-clear details & legal brief­ing
Legal advice to read before arrival

Camp for Climate Action heads in ground bannerThe Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 — Tues­day 14th August to Tues­day 21st August
Check out Indy­media for news dur­ing the camp — this web­site will not get updat­ed for the dura­tion — site occu­pied: come on down.

Key infor­ma­tion for peo­ple com­ing
Avenge the Plan­et — www.reclaimtheskies.com — infor­ma­tion for action
24 Hours of Mass Action
Location/getting there
Work­shop pro­gramme
Toolk­it for cli­mate action
Injunc­tion: all-clear details & legal brief­ing
Legal advice to read before arrival
Eight days of low-impact liv­ing, debates, learn­ing skills, and high-impact direct action tack­ling the root caus­es of cli­mate change. Why?

The sci­ence is clear: glob­al emis­sions of car­bon diox­ide must go into rapid decline with­in the next decade. If they don’t, human­i­ty faces a bleak future.

To achieve this in a way that respects glob­al jus­tice means 90% cuts in devel­oped coun­tries like the UK. How will we cut emis­sions and end inequal­i­ty? How will we achieve this in the face of an eco­nom­ic sys­tem intent on expand­ing at any cost, with cor­po­ra­tions steal­ing the lan­guage of change to dis­guise busi­ness as usu­al? Ordi­nary peo­ple will have to join togeth­er to cre­ate real solu­tions and take direct action against the root caus­es of the prob­lem.

This year the Camp for Cli­mate Action will be at Heathrow, the world’s busiest air­port and a big­ger source of CO2 emis­sions than most coun­tries. It’s sheer luna­cy in this time of eco­log­i­cal cri­sis, but the avi­a­tion indus­try are push­ing to almost dou­ble the air­port’s capac­i­ty by increas­ing flights and build­ing a third run­way. The bat­tle to stop them will be one of the most impor­tant envi­ron­men­tal bat­tles in West­ern Europe.

What we do now decides what the future holds. Those who came before us didn’t know the prob­lem, those who come after us will have severe­ly lim­it­ed options. We have both the pow­er and the respon­si­bil­i­ty to make a rad­i­cal­ly bet­ter world.

By unit­ing in col­lec­tive action this sum­mer we can begin to make it hap­pen.

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New­ly pub­lished — leaflet and web­site:
Heathrow Air­port and the indus­tries that make it work

Avenge the Plan­et — encour­ag­ing affin­i­ty group action against the avi­a­tion indus­try
Hot action not hot air

Full details at www.reclaimtheskies.com

Out Now! Toolkit for Climate Action

Just in time for the 2007 Cli­mate Camp — the Toolk­it for Cli­mate Action is now ready. With this toolk­it we hope to inspire you to take action — at home, at school, at work, in your com­mu­ni­ty. The toolk­it has been put togeth­er by the Net­work for Cli­mate Action, which is has grown out of and is asso­ci­at­ed with the Cli­mate Camp.

Network for Climate Action logoJust in time for the 2007 Cli­mate Camp — the Toolk­it for Cli­mate Action is now ready. With this toolk­it we hope to inspire you to take action — at home, at school, at work, in your com­mu­ni­ty. The toolk­it has been put togeth­er by the Net­work for Cli­mate Action, which is has grown out of and is asso­ci­at­ed with the Cli­mate Camp.

The toolk­it con­tains mass­es of use­ful infor­ma­tion relat­ed to cli­mate chaos includ­ing:
*use­ful con­tacts, *action resources, *group work­ing, *out­reach ideas, *images and graph­ics, *press and media, *facts and sci­ence, *pos­i­tive alter­na­tives, *fly­ers and posters, *films and music

You can look at it on the web:

http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk

It’s also avail­able as a pack con­tain­ing a DVD with all the resources on it, print­ed guides on direct action, legal issues, media and pub­lic­i­ty, plus a con­tact list for peo­ple involved in cli­mate action.

Pick up your pack at the Big Green Gath­er­ing or the Cli­mate Camp.

Or if you can’t wait or aren’t going there, we can post one to you.

Dona­tions would be great too!
Con­tact Details
http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk/toolkit/contactus.html

CONTRIBUTE!
We’d like the resource web­site grow and maybe we’ll even put out a sec­ond paper edi­tion. If you are up for help­ing get in touch! Let us know you have any use­ful cli­mate relat­ed resources that should be on it.

FEEDBACK
The pack­’s been put togeth­er by just a few peo­ple and it was lots and lots of work — which means that some of it may not be as great as it could be. It’d be real­ly good to get your com­ments and offers of help to improve it.

http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk

Dutch/Belgian Earth First! gathering 24–26 August 2007

Join the Dutch EF! gath­er­ing and get involved in DIY and ion­for­ma­tive work­shops on the three most exten­sive threats to this plan­et: cli­mate change, one third decrease in bio­di­ver­si­ty and the increas­ing abuse of nat­ur­al resources. We can’t wait any longer: NOW is the time to shrink or we’ll drown!

Join the Dutch EF! gath­er­ing and get involved in DIY and ion­for­ma­tive work­shops on the three most exten­sive threats to this plan­et: cli­mate change, one third decrease in bio­di­ver­si­ty and the increas­ing abuse of nat­ur­al resources. We can’t wait any longer: NOW is the time to shrink or we’ll drown!

From Fri­day evening the 24th until Sun­day evening the 26th of August there will be work­shops, dis­cus­sions, brain­storms and pre­sen­ta­tions about eg the five coal-fired pow­er sta­tions planned to be built in the Nether­lands, cur­rent cam­paigns, cli­mate neu­tral squat­ting, DIY wind­mills, eco­nom­ic shrink and much more!

For more info vis­it www.groenfront.nl or send an email to 2007@groenfront.nl Don’t hes­i­tate to sub­mit your own work­shop sug­ges­tions.

Chil­dren’s facil­i­ties avail­able. Don’t bring dogs or jour­nal­ists.

First Directions to The Camp for Climate Action 2007.….

The camp dates are draw­ing near­er and near­er and we’re all des­per­ate to know where it will be… but we’ll just have to wait a lit­tle longer!

But what we do know is that if you get your­self to Staines rail­way sta­tion in West Lon­don by 10am on Tues­day 14th August, you will be greet­ed by our friend­ly wel­come team and prompt­ly trans­port­ed via a mag­i­cal mys­tery tour, to the camp! (There will also be lifts to the camp lat­er in the day and through­out the week.)

The camp dates are draw­ing near­er and near­er and we’re all des­per­ate to know where it will be… but we’ll just have to wait a lit­tle longer!

But what we do know is that if you get your­self to Staines rail­way sta­tion in West Lon­don by 10am on Tues­day 14th August, you will be greet­ed by our friend­ly wel­come team and prompt­ly trans­port­ed via a mag­i­cal mys­tery tour, to the camp! (There will also be lifts to the camp lat­er in the day and through­out the week.)

Camp for Cli­mate Action comes to Heathrow this sum­mer.

Avi­a­tion is the fastest grow­ing source of green­house gas emis­sions in the UK, and all our efforts to tack­le cli­mate change in oth­er sec­tors are undone by the mas­sive growth in air trav­el.
Hold­ing the camp at Heathrow aims to high­light the luna­cy of the gov­ern­men­t’s air­port expan­sion plans, tar­get indus­try giants prof­i­teer­ing from the cli­mate cri­sis, and raise aware­ness of the need to fly less.
The camp will also sup­port local res­i­dents in their long-term strug­gle against the build­ing of a third run­way and the destruc­tion of their com­mu­ni­ties.

There will be a day of mass direct action aim­ing to dis­rupt the activ­i­ties of the air­port and the avi­a­tion indus­try, but in the inter­ests of pub­lic safe­ty there will be no attempt to block­ade run­ways.

Although the loca­tion is dif­fer­ent, the phi­los­o­phy of the camp remains the same: to be a place for the bur­geon­ing net­work of peo­ple tak­ing rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change around the coun­try to come togeth­er for a week of low-impact liv­ing, edu­ca­tion, debate, net­work­ing, strate­gis­ing, cel­e­bra­tion, and direct action.
The camp will fea­ture over 100 work­shops cov­er­ing top­ics such as cli­mate change impacts, car­bon off­set­ting, bio­fu­els, peak oil, per­ma­cul­ture, prac­ti­cal renew­ables, cam­paign strat­e­gy, skills for direct action, and much more.
Run with­out lead­ers by every­one who comes along, it will be a work­ing eco­log­i­cal vil­lage using renew­able ener­gy, com­post­ing waste and sourc­ing food local­ly.

It all comes down to us, now. We are the last gen­er­a­tion that can do any­thing about cli­mate change. In 20 or 30 years’ time, should we not change our ways, we’ll be com­mit­ted to emis­sions increas­es that will see forests burn, soils decay, oceans rise, and mil­lions of peo­ple die. If we don’t get this issue right, so much else is lost too.

We still have time, but not for long. Make it count.

Why tar­get avi­a­tion?

It is the fastest grow­ing source of CO2 emis­sions.
It has been left out of the first fal­ter­ing frame­works to con­trol emis­sions, eg. the Kyoto Pro­to­col and the Cli­mate Bill.
It is the most dam­ag­ing form of trans­port.
Unlike the oth­er high emit­ting sec­tors (e.g. ener­gy and food pro­duc­tion), there is no alter­na­tive sus­tain­able tech­nol­o­gy.

The only way to reduce emis­sions from avi­a­tion is to reduce the num­ber of flights.
And unlike those oth­er sec­tors, avi­a­tion is not a neces­si­ty.
There is a major air­port expan­sion pro­gramme planned at 21 air­ports, with increas­es in capac­i­ty equiv­a­lent to a new Heathrow every 5 years. This expan­sion pro­gramme locks us into increased emis­sions, and undoes all our oth­er efforts else­where to reduce emis­sions.

Why tar­get Heathrow?

Nowhere in the UK is there a larg­er source of CO2 emis­sions. Most coun­tries emit less green­house gas­es than Heathrow’s planes.

Heathrow is the world’s busiest inter­na­tion­al air­port. It is an icon­ic glob­al sym­bol of avi­a­tion.
Heathrow is the heart of the UK?s avi­a­tion indus­try.
Heathrow is the cen­tral plank of the gov­ern­men­t’s air­port expan­sion plans. Heathrow has a planned third run­way that can be stopped.

The third run­way would bull­doze entire vil­lages and destroy com­mu­ni­ties. There is a big, estab­lished, long-term local cam­paign against Heathrow and BAA that we can join forces with.

There is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to high­light bias in the cor­rupt plan­ning process in favour of big busi­ness and devel­op­ment.

The pres­ence of Har­mondsworth deten­tion cen­tre near­by high­lights the plight of envi­ron­men­tal refugees and the fact that cli­mate change is fun­da­men­tal­ly an issue of social and glob­al injus­tice.

Sumac work-month — get involved!

The Sumac is closed for busi­ness through­out the whole of July to do some long over­due main­te­nance and redec­o­ra­tion!

We are look­ing for any­one and every­one to get involved — whether you are high­ly skilled at DIY or just enthu­si­as­tic!

The Sumac is closed for busi­ness through­out the whole of July to do some long over­due main­te­nance and redec­o­ra­tion!

We are look­ing for any­one and every­one to get involved — whether you are high­ly skilled at DIY or just enthu­si­as­tic!

Hope­ful­ly peo­ple will be work­ing almost every day through­out the month… to find out when peo­ple are like­ly to be there to work with call the cen­tre on 0845 458 9595 or 0115 9608254.

Work-week­ends ‑on the fol­low­ing week­ends there will be even more peo­ple than nor­mal fix­ing and paint­ing, as well as hope­ful­ly some food and booze for vol­un­teers:

July 7–8th main­te­nance jobs
July 21st-22nd Dec­o­ra­tion prepa­ra­tion and main­te­nance
July 27th ‑28th Dec­o­ra­tion

If you are from out of town, we can find you some­where to stay.

Sumac Cen­tre is found at 245 Glad­stone St, For­est Fields Not­ting­ham. For direc­tions look at the web­site.
http://www.sumac.org.uk

Miffed by Miffy

I don’t know how it came about but the Miffy rab­bit char­ac­ter has for a long time been asso­ci­at­ed with the Earth First! move­ment and rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action. But do the cre­ators and copy­right own­ers of the char­ac­ter know or approve of Miffy’s polit­i­cal activ­i­ties?…



Rabbit under fence

EF! summer gathering 2007 logo



Rabbit with wrenchEF! gathering '07 logo (rabbit/fence)

I don’t know how it came about but the Miffy rab­bit char­ac­ter has for a long time been asso­ci­at­ed with the Earth First! move­ment and rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action. But do the cre­ators and copy­right own­ers of the char­ac­ter know or approve of Miffy’s polit­i­cal activ­i­ties?…

Miffy is a pic­ture book char­ac­ter cre­at­ed by Dick Bruna in 1955, after telling his one-year-old son Sierk sto­ries about a rab­bit they had seen on hol­i­day. Miffy now fea­tures in about 30 titles which have been trans­lat­ed into 40 dif­fer­ent lan­guages, sell­ing over 80 mil­lion copies all over the world.

Drawn in a very min­i­mal­ist style, Miffy requires only a few lines and one or two pri­ma­ry col­ors drawn in two dimen­sions to be recog­nis­able. Per­haps this, and the sense of air of inno­cence over mis­chief explains why she become involved in eco­log­i­cal direct action.

It’s unclear exact­ly when exact­ly it began but you can trace her polit­i­cal activ­i­ties, in this coun­try at least, back to the ear­ly 90’s and the anti-roads move­ment. Seen coy­ly hold­ing a span­ner behind her back, one could only imag­ine the trail of mon­key wrench­ing she left behind her in her efforts to defend the fields, wood­land and hedgerows she loved.

By the late nineties, with the roads build­ing pro­gram in retreat, Miffy joined the grow­ing anti GM move­ment, tak­ing up a spade to join the resis­tance. More recent­ly, Miffy joined her fel­low pro­test­ers for a game of golf up in Scot­land dur­ing the 2005 G8 sum­mit and who know, per­haps she also took part in the block­ades in Heili­gen­damm this year.

At over fifty years old you’d think that Miffy would be her own per­son, free to express her polit­i­cal beliefs as she sees fit but sad­ly it appears not. The copy­right own­ers of all Dick Bruna’s char­ac­ter con­stant­ly hunt down unli­censed users of her image in order to defend their prof­itable mer­chan­dis­ing busi­ness.

While Miffy was cre­at­ed for a chil­dren’s book, the design has been cap­i­talised on to sell numer­ous oth­er prod­ucts like clothes, sta­tionery, toys, glass­es, house­hold items etc. A search for Miffy prod­ucts on google brings up over 100,000 pages and no doubt many of the prod­ucts sold are unli­censed copies made in far east­ern sweat shops.

How­ev­er, Mer­cis, the Dutch com­pa­ny that owns the copy­right, are not con­tent to sim­ply take action on those pro­duc­ing ‘fake’ mer­chan­dise, they appears to have stum­bled on Miffy’s rad­i­cal secret life and they are not amused. They are deeply offend­ed, iron­i­cal­ly, by Miffys involve­ment in the cam­paign against patents on life, as depict­ed in stick­er pro­duced many years ago pro­mot­ing the (long dead), www.resistanceisfertile.com web­site — copies of which can now only be found in resource archives of the (no longer main­tained) Totnes Against Genet­ics (ToGG) web­site.

Mer­cis (www.mercis.nl) have unleashed their legal team to threat­en expen­sive legal action against who­ev­er might be held account­able — the inac­tive Totnes Genet­ics Group who’s long unmain­tained web­site sill con­tains a pic­ture of that Miffy stick­er.

While ToGG vol­un­teers try to get long for­got­ten pass­words and access from the inter­net ser­vice provider which hosts the web­site in order to remove the offend­ing image, more impor­tant ques­tions have been raised. Will Miffy tol­er­ate this attack on her free­dom of expres­sion and will her friends in the move­ment stand idly by and watch as her free­dom to protest is tak­en away?

Oth­er sit­ing of Miffy can be found at https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/06/374195.html?c=on#comments

Ramona Africa — ON A MOVE tour of UK

Ramona Africa is tour­ing the UK speak­ing about the incred­i­ble sto­ry of MOVE. MOVE are a large­ly black eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group based in Philadel­phia. They have cam­paigned on envi­ron­men­tal, ani­mal rights and anti-police repres­sion issues for thir­ty years. They have nev­er backed down in the face of overt racist police repres­sion.

More info: www.onamove2007.org.uk

Ramona Africa is tour­ing the UK speak­ing about the incred­i­ble sto­ry of MOVE. MOVE are a large­ly black eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group based in Philadel­phia. They have cam­paigned on envi­ron­men­tal, ani­mal rights and anti-police repres­sion issues for thir­ty years. They have nev­er backed down in the face of overt racist police repres­sion.

More info: www.onamove2007.org.uk


In 1978 nine mem­bers of MOVE were impris­oned for a bla­tant­ly framed mur­der, they are still impris­oned with their first chance of parole in August 2008. In 1985 the city of Philadel­phia sort the ‘final solu­tion’ for the MOVE ‘prob­lem’ by attack­ing their home with 10,000 rounds of ammu­ni­tion, tear gas, water can­nons and final­ly a bomb that burnt 60 homes to the ground. 6 MOVE adults and 5 chil­dren were burned to death. Ramona man­aged to escape with one of the chil­dren.
She was sen­tenced to sev­en years for ‘riot’.

MumiaMumia Abu-Jamal is a MOVE sup­port­er who also has also expe­ri­enced the injus­tice of the sys­tem whilst spend­ing over 26 years on death row for a crime he did not com­mit.

Come and hear about all these events and see the MOVE doc­u­men­tary nar­rat­ed by Howard Zinn.

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June:
Thu 21ST @ 1in12 Brad­ford
Fri 22nd @ The Work­shop Cafe Bar Nor­wich 7pm
Sun 24th @ The Com­mon Place Leeds 6pm
Mon 25th @ The West Indi­an Club Leeds 6.30pm
Wed 27th @ The Cow­ley Club Brighton 7pm
Thu 28th @ The Ram­part Cen­tre Lon­don 7pm
Fri 29th @ Bath Place Leam­ing­ton Spa
Sat 30th @ The Drum Birm­ing­ham 7pm
July:
Sun 1st @ The Star and Shad­ow Cin­e­ma New­cas­tle 7.30pm
Mon 2nd @ The Cube Cin­e­ma Bris­tol 8pm
(Kebele are also turn­ing their reg­u­lar Sun­day Veg­an cafe into a
ben­e­fit for MOVE on Sun­day 1st July)

EXXON PROPOSES BURNING HUMANITY FOR FUEL IF CLIMATE CALAMITY HITS — Yes Men hit

June 14, 2007 — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

EXXON PROPOSES BURNING HUMANITY FOR FUEL IF CLIMATE CALAMITY HITS
Con­fer­ence orga­niz­er fails to have Yes Men arrest­ed

Vivoleum tributeJune 14, 2007 — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

EXXON PROPOSES BURNING HUMANITY FOR FUEL IF CLIMATE CALAMITY HITS
Con­fer­ence orga­niz­er fails to have Yes Men arrest­ed

Text of speech, pho­tos, video: http://www.vivoleum.com/event/
GO-EXPO state­ment: http://newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2007/14/c5086.html
Press con­fer­ence before this event, Fri­day, Cal­gary: http://arusha.org/event/7214
Con­tact: mailto:fuel@theyesmen.org
More links at end of release.

Imposters pos­ing as Exxon­Mo­bil and Nation­al Petro­le­um Coun­cil (NPC) rep­re­sen­ta­tives deliv­ered an out­ra­geous keynote speech to 300 oil­men at GO-EXPO, Canada’s largest oil con­fer­ence, held at Stam­pede Park in Cal­gary, Alber­ta, today.

The speech was billed before­hand by the GO-EXPO orga­niz­ers as the major high­light of this year’s con­fer­ence, which had 20,000 atten­dees. In it, the “NPC rep” was expect­ed to deliv­er the long-await­ed con­clu­sions of a study com­mis­sioned by US Ener­gy Sec­re­tary Samuel Bod­man. The NPC is head­ed by for­mer Exxon­Mo­bil CEO Lee Ray­mond, who is also the chair of the study. (See link at end.)

In the actu­al speech, the “NPC rep” announced that cur­rent U.S. and Cana­di­an ener­gy poli­cies (notably the mas­sive, car­bon-inten­sive exploita­tion of Alber­ta’s oil sands, and the devel­op­ment of liq­uid coal) are increas­ing the chances of huge glob­al calami­ties. But he reas­sured the audi­ence that in the worst case sce­nario, the oil indus­try could “keep fuel flow­ing” by trans­form­ing the bil­lions of peo­ple who die into oil.

“We need some­thing like whales, but infi­nite­ly more abun­dant,” said “NPC rep” “Shep­ard Wolff” (actu­al­ly Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men), before describ­ing the tech­nol­o­gy used to ren­der human flesh into a new Exxon oil prod­uct called Viv­oleum. 3‑D ani­ma­tions of the process brought it to life.

“Viv­oleum works in per­fect syn­er­gy with the con­tin­ued expan­sion of fos­sil fuel pro­duc­tion,” not­ed “Exxon rep” “Flo­ri­an Osen­berg” (Yes Man Mike Bonan­no). “With more fos­sil fuels comes a greater chance of dis­as­ter, but that means more feed­stock for Viv­oleum. Fuel will con­tin­ue to flow for those of us left.”

The oil­men lis­tened to the lec­ture with atten­tion, and then lit “com­mem­o­ra­tive can­dles” sup­pos­ed­ly made of Viv­oleum obtained from the flesh of an “Exxon jan­i­tor” who died as a result of clean­ing up a tox­ic spill. The audi­ence only react­ed when the jan­i­tor, in a video trib­ute, announced that he wished to be trans­formed into can­dles after his death, and all became crys­tal-clear.

At that point, Simon Mel­lor, Com­mer­cial & Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Direc­tor for the com­pa­ny putting on the event, strode up and phys­i­cal­ly forced the Yes Men from the stage. As Mel­lor escort­ed Bonan­no out the door, a dozen jour­nal­ists sur­round­ed Bichlbaum, who, still in char­ac­ter as “Shep­ard Wolff,” explained to them the ratio­nale for Viv­oleum.

“We’ve got to get ready. After all, fos­sil fuel devel­op­ment like that of my com­pa­ny is increas­ing the chances of cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change, which could lead to mas­sive calami­ties, caus­ing migra­tion and con­flicts that would like­ly dis­able the pipelines and oil wells. With­out oil we could no longer pro­duce or trans­port food, and most of human­i­ty would starve. That would be a tragedy, but at least all those bod­ies could be turned into fuel for the rest of us.”

“We’re not talk­ing about killing any­one,” added the “NPC rep.” “We’re talk­ing about using them after nature has done the hard work. After all, 150,000 peo­ple already die from cli­mate-change relat­ed effects every year. That’s only going to go up — maybe way, way up. Will it all go to waste? That would be cru­el.”

Secu­ri­ty guards then dragged Bichlbaum away from the reporters, and he and Bonan­no were detained until Cal­gary Police Ser­vice offi­cers could arrive. The police­men, deter­min­ing that no major infrac­tions had been com­mit­ted, per­mit­ted the Yes Men to leave.

Canada’s oil sands, along with “liq­uid coal,” are key­stones of Bush’s Ener­gy Secu­ri­ty plan. Min­ing the oil sands is one of the dirt­i­est forms of oil pro­duc­tion and has turned Cana­da into one of the world’s worst car­bon emit­ters. The pro­duc­tion of “liq­uid coal” has twice the car­bon foot­print as that of ordi­nary gaso­line. Such tech­nolo­gies increase the like­li­hood of mas­sive cli­mate cat­a­stro­phes that will con­demn to death untold mil­lions of peo­ple, main­ly poor.

“If our idea of ener­gy secu­ri­ty is to increase the chances of cli­mate calami­ty, we have a very fun­ny sense of what secu­ri­ty real­ly is,” Bonan­no said. “While Exxon­Mo­bil con­tin­ues to post record prof­its, they use their mon­ey to per­suade gov­ern­ments to do noth­ing about cli­mate change. This is a crime against human­i­ty.”

“Putting the for­mer Exxon CEO in charge of the NPC, and solic­it­ing his advice on our ener­gy future, is like putting the wolf in charge of the flock,” said “Shep­ard Wolff” (Bichlbaum). “Exxon has done more dam­age to the envi­ron­ment and to our chances of sur­vival than any oth­er com­pa­ny on earth. Why should we let them deter­mine our future?”

About the NPC and Exxon­Mo­bil: About the NPC and Exon Mobil
About the Alber­ta oil sands: About Alber­ta oil sands
About liq­uid coal: Sier­ra club on liq­uid coal

Climate activists glued to doors at airport

16.06.2007

Cli­mate cam­paign­ers this after­noon glued them­selves to the doors of the short-haul East Mid­lands air­port to draw atten­tion to the envi­ron­men­tal impacts of fly­ing as part of a Euro­pean day of action on short-haul flights called by pres­sure group Air­port Watch.

East Midlands Airport glue action 116.06.2007

Cli­mate cam­paign­ers this after­noon glued them­selves to the doors of the short-haul East Mid­lands air­port to draw atten­tion to the envi­ron­men­tal impacts of fly­ing as part of a Euro­pean day of action on short-haul flights called by pres­sure group Air­port Watch.

Two men from cli­mate action group, Plane Stu­pid, have caused dis­rup­tion by super­glu­ing them­selves to the pas­sen­ger entrances to the air­port. Sup­port­ers are there hand­ing out leaflets to air­port cus­tomers encour­ag­ing them not to fly next time, and a ban­ner car­ried by heli­um-filled bal­loons was also been released in the depar­ture lounge bear­ing the slo­gan ‘Let’s fry’.

Last week anoth­er activist from Plane Stu­pid, Pen­ny East­wood, a moth­er of two from York­shire, glued her­self both to the doors of Lastminute.com HQ in Lon­don in protest at the ever grow­ing green­house gas emis­sions from avi­a­tion.

Today’s day of action was called to illus­trate that short-haul flights are unnec­es­sary and unsus­tain­able and that short haul jour­neys can eas­i­ly be tak­en by train or bus which are both over ten times less pol­lut­ing. Demon­stra­tions and protests have been hap­pen­ing through­out the day at air­ports across the UK and Europe, includ­ing Heathrow, Gatwick, Bris­tol, Southamp­ton, Edin­burgh, Aberdeen, Paris, Brus­sels, Ams­ter­dam and oth­ers.

Avi­a­tion is the fastest-grow­ing source of green­house-gas emis­sions world­wide. In the UK, emis­sions from avi­a­tion more than dou­bled in ten years. In May the gov­ern­ment quot­ed the fig­ure of 13% as aviation’s con­tri­bu­tion to UK cli­mate impacts. If you include flights to and from the UK by UK cit­i­zens (the gov­ern­ment excludes the for­mer), the sec­tor now con­tributes about 18.5% of the cli­mate-chang­ing emis­sions for which this coun­try is respon­si­ble.

Not­ting­ham pro­tes­tor, Alex Har­vey, said, “Binge-fly­ing is chok­ing the plan­et. Air­port expan­sion would lock us into increased green­house gas emis­sions and undo all our oth­er efforts to reduce emis­sions. It’s just not an option. Yet that’s exact­ly what is planned for air­ports like East Mid­lands which only serve des­ti­na­tions eas­i­ly reach­able by more sus­tain­able pub­lic trans­port alter­na­tives.’

Last year twen­ty-five activists from Plane Stu­pid block­ad­ed a taxi-run­way at the same air­port.

- ENDS -

nottingham@planestupid.com
http://www.planestupid.com
East Midlands Airport glue leaflet 1
East Midlands Airport glue leaflet 2
For more pho­tos of passers­by, reac­tions etc, see https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/06/373813.html and https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/06/373834.html