Category: London

Lon­don

Plane Stupid targets Red Bullshit

Envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign group, Plane Stu­pid, has deposit­ed a large mound of manure out­side the south Lon­don HQ of soft drink giant Red Bull.

Red BullshitEnvi­ron­men­tal cam­paign group, Plane Stu­pid, has deposit­ed a large mound of manure out­side the south Lon­don HQ of soft drink giant Red Bull. Three activists, dressed as ‘aveng­ing air host­esses’ in wigs and mini-dress­es the same colour as the company’s logo, crowned the mound with plac­ards read­ing: ‘Red Bull-sh*t’, ‘Red Bull gives you (plane) wings’ and ‘No sec­ond run­way by stealth.’

The move was prompt­ed by the rev­e­la­tion that Red Bull has applied for plan­ning per­mis­sion to build an aero­drome oppo­site Lon­don City Air­port. The com­pa­ny claims that the new con­trol tow­er, run­way and heli­pads would sup­port its annu­al air race on the Riv­er Thames.

But there are grow­ing fears that the com­pa­ny is work­ing with Lon­don City Air­port and Newham Coun­cil to intro­duce a new heli­port and per­ma­nent run­way for pri­vate jets through the back door. ‘We believe Red Bull’s claim is bullsh*t and we’re telling them so,’ said spokes­woman Eliz­a­beth Baines.

‘Lon­don City Air­port is posi­tion­ing itself a major hub for City exec­u­tives,’ Eliz­a­beth con­tin­ued. ‘We sus­pect that Red Bull’s plan­ning appli­ca­tion is an under­hand way of help­ing the air­port to attract pri­vate jet and heli­copter users. That way, they won’t have to deal with fierce oppo­si­tion from peo­ple in East Lon­don who are sick and tired of the noise and pol­lu­tion from the air­port.’

Lon­don City Air­port has been feel­ing the heat recent­ly. Local cam­paign group Fight The Flights (FTF) has launched a High Court bid to stop the air­port from expand­ing its flights vol­ume by 50%. Six local coun­cils have pub­licly sup­port­ed FTF’s bid. The Greater Lon­don Assembly’s Envi­ron­ment Com­mit­tee is also hold­ing a probe into the effects of the expan­sion.

‘We insist that Newham coun­cil turns down this plan­ning appli­ca­tion. Red Bull may have high fly­ing ideas but this time we think their wings should be clipped,’ Elsie added. ‘

For more infor­ma­tion con­tact:
Leo Mur­ray: 07595 506673
Nan­cy Birch: 07506 006597

heavies sent in to rampart at globe road — join us tomorrow at noon.

A bunch of heav­ies broke into the ram­part social cen­tre’s new loca­tion on 105 Globe Road tonight (fri­day, 23 April) at 10:30 pm. There were about 20 of us here watch­ing films. The goons left, but said they want­ed every­one out of build­ing by 2 pm tomor­row.

A bunch of heav­ies broke into the ram­part social cen­tre’s new loca­tion on 105 Globe Road tonight (fri­day, 23 April) at 10:30 pm. There were about 20 of us here watch­ing films. The goons left, but said they want­ed every­one out of build­ing by 2 pm tomor­row.

We invite every­one, and their cam­eras, to come down and join us to wel­come them. Come down at noon.

A bunch of heav­ies broke into the ram­part social cen­tre’s new loca­tion on 105 Globe Road tonight at 10:30 pm. There were about 20 of us here watch­ing films. The goons left, but said they want­ed every­one out of build­ing by 2 pm tomor­row.

We invite every­one, and their cam­eras, to come down and join us to wel­come them. Come down at noon.

rampart@mutualaid.org

PARTY AT THE PUMPS PART 2… THIS TIME IT’S SHELL!

MASS ACTION CALL OUT

When: Sat­ur­day, 15th May
Meet: 1PM at Oxford Cir­cus
Bring: a zone 1–2 tube pass, noise­mak­ers, your friends & fam­i­ly and your
danc­ing shoes
Oxford Cir­cus meet­ing point map: http://tinyurl.com/OCnw-SVmap

MASS ACTION CALL OUT

When: Sat­ur­day, 15th May
Meet: 1PM at Oxford Cir­cus
Bring: a zone 1–2 tube pass, noise­mak­ers, your friends & fam­i­ly and your
danc­ing shoes
Oxford Cir­cus meet­ing point map: http://tinyurl.com/OCnw-SVmap

Shut­ting down a petrol sta­tion for 5 hours on a sun­ny Sat­ur­day after­noon was so much fun we’re going to do it again. Shell’s Hell – in the tar sands and beyond — is next in the fir­ing line.

Par­ty 1 had Sam­ba, twin sound sys­tems, a live Ceilidh band, face-paint­ing, free cakes and 200 peo­ple. Par­ty 2 will be big­ger and bet­ter, with activists join­ing us from Brighton, Oxford and beyond.
See here for a video of Par­ty at the Pumps Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An6-tdxd12M

And for all you cyclists out there, there will be a spe­cial Par­ty at the Pumps Crit­i­cal Mass mak­ing its way to the par­ty. Meet 1PM at Mar­ble Arch (under the arch).

Get ready for sun­shine, music, and danc­ing on the fore­court!

Why tar­get Shell?

Par­ty at the Pumps Part 2 is tak­ing place just three days before Shell’s AGM, where the com­pa­ny will come under fire from share­hold­ers over its plans in the Cana­di­an tar sands; and a week before the Merthyr to Mayo sol­i­dar­i­ty bike ride, which will link two com­mu­ni­ties in Wales and Ire­land resist­ing fos­sil fuel extrac­tion.

Par­ty at the Pumps is in sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties around the world who are resist­ing Shell’s destruc­tion of lives and liveli­hoods, poi­son­ing of lands and waters, and fuelling of cli­mate chaos. In North­ern Cana­da, Shell’s tar sands projects are ignor­ing First Nations treaty rights, caus­ing rare forms of can­cer and killing wildlife (http://www.ienearth.org/tarsands.html). In Ross­port, Ire­land, a dan­ger­ous onshore pipeline and mas­sive refin­ery are trans­form­ing an area of out­stand­ing nat­ur­al beau­ty into an envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter zone with seri­ous pub­lic health and safe­ty impli­ca­tions (http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org). And in Nige­ria, where Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogo­ni col­leagues were hung by the Niger­ian state for cam­paign­ing against Shell’s dev­as­ta­tion of the Niger Delta, resis­tance to Shell and Big Oil con­tin­ues (http://www.remembersarowiwa.com).

These strug­gles may be hap­pen­ing in dis­tant places, but they are dri­ven from Shell HQ. On May 15th, we bring the resis­tance to the heart of Lon­don.

This action is joint­ly called by Lon­don Ris­ing Tide/London Tar Sands Net­work and Cli­mate Camp Lon­don.
http://www.no-tar-sands.org
http://www.risingtide.org.uk
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/london

BP + TAR SANDS = CLIMATE CRIME – Thu 15 Apr 10

Date­line: BP Share­hold­ers Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, ExCel Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Lon­don, Thu 15 Apr 10 – At the apex of the ‘BP Fort­night of Shame’, at the entrance to the BP AGM, cli­mate chaos and human rights activists per­suade BP share­hold­ers to vote for the Fair­Pen­sions anti-Tar-Sands motion.

Tar Sands Global Crime bannerDate­line: BP Share­hold­ers Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, ExCel Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Lon­don, Thu 15 Apr 10 – At the apex of the ‘BP Fort­night of Shame’, at the entrance to the BP AGM, cli­mate chaos and human rights activists per­suade BP share­hold­ers to vote for the Fair­Pen­sions anti-Tar-Sands motion. Mobilised by the UK Tar Sands Net­work, Ris­ing Tide and Cli­mate Camp, we let BP share­hold­ers know, in no uncer­tain terms, that BP + TAR SANDS = CLIMATE CRIME.

Vidz at YouTube
• ‘BP + TAR SANDS = CLIMATE CRIME’ – 1, 2, 3, etc.
» LINKs to fol­low short­ly, once edit­ing and upload­ing is com­plete

TWO WEEKS OF INTENSE COLLECTIVE BP BRAND-TRASHING
Organ­ised in sol­i­dar­i­ty with our indige­nous First Nations sis­ters and broth­ers at the sharp end of the Cana­di­an Tar Sands cli­mate crime atroc­i­ty, the ‘BP Fort­night of Shame’ began on Fos­sil Fools Day, Thu 01 Apr 10, with wide­spread direct action pranks, includ­ing Lon­don Ris­ing Tide deliv­er­ing a ‘Back to Black’ Cor­poate ID rebrand­ing pack­age to BP’s glob­al head­quar­ters in St. James Square – see, eg:
• ‘BP Goes Back to Black’
» video, 2:38 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNLzN3zld7o

Then on Sat 10 Apr 10, the Lon­don direct action com­po­nent of an Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action on Cana­di­an Tar Sands saw 200+ peo­ple mount an “ille­gal” occ­cu­pa­tion of the Shep­herd’s Bush BP petrol sta­tion for a samba-&-ceillidh-powered ‘Par­ty at the Pumps’ – see, eg:
• ‘BP hit by nation­wide protests over plans to Enter the Tar Sands’
» video, 5:14 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An6-tdxd12M
» pix-&-vidz-led action report – http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/4613

The fort­night’s cul­mi­nat­ing protest occured along­side the Colom­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign, demand­ing “BP MUST RECOGNISE ITS RESPONSIBILITY TO CASANARE WORKERS, COMMUNITIES AND THE ENVIRONMENT”, on the west plaza entance to the ExCel Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, as vote-cast­ing investors arrived for the BP share­hold­ers Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing. First Nations Tar Sands cam­paign­ers Clay­ton Thomas-Muller and George Poitras from the Indi­gen­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work of North Amer­i­ca were on hand, giv­ing inter­views to jour­nal­ists and video­g­ra­phers, before going into the BP AGM at for the 11:30 start.
For more on the inter­na­tion­al anti-Tar Sands actions, check out:
• ‘Anti-Tar Sands Protests Gath­er Momen­tum’
» IMC UK Fea­ture arti­cle – http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/449169.html

MAKING A KILLING IN COLOMBIA, AGAIN AND AGAIN
Bruno Fed­eri­co of COSPACC (Cor­po­ración Social para la Asesoría y la Capac­itación Comu­ni­taria) spoke in his native Ital­ian, ably trans­lat­ed by Claire Hall of Espa­cio Bris­tol-Colom­bia, of the mass mur­der of social move­ments opposed to BP’s exploits in Casanare, east­ern Colom­bia, where BP has been oper­at­ing for twen­ty years.

“Dur­ing that time, 2600 peo­ple have been dis­ap­peared, 6500 peo­ple have been killed by para­mil­i­tary groups, right wing armed groups that have insti­tu­tion­al links to the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment.
More recent­ly there has been 100 doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of direct state assas­si­na­tions of civil­ians. Com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers were forced to flee and social organ­i­sa­tions that chal­lenged BP’s prac­tices were exter­mi­nat­ed.
There has also been severe envi­ron­men­tal dam­age caused by the extrac­tion; water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, water deple­tion, land­slides from seis­mic explo­ration. There has been very lit­tle chal­lenge to BP’s envi­ron­men­tal impact due to the com­mu­ni­ties being unable to organ­ise.
How­ev­er com­mu­ni­ties and work­ers are cur­rent­ly mobil­is­ing and have pre­sent­ed a list of demands to BP around five key themes:
— labour issues,
— social invest­ment,
— human rights,
— pub­lic good
— and envi­ron­ment.
More info – http://www.espacio.org.uk/bp/CasanareMission2007Report.pdf
[source: ‘Oil, Vio­lence and Social Move­ments in Colom­bia’ – http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/449208.html ]

HOLDING BP TO ACCOUNT FOR CLIMATE CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES
The UK-based Fair­Pen­sions eth­i­cal invest­ment cam­paign had tabled Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion 25, a delib­er­ate­ly soft­ly word­ed pro­pos­al aimed at gar­ner­ing the widest pos­si­ble sup­port from share­hold­ers, to which Clay­ton, George and oth­er Tar Sands cam­paign­ers spoke:

“Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion
That in order to address our con­cerns for the long term suc­cess of the Com­pa­ny aris­ing from the risks asso­ci­at­ed with the Sun­rise SAGD Project, we as share­hold­ers of the Com­pa­ny direct that the Audit Com­mit­tee or a Risk Com­mit­tee of the Board com­mis­sions and reviews a report set­ting out the assump­tions made by the Com­pa­ny in decid­ing to pro­ceed with the Sun­rise Project regard­ing future car­bon prices, oil price volatil­i­ty, demand for oil, antic­i­pat­ed reg­u­la­tion of green­house gas emis­sions and legal and rep­u­ta­tion­al risks aris­ing from local envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and impair­ment of tra­di­tion­al liveli­hoods. The find­ings of the report and review should be report­ed to investors in the Busi­ness Review sec­tion of the Company’s Annu­al Report pre­sent­ed to the Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing in 2011.”
[source: ‘Oil sands [sic] res­o­lu­tion and response’ – http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/set_branch/set_investors/STAGING/local_assets/downloads/pdf/IC_AGM_oil_sands_resolution.pdf ]

In an attempt to mar­gin­alise any crit­i­cism of the “right” of the BP Board of Direc­tors to com­mit what ever cli­mate crimes they deem to be a prof­itable “invest­ment”, Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion 25 was shunt­ed to the arse-end of the agen­da, to be rushed past at the hur­ry-up so that the share­hold­ers could adjourn for their free lunch, cour­tesy of the BP boss­es.

By mir­a­cles of mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy, we were able to lis­ten in on the pro­ceed­ings of the debate inside the BP AGM on the sound sys­tem (see pic B7 above). So in the debate around the Fair­Pen­sions Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion, we got to hear the impas­sioned pleas from George, Clay­ton and oth­ers to BP to account for the finan­cial and eco­log­i­cal risks, the envi­ron­men­tal dam­age (local and glob­al), the health dam­age to down­stream First Nations com­mu­ni­ties, and the human rights vio­la­tions that BP’s Tar Sands encroach­ments would entail– and to the polite, bland, eva­sive, cor­po­rate green­wash reply sup­plied on behalf of the BP Board. But we did hear from a per­son sup­port­ing the Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion of and arti­cle in Wednes­day’s Finan­cial Times:

“BP has until now not had a pres­ence in the vast resources of Canada’s oil sands, which are sec­ond only to Sau­di Ara­bia in terms of proven reserves. It is now work­ing on the pro­posed $2.4bn (£1.5bn) Sun­rise project, split equal­ly with Canada’s Husky Ener­gy, and expects to make the final invest­ment deci­sion by ear­ly next year.”
[source: ‘BP to press on with Cana­da oil sands plan’, by Ed Crooks and Fiona Har­vey, at FT.com (free reg­is­tra­tion required), on 14 April 2010 23:27 – http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6828b3de-4813–11df-b998-00144feab49a.html ]

So in fact, as the ques­tion­er put in, BP had already POSTPONED their final invest­ment deci­sion for a FOURTH time, until 2011 – I won­der if all the pres­sure piled on them by our ‘BP Fort­night of Shame’ might have influ­enced them so to do?

As I was prepar­ing to leave for home, we got word on an iPhone from Fair­Pen­sions of the vot­ing per­cent­ages on the their Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion:
In favour: 06%
Absen­tions: 09%
Against: 85% (ie: vot­ing as direct­ed to do so by the BP Board of Direc­tors)

WE WILL SHUT THEM DOWN
This is, of course, mere­ly a sin­gle bat­tle in the long-run­ning war over the Tar Sands atroc­i­ty, in a strug­gle for the future life-bear­ing capac­i­ty of our small blue jew­el of a home world, which pits the cli­mate crim­i­nal oil cor­po­ra­tions against peo­ple and plan­et. BP boss­es thought they could get away with apply­ing their cor­po­rate “Silent Run­ning” tac­tic (adopt­ed by anal­o­gy from the mil­i­tary sub­ma­nin­er’s tac­tic of that name) to their desire to mire BP in Tar Sands shit, where­by exec­u­tives would gain big bonus­es if they suceed­ed in keep­ing their cor­po­ra­tion’s cli­mate crim­i­nal activ­i­ties OUT of the pub­lic domain, unscru­ti­nised by jounal­ists, and under every­body’s radar. Thanks to the ini­tia­tive shown by our First Nations sis­ters and broth­ers like Clay­ton and George, plus Susan and Ariel Deranger (see, eg: ‘From Athabas­ca to Copen­hagen’, video, 3:49 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2vfa6qwKgw ), our cam­paign­ing direct action depth charges have blown them to the sur­face for all to see.

So now you know of the sigle most destruc­tive indus­tri­al cli­mate crim­i­nal atoc­i­ty on Earth, we invite you to find out more via the links below, then to make the most impor­tant tran­si­tion of all: from con­cerned cit­i­zen to active cli­mate chaos cam­paign­er. Because the greater our num­ber, the stronger our forces, and the more quick­ly we can score the telling vic­to­ry required for the future of our human civil­i­sa­tion and our pre­cious ecos­phere: SHUT DOWN THE TAR SANDS!

LINKS
» Cli­mate Camp UK – http://www.climatecamp.org.uk
» Colum­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign – http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk
» COSPACC: Cor­po­ración Social para la Asesoría y la Capac­itación Comu­ni­taria – no web­site found
» Espa­cio Bris­tol-Colom­bia – http://www.espacio.org.uk
» Fair­Pen­sions – http://www.fairpensions.org.uk/tarsands/action
» Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work – http://www.ienearth.org/tarsands.html
» Ris­ing Tide UK – http://www.risingtide.org.uk
» Sup­port the Beaver Lake Cree – http://www.co-operativecampaigns.co.uk/toxicfuels/beavercreenation.php
• UK Tar Sands Net­work:
» web­site – http://www.no-tar-sands.org
» blog – http://www.tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com

Foot­notes

More pho­tos at https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/449231.html?c=on#comments

All these pho­tos and video clips are ‘Copy­Left’
This means you are free to copy and dis­trib­ute any of my pho­tos and videos you find here, under the fol­low­ing license:
• Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion-Non­com­mer­cial-Share Alike 3.0 Unport­ed License
» http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
» Accred­i­ta­tion: tim.dalinian.jones@gmail.com

NB: These pix are edit­ed and down­sized ver­sions (up to 800x800px, 0.64Mpx, typ­i­cal­ly 100–900 KB) for onscreen dis­play. If you would like the free, edit­ed, full-sized ver­sions (up to 3072x2304px, 7.1Mpx, typ­i­cal­ly 1–2 MB) for print, poster, plac­ard, ban­ner, etc, please email your request to tim.dalinian.jones [at] gmail.com quot­ing the pic­ture title(s) you’d like.

Upcoming action dates & activist gatherings, 2010 — updated

scroll down for lat­est dates…

8–10 Octo­ber 2010
Earth First! tree plant­i­ng week­end — Treespon­si­bil­i­ty

10 Octo­ber 2010
Glas­gow air­port shut-down action

12 Octo­ber 2010

scroll down for lat­est dates…

8–10 Octo­ber 2010
Earth First! tree plant­i­ng week­end — Treespon­si­bil­i­ty

10 Octo­ber 2010
Glas­gow air­port shut-down action

12 Octo­ber 2010
Glob­al Min­ga for Moth­er Earth

12–16 Octo­ber 2010
Direct Action for Cli­mate Jus­tice, CJA call-out

13 Octo­ber 2010
It’s Ham­mer­time! — Smash EDO

16 Octo­ber 2010
Crude Awak­en­ing — big oil day of action in Lon­don City

23–24 Octo­ber 2010
Stop Nuclear Pow­er Net­work UK Gath­er­ing, Bris­tol

10–12 Decem­ber 2010
Earth First! tree plant­i­ng week­end — Treespon­si­bil­i­ty

=========

Old dates from this cal­en­dar:

2010

15–17 Jan­u­ary 2010
Peace News Win­ter Gath­er­ing, Not­ting­ham

23–26 Jan­u­ary 2010
Main­shill Pre-Evic­tion Gath­er­ing

5–7 Feb­ru­ary 2010
EF! Win­ter Moot, North East Eng­land

12–14 Feb­ru­ary 2010
UK Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Gath­er­ing, Not­ting­ham

19–21 Feb­ru­ary 2010
Camp for Cli­mate Action nation­al ‘where next?’ gath­er­ing, Bris­tol — region­al ones hap­pen­ing over Jan­u­ary & Feb­ru­ary (details here)

26–28 Feb­ru­ary 2010
No Bor­ders Win­ter Gath­er­ing, Not­ting­ham

14 March 2010
UK Tar Sands Cam­paign Gath­er­ing, York

11am till 6pm (Veg­an lunch by dona­tion)
With BP’s AGM just 1 month away, and 2 weeks of actions planned for 1st to 15th April, come and con­nect with oth­er UK-based Tar Sands cam­paign­ers, share ideas and cre­ate actions. We’ll be look­ing at strate­gies and actions for tar­get­ing Shell, BP and the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land — Britain’s Dirty Three­some on Tar Sands invest­ment.

We’re meet­ing in Der­went Col­lege, York Uni­ver­si­ty, room D/056 — from the sta­tion or city cen­tre, take bus num­ber 4 to the very last stop, walk back about 50 meters, and the road entrance to the col­lege is signed on the left. D/056 is accessed from the out­side, beyond the din­ing hall and ponds.

1 April 2010
Fos­sil Fools Day

1–4 April 2010
The Hunt­ing­ton Lane Fos­sil Fools week­end con­ver­gence

1–15 April 2010
BP Fort­night of Shame
includ­ing Lon­don Mass Action

17–18 April 2010
Social Cen­tres in a Time of Cri­sis, Leeds
A week­end of work­shops, dis­cus­sions and social­is­ing for every­one with an inter­est in rad­i­cal autonomous social cen­tres

22–23 April 2010
anti-avi­a­tion 48 hours of stick­er-whack­ing, sub­ver­tis­ing, adbust­ing pan­de­mo­ni­um

23–26 April 2010
Anti-nuclear Camp, Suf­folk — see lat­est EF!AU for details

6–10 May 2010
Activist Tat train­ing week: putting up mar­quees, erect­ing and mend­ing flat pack toi­lets, as well as tech­ni­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal (pow­er, plumb­ing etc) skill­shar­ing

15 May 2010
Par­ty at the Pumps 2

21 May‑5 June 2010
Merthyr to Ross­port sol­i­dar­i­ty bike ride — Cli­mate Chains

5–8 June 2010
Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp Gath­er­ing, Ire­land

11–19 June 2010
World Naked Bike Ride — 11 June: Man­ches­ter, Southamp­ton; 12 June, Cardiff, Edin­burgh, Lon­don; 13 June: Brighton, Bris­tol; 19 June, Sheffield, York

18–21 June 2010
Out­door Skill­share, Scot­land

19 June 2010
Nation­al Gath­er­ing of the Stop Nuclear Pow­er Net­work, Lon­don

25 June-31 August 2010
Eco­topia Bike­tour, from Crit­i­cal Mass, Towards Car Free Cities Con­fer­ence, to the French & Ger­man cli­mate camps and much in between.

6–12 July 2010
Anti-Indus­tri­al Land Defence Action Camp, Cat­alo­nia
Go only if you can speak Cata­lan or Span­ish — http://acampadaderesistencies.blogspot.com

14–22 July 2010
Nordic cli­mate action camp, South­ern Swe­den

22 July‑1 August 2010
French Camp Action Cli­mat, near Le Havre

22 July‑2 August 2010
Swiss cli­mate camp Fr / De

23–27 July 2010
Peace News Sum­mer Camp, Oxford­shire

29 July‑4 August 2010
Bel­gian Cli­mate Camp, near Liege

4–9 August 2010
EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, Der­byshire

12–16 August 2010
Irish Cli­mate Camp, Coun­ty Tyrone

13–17 August 2010
Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru

21–24 August 2010
Cli­mate Camp tar­gets RBS in Edin­burgh: Action Days

21–29 August 2010
Ger­man Kli­macamp, near Erke­lenz

27–30 August 2010
Nation­al Ani­mal Rights Gath­er­ing, near Northamp­ton

27–29 August 2010
Dutch Earth First! Gath­er­ing and CJA meet­ing — Groen Front!

BlueNG Superglued in Protest Against Agrofuels

14.4.10
Last night, Agro­fu­el com­pa­ny Blue NG had their head offices vis­it­ed by activists and all of the doors super­glued shut. This action was in protest at Blue NG’s involve­ment in plans to build an agro­fu­el pow­er plant.

14.4.10
Last night, Agro­fu­el com­pa­ny Blue NG had their head offices vis­it­ed by activists and all of the doors super­glued shut. This action was in protest at Blue NG’s involve­ment in plans to build an agro­fu­el pow­er plant.

Blue NG are up to their necks in recent plans to build bio­fu­el-pow­ered plants in lon­don. Despite their green­wash, it is well doc­u­ment­ed that this plant will con­tribute to glob­al warm­ing, food short­ages, and res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases in the area around it.

With an impor­tant plan­ning meet­ing regard­ing the plant hap­pen­ing today, anti-agro­fu­el activists decid­ed to get their point across by vis­it­ing the com­pa­ny’s head office dur­ing the night, jam­ming all the locks with super­glue, and leav­ing a brief com­mu­nique explain­ing their motives.

Activist Tat training week

There will be a free AT Co-op train­ing week in Not­ting­ham, from Thurs­day 6th of May to Mon­day 10th of May 2010.

There will be a free AT Co-op train­ing week in Not­ting­ham, from Thurs­day 6th of May to Mon­day 10th of May 2010.

This will include putting up mar­quees, erect­ing and mend­ing the flat pack toi­lets and paint­ing them for beau­ty and dura­bil­i­ty, as well as all the tech­ni­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal (pow­er, plumb­ing etc) skill­shar­ing that launched the site crews of the No Bor­ders Camp in Calais, and the Camp for Cli­mate Action in Black­heath in 2009.

We would like to see 50 new peo­ple there. We can cope with 70 if they are
con­sid­er­ate and co-oper­a­tive.

You can come for the whole week or just a cou­ple of days. We’ll share the cost of excel­lent veg­an food, and bring sleep­ing bags for the friend­liest floors in For­est Fields, Not­ting­ham. E‑mail jed2f4[at]yahoo.co.uk if you’re com­ing.

======

Do you have equip­ment? Spaces activist groups can use? Skills you would like to share with oth­ers? ATC are cur­rent­ly doing an audit of grass­roots move­ments to see what mate­ri­als we have and what we have to offer each oth­er. Please take part in our ques­tion­naire, and help us cre­ate a strong net­work where we share skills and mate­ri­als.

The AT Coop­er­a­tive (com­mon­ly known as ‘activist tat col­lec­tive’) is a group of peo­ple who have come togeth­er to pro­vide equip­ment, trans­port and train­ing for grass­roots move­ments. The aims of the group are as fol­lows:

1. To source and pro­vide equip­ment for events to grass­roots cam­paigns at below com­mer­cial rates, by using exist­ing resources and pur­chas­ing new mate­ri­als.

2. To train peo­ple up in essen­tial skills for putting on out­door events.

3. To be a point of con­tact for indi­vid­u­als and groups seek­ing who are hap­py for oth­ers to use their equip­ment or who want to pass on their skills.

In all this, ATC aims to be as pro­fes­sion­al as pos­si­ble, main­tain­ing and stor­ing equip­ment respon­si­bly and ensur­ing that it is returned or replaced. This will reduce waste and free up valu­able time for actu­al cam­paign­ing!

There is a lot more infor­ma­tion on our web­site, so please read on.

http://www.atcoop.org.uk

BP hit by tar sands protests in London, Brighton, Oxford and Cambridge

Sat­ur­day April 10th
BP hit by tar sands protests in Lon­don, Brighton, Oxford and Cam­bridge

Oil com­pa­ny tar­get­ed by nation­wide protests in advance of cru­cial AGM vote

Pro­test­ers demand BP pulls out of “the most destruc­tive project on Earth” — the Cana­di­an tar sands

Sat­ur­day April 10th
BP hit by tar sands protests in Lon­don, Brighton, Oxford and Cam­bridge

Oil com­pa­ny tar­get­ed by nation­wide protests in advance of cru­cial AGM vote

Pro­test­ers demand BP pulls out of “the most destruc­tive project on Earth” — the Cana­di­an tar sands

For pho­tos, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/no-tar-sands and http://www.no-tar-sands.org. Brief reports of the Lon­don and Oxford actions can be seen at http://www.demotix.com/news/297925/bp-party-pumps and http://www.demotix.com/news/298075/bp-tar-sands-protest-oxford.

Today, oil giant BP was struck by mul­ti­ple protests over its con­tro­ver­sial plans to extract oil from the Cana­di­an tar sands (1). Hun­dreds of cli­mate activists in Lon­don, Brighton, Oxford and Cam­bridge (2) tar­get­ed the com­pa­ny with simul­ta­ne­ous demon­stra­tions and street par­ties, includ­ing fore­court inva­sions which closed three BP petrol sta­tions in Lon­don and Brighton (3), (4).

Activists hailed the day as a major suc­cess, stat­ing that the protests would send a strong mes­sage to BP and its investors. Sheila Laugh­lin of the UK Tar Sands Net­work said:

“Today, we did exact­ly what we set out to do – we hit BP’s prof­its by shut­ting down their petrol sta­tions, and we hit their brand by inform­ing thou­sands of peo­ple about their destruc­tive tar sands plans. Near­ly every­one we spoke to was shocked and out­raged by the hor­rif­ic cli­mate, eco­log­i­cal and human impacts of tar sands extrac­tion. If BP want to com­plete­ly alien­ate the UK pub­lic, they’re going about it in exact­ly the right way.”

Mean­while, a share­hold­er res­o­lu­tion ques­tion­ing BP’s role in the tar sands, which is due to be dis­cussed and vot­ed on at their AGM lat­er this week (5), con­tin­ues to attract inter­est from share­hold­ers, with a num­ber of major invest­ment funds stat­ing their sup­port for the anti-tar sands res­o­lu­tion in the last few days (6).

ENDS

Notes to Edi­tors

1) Tar sands are a type of oily soil, which requires large amounts of ener­gy, water, and indus­tri­al pro­cess­ing to extract and trans­form into crude oil. Tar sands extrac­tion in Alber­ta, Cana­da is already the world’s largest indus­tri­al project, requir­ing the removal of vast areas of ancient for­est and con­sum­ing enough nat­ur­al gas per day to heat 3.2 mil­lion Cana­di­an homes. The extrac­tion process emits 3 to 5 times as much car­bon diox­ide as con­ven­tion­al oil drilling, the lakes of tox­ic waste it pro­duces are so large they are vis­i­ble from space, and the pol­lu­tion from the project is harm­ing the health of the Indige­nous peo­ple who live in its shad­ow.
See http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/inventory_report/2006_report/som-sum_eng.cfm and http://www.ienearth.org/cits.html

BP was the only major oil com­pa­ny not to be in the tar sands, until in 2007 it pur­chased a stake in the ‘Sun­rise Project’, an extrac­tion project that could pro­duce 200,000 bar­rels of tar sands oil per day. Ear­li­er this year it announced its poten­tial involve­ment in two oth­er, sim­i­lar devel­op­ments, although a final deci­sion as to whether or not to go ahead with them has yet to be made. Over the last six months, an unprece­dent­ed coali­tion of UK cli­mate activists, NGOs and Indige­nous Cana­di­an activists has come togeth­er to stop BP’s plans.

2) The April 10th day of action was sup­port­ed by the UK Tar Sands Net­work ( http://www.no-tar-sands.org), Ris­ing Tide UK ( http://risingtide.org.uk), the Camp for Cli­mate Action ( http://www.climatecamp.org.uk) and the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work ( http://www.ienearth.org)

3) A brief sum­ma­ry of each of the actions:

Lon­don: Around 150 peo­ple invad­ed BP’s Shepherd’s Bush petrol sta­tion at around 2pm today. They hung ban­ners off the roof, climbed on the pumps and held a ceilidh in the fore­court. The sta­tion remained closed for the rest of the after­noon. There was a heavy police pres­ence, but no arrests.

Oxford: About 25 peo­ple from the Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action group recon­struct­ed the Cana­di­an tar sands on Oxford’s cen­tral shop­ping parade, includ­ing a pipeline and “tox­ic” tail­ings pond com­plete with toy ducks. They used a cycle-pow­ered sound sys­tem to enter­tain and inform thou­sands of shop­pers with music and speech­es, while activists dressed as Cana­da and BP got friend­ly with each oth­er by the pipeline. Around 5,000 anti-BP leaflets were dis­trib­uted, and video mes­sages were col­lect­ed from the pub­lic to send to BP’s AGM.

Brighton: Activists suc­cess­ful­ly invad­ed and shut down two sep­a­rate BP petrol sta­tions. Pho­tos can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/wdmbrightonandhove

Cam­bridge: Local activists from the Cam­bridge Tar Sands Net­work led an uncon­ven­tion­al tour group through the city today. They took in the sights of RBS Branch­es, a Super­drug Loca­tion, and Uni­ver­si­ty Facil­i­ties fund­ed by BP, all of which have links to the Cana­di­an Tar Sands. The event drew the atten­tion of many mem­bers of the pub­lic, who took pho­tos, request­ed more infor­ma­tion, or even joined the tour. The event was hailed as a suc­cess­ful pub­lic expose of Cambridge’s dark tar-sand-stained under­bel­ly.

4) This day of action fell near the end of a full two weeks of action against BP and the tar sands, dubbed the “BP Fort­night of Shame”. Oth­er actions since April 1st have includ­ed:

• 22,000 “rebrand­ed” BP logos were deliv­ered to BP HQ – video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNLzN3zld7o
• A BP petrol sta­tion was block­ad­ed in Ply­mouth, with pro­test­ers chain­ing them­selves to petrol pumps. The sta­tion was closed for an hour and a half, and there were two arrests: http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/Greens-protest-closes-petrol-station/article-1992261-detail/article.html
• A demon­stra­tion by Youth Against Cli­mate Change in St. Albans, tar­get­ing RBS, who are one of BP’s key fun­ders in the tar sands: http://www.stalbansreview.co.uk/news/6646160.St_Albans_demo_targets__RBS/
• RBS cash machines were ren­dered tem­porar­i­ly out of order by Brighton Against Tar Sands (BATS): http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/448446.html
• A walk­ing tree from Alber­ta, Cana­da, turned up at BP HQ (and oth­er key Lon­don loca­tions) to com­plain about tar sands defor­esta­tion – video here: http://vimeo.com/10630598
• “Free mon­ey” stained with oil was giv­en out at a Natwest (owned by RBS) branch in Nor­wich: http://felixinnorwich.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/fossil-fools-day-in-norwich-tar-sand-protest-at-natwest/

5) BP’s Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing will take place at 11.30am on April 15th 2010 at the Excel Cen­tre, Lon­don. Cam­paign­ers will be speak­ing to share­hold­ers out­side the meet­ing, and chal­leng­ing BP inside the meet­ing. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/04/bp-investors-row-tar-sands

6) See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/epic/bpdot/7568809/US-and-Australian-funds-join-BP-rebellion-on-oil-sands.html and http://nachhaltiger.de/index.php/2010/04/10/apg-may-vote-against-bp-shell-on-tar-sands/

UK Tar Sands Net­work
tarsandsinfocus@googlemail.com
http://www.no-tar-sands.org

Earth First! Summer Gathering, 4th — 9th Aug 2010, Derbyshire — location & programme announced/set-up plans & call-out

Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action with­out Com­pro­mise

5 days of work­shops, skill shar­ing and plan­ning action, plus low-impact liv­ing with­out lead­ers.

Meet peo­ple, learn skills, take action.

For lat­est details, see http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk/
Set-up plans & call-out
Loca­tion
Pro­gramme

EF! Summer Gathering poster 2010Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action with­out Com­pro­mise

5 days of work­shops, skill shar­ing and plan­ning action, plus low-impact liv­ing with­out lead­ers.

Meet peo­ple, learn skills, take action.

For lat­est details, see http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk/
Set-up plans & call-out
Loca­tion
Pro­gramme
Want to do some­thing to stop our plan­et from get­ting trashed?

EF! is about direct action to halt the destruc­tion of the Earth. It’s about doing it your­self rather than rely­ing on lead­ers, gov­ern­ments or indus­try. Direct action is at the heart of it, whether you’re stand­ing in front of a bull­doz­er, shut­ting down an open-cast mine or rip­ping up a field of GM crops.

We’re a loose net­work of peo­ple, groups and cam­paigns com­ing togeth­er for eco­log­i­cal direct action.

Join us for 5 days of work­shops, net­work­ing and plan­ning actions, run with­out lead­ers by every­one who comes along. The gath­er­ing is also a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of low-impact eco-liv­ing and non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing.

What’s hap­pen­ing?
Over 80 work­shops, dis­cus­sions, plan­ning, strat­e­gy and ‘where next’ ses­sions:

*Share and learn skills for kick-ass actions on land and water.
Small boat han­dling and blockad­ing using kayaks / Blockad­ing — tripods, lock-ons/ Fences / Climb­ing skills / Action recon­nais­sance / Secu­ri­ty for Activists / Strat­e­gy and tac­tics / How to research cor­po­ra­tions /

*Net­work cur­rent cam­paigns against eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion
Open-cast min­ing / Genet­ic engi­neer­ing / Agro­fu­els / Sav­ing Ice­land / Cli­mate actions / Pipeline resis­tance in Ross­port / Anti-nuclear / Air­port expansion/ Tar Sands

*Think about eco-cen­tric ethics and alter­na­tive ways of organ­is­ing
Deep green ethics / Anar­chist eco­nom­ics / Anar­chist his­to­ry / Rad­i­cal Pol­i­tics / Work­ing with­out leaders/ Con­sen­sus deci­sion-mak­ing

*Prac­ti­cal skills for eco­log­i­cal restora­tion and sus­tain­able liv­ing.
Intro­duc­tion to Ecol­o­gy / Restora­tion ecol­o­gy / Flo­ra and Fau­na iden­ti­fi­ca­tion / Veg­an Cake mak­ing / Pow­er from solar and wind / wild food / Squat­ting / Bike main­te­nance

As well as inter­na­tion­al cam­paigns round-up, net­work­ing and plan­ning for future actions.

Cost and prac­ti­cal things
£20–30 accord­ing to what you can afford.
The gath­er­ing is in Der­byshire, the exact loca­tion will be announced the week before. More info on our web­site.

Find out more and join in!

Email us if you can offer a work­shop, want to help out with the gath­er­ing or if you would like posters and leaflets to dis­trib­ute.

We have now a stack of fresh­ly print­ed posters adver­tis­ing the gath­er­ing. If you’d like to send you some to stick up in your area or to take to events, fes­ti­vals and the like, please email us. Alter­na­tive­ly you can also down­load the files and print your own. They are fair­ly large files! EF! gath­er­ing poster (A4)

We are now look­ing for peo­ple to run work­shops and dis­cus­sions at the gath­er­ing. Please con­tact us if you can offer some­thing. Have a look at our pro­gramme page to see the kind of thing we’re look­ing for.

http://www.earthfirst.org.uk, sum­mer­gath­er­ing _ NOSPAM _ @ _ NOSPAM earthfirst.org.uk

Fossil Fools Day round-up

In the UK —

BP ad cam­paign hoax kicks off the Fort­night of Shame

In the UK —

BP ad cam­paign hoax kicks off the Fort­night of Shame
BP Back to Black logo smallBP Hoax 1BP Hoax 2
BP today had to halt the launch of a mul­ti-mil­lion pound ‘Back to Black’ ad cam­paign. That’s right, BP’s award-win­ning ‘beyond petro­le­um’ brand took a hit today when a, pre­vi­ous­ly unknown, PR agency deliv­ered 22,000 revamped BP logos and a new sign to the company’s head­quar­ters in St. James’ Square.The ad agency mis­in­ter­pret­ed the brief to come up with a new logo that took account of BP’s deci­sion to invest in the Cana­di­an tar sands, and launched the mul­ti-mil­lion pound ‘Back to Black’ cam­paign.

… What day is it? April Fools Day, a day for pranks both sil­ly and seri­ous.
So here’s what real­ly hap­pened:

Pos­ing as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a PR com­pa­ny, cli­mate cam­paign­ers played a Fos­sil Fools Day prank on BP today by deliv­er­ing 22,000 new logos – one for every BP logo in the UK – to the company’s HQ.

The cam­paign­ers, from Lon­don Ris­ing Tide and the UK Tar Sands Net­work, piled box­es of ‘Back to Black’ logos on BP’s doorstep and d‑locked a match­ing sign onto the build­ing in protest at the company’s rever­sal of its deci­sion to stay out of Canada’s con­tro­ver­sial tar sands.

BP’s ‘beyond petro­le­um’ brand was nev­er more than a slick cha­rade and BP’s plans to move into the tar sands reveal the company’s true colours. We vis­it­ed BP today to present a logo that’s more fit­ting for a com­pa­ny about to invest in the most destruc­tive project on the plan­et.

Today marks the start of the BP Tar Sans Fort­night of Shame, which will see actions tak­ing place up and down the coun­try, all with a com­mon mes­sage. Extrac­tion in the Cana­di­an tar sands is fuelling cli­mate chaos and tram­pling indige­nous rights, and we won’t let BP go into the tar sands with­out a fight.

If you want to get involved then come along to the BP Tar Sands: Par­ty at the Pumps on Sat­ur­day 10th April, meet 1pm, Oxford Cir­cus – more info at: www.risingtide.org.uk

tarsandsinfocus@googlemail.com
http://www.tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com

Video

–

Ris­ing Tide dis­rupt Shell in Bris­tol
Bristol Shell petrol station protest
Activists from Bris­tol and Bath Ris­ing Tide vis­it­ed the Shell garage in Muller Road, East­ville at 8.30am yes­ter­day to high­light the repres­sion expe­ri­enced by com­mu­ni­ties in Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land who are try­ing to stop Shell build­ing an onshore high pres­sure pipeline and gas refin­ery.

The com­mu­ni­ty in Erris, Coun­ty Mayo has seen con­tin­ued harass­ment and intim­i­da­tion by Gar­dai and Shell secu­ri­ty, as well as the unlaw­ful arrest and tar­get­ed jail­ing of key cam­paign­ers. In Feb­ru­ary fish­er­man Pat O’Don­nell was sen­tenced to 7 months in jail for con­vic­tions of “breach of the peace” and of “obstruct­ing a Gar­da”. The com­mu­ni­ty has been fight­ing this project for over a decade. Con­struc­tion of the gas refin­ery has result­ed in the pol­lu­tion of the local drink­ing water. Untreat­ed waste chem­i­cals from the refin­ery, includ­ing lead, mer­cury, arsenic and radon would be pumped into Broad­haven Bay despite it being a des­ig­nat­ed Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion. 1

The action was part of Fos­sil Fools Day, a glob­al day of cre­ative action against cor­po­ra­tions who con­tribute to and prof­it from cli­mate change. 2

Rachel Keevil from Ris­ing Tide, chas­ing anoth­er activist with a large sec­tion of pipe, said “Shell are cli­mate crim­i­nals. The gas pipeline in Coun­ty Mayo will dam­age the envi­ron­ment and threat­en the health and liveli­hoods of local peo­ple; all for the prof­it of Shell. It’s a pipeline to dis­as­ter.”

This street the­atre was clear­ly a ridicu­lous rep­re­sen­ta­tion of very seri­ous events but opened up a space for talk­ing with the pub­lic about the issues, many of whom took gen­uine inter­est, some say­ing they were inspired to write to Pat in prison.

Notes
1 http://www.shelltosea.com/node/21
2 http://risingtide.org.uk/node/336

Bris­tol and Bath Ris­ing Tide
bristol@risingtide.org.uk
http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

–

Eon switch on to com­mu­ni­ty renew­ables

PRESS RELEASE 01-04-2010

GREEN ENERGY GIFT FOR MEDWAY
Medway Renewables 2Medway Renewables 1
Ger­man ener­gy giant EON have announced that they are shelv­ing con­tro­ver­sial plans for a mas­sive expan­sion of coal and gas
elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion in the Med­way region. The sur­pris­ing news emerged today as Eon con­trac­tors broke ground at the offices of Med­way Coun­cil on Dock Road, Chatham, and start­ed installing wind tur­bines and solar pan­els.

Eon media rela­tions offi­cer, Joe King announced, “We realise that con­tin­ued invest­ment in fos­sil fuels is a dan­ger­ous dis­trac­tion from the urgent need to devel­op tru­ly sus­tain­able tech­nolo­gies so we’ve aban­doned our dat­ed plans to con­tin­ue burn­ing gas and coal. This wind farm for Med­way coun­cil is just the begin­ning, we’re also offer­ing all our cus­tomers heav­i­ly dis­count­ed shares in future com­mu­ni­ty wind farm schemes, so they’ll actu­al­ly co-own the sys­tems that pro­vide their pow­er”.

In a leaflet passed out to passers by, Eon admit­ted that until now, only a triv­ial amount of their invest­ments had gone into renew­ables but promised that would now change. Acknowl­edg­ing the urgent need to dras­ti­cal­ly cut emis­sions in order to curb glob­al warm­ing and avoid dis­as­trous cli­mat­ic tip­ping points, the com­pa­ny promised they’d aban­don their plans to turn Med­way into a CO2 pump­ing hub, end fur­ther invest­ment into fos­sil fuels, and instead com­mit to tru­ly sus­tain­able ener­gy such as wind and sun.

How­ev­er, a local activist Ben­nie Fac­tor, expressed dis­be­lieve, “This is a joke! All this renew­able ener­gy rhetoric rep­re­sent noth­ing more than cycli­cal green­wash from these ener­gy giants. Sad­ly, the real­i­ty is that they are still com­mit­ted to busi­ness as usu­al, damn­ing us all to con­tin­ued green­house gas emis­sions and cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change.”

–

The FOSSIL FOOLS FARCE … is here!

Ris­ing Tide-Ply­mouth & Art Not Oil-Ply­mouth took the Ply­mouth city cen­tre streets to bring you the big “Fos­sil Fools Farce”, to remind us there are facts and names behind the Cli­mate dra­ma.

Today, on “Fos­sil Fools Day”, we bring you:

*The BIG OIL evil clown – Oil indus­try is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the ‘tax­pay­er sup­port­ed’ glob­al expan­sion into the far reach­es of the plan­et. Unless fur­ther explo­ration to find and exploit more oil and oth­er fos­sil fuels is stopped, and instead accel­er­ate the trans­fer of invest­ment into renew­able ener­gy, the planet’s cli­mate will not be able to with­stand. Apart of mas­sive CO2 emis­sions, the oil indus­try has been respon­si­ble for mas­sive scale defor­esta­tion, local mor­tal dis­eases in oil field areas, eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ters, over­rid­ing indige­nous rights and more human rights vio­la­tions. All in the name of their prof­it.

Cur­rent­ly BP & Shell are invest­ing in the trag­ic TAR SANDS project in Cana­da, which is the dirt­i­est and most expen­sive oil in terms of extrac­tion and emis­sions that will lead us inevitably to run­away Cli­mate Chaos ‑at a time when glob­al oil resources are run­ning out!

*The Crazy AVIATOR – In terms of dam­age to the cli­mate, fly­ing is ten times worse than tak­ing the train. It’s respon­si­ble for 13% of the UK’s impact on the cli­mate and it’s the fastest grow­ing source of emis­sions in this coun­try; between 1990 and 2050, emis­sions from avi­a­tion are set to quadru­ple, which sci­en­tists say could wipe out all oth­er emis­sions sav­ings we make in every oth­er sec­tor! The main cause of this mas­sive growth in the UK is the pro­lif­er­a­tion of short haul routes — often unnec­es­sary domes­tic ones.

In Ply­mouth we have Air South West ( owned by Sut­ton Har­bour group — who also man­age Ply­mouth air­port!) pub­li­cis­ing aggres­sive­ly domes­tic flights between Ply­mouth-Lon­don and Newquay. Their ‘cheap’ price offers don’t tell you what we’ll all have to pay after­wards — the REAL price behind it: a plan­et that will nev­er stop warm­ing up. Besides, trains to Corn­wall aren’t expen­sive! – and it’s a great land­scape.

Fos­sil fuels are the main source of Green­house Gas emis­sions. How­ev­er last Decem­ber in Copen­hagen the politi­cians sold us out to the fos­sil­fools, 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.

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 …

If we’re going to stop cli­mate chaos, the only real solu­tion is to keep fos­sil fuels in the ground.

Join the pos­i­tive char­ac­ters of this dra­ma and change the script of our future!

Join the inspir­ing WIND FAIRY, play­ing and trust­ing clean ener­gy; the com­mit­ted CYCLIST, who claims the future with ped­al pow­er! and
the down to earth PERMACULTURE, who respects the land, grows their own food and sows the seeds into our chance to be healthy and eco­nom­i­cal­ly inde­pen­dent com­mu­ni­ties!

We can be the prob­lem ..or the solu­tion. That is our stance today.

NOTES:

-Join ‘Tran­si­tion-Ply­mouth’ grass­roots local ini­tia­tive for a sus­tain­able Ply­mouth!
Email: plymouthtransition@nature-mail.com or phone: 01752 222152

- Get the facts on Tar Sands: http://www.tarsandswatch.org/

- Stop sup­port­ing uneth­i­cal fos­sil banks like RBS & Bar­clay’s. Switch your­self to an eth­i­cal one: the Co-oper­a­tive or Tri­o­dos, or see:
http://www.vegansociety.com/Lifestyle-And-Nutrition/Finance/Ethical-Banking.aspx

- More alter­na­tives: http://risingtide.org.uk/resources/positivesolutions

Ris­ing Tide-Ply­mouth takes cre­ative non-vio­lent direct action and pro­vides pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion to con­front the root caus­es of Cli­mate
Change.

www.risingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk

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Brighton — RBS out of order over Tar Sands

Roy­al Bank of Scot­land cash­points have fall­en prey to an April fools prank in protest at RBS’s invest­ments in Cana­di­an tar sands. The cash­points were dis­abled by local activist group Brighton Against Tar Sands (BATS) with signs which read ‘Invest­ing in tar sands is OUT OF ORDER’. The signs were fixed to half a dozen cash­points in Brighton and Lewes in the ear­ly hours of Thurs­day (1st April) morn­ing.

The prac­ti­cal joke had a seri­ous mes­sage. Tar sands oil extrac­tion in Alber­ta, Cana­da is the sin­gle largest indus­tri­al CO2 emit­ter on the plan­et and has been respon­si­ble for destroy­ing an area of ancient for­est the size of Eng­land.

It is also home to First Nation tribes who have lived off the land for mil­len­nia. Due to the pol­lu­tion they now have high rates of can­cer and are los­ing their ancient hunt­ing grounds.

BATS spokesper­son Dan Stars said: “RBS is out of order. Tar sands is like­ly to be respon­si­ble for run­away cli­mate change if the exploita­tion con­tin­ues unchecked. It is whol­ly irre­spon­si­ble for the bank to invest in what amounts to tar­maged­don.”
http://http://www.flickr.com/photos/wdm/4327600119

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Back in the USA —

Col­orado activists pulled an elab­o­rate prank on Xcel Ener­gy today, April Fool’s Day, announc­ing that the util­i­ty com­pa­ny pledged to switch to 100 per­cent renew­able elec­tric­i­ty statewide by phas­ing out not just coal plants, but nat­ur­al gas as well. More

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Pro­test­ers boast­ing signs that read “Break America’s Oil Addic­tion” and “Coal is Dirty” crowd around Bank of Amer­i­ca in down­town Asheville shout­ing and chant­i­ng slo­gans like: “What do we want? No Coal! When do we want it? NOW.” More

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An activist was arrest­ed this after­noon at the Water­loo Branch of RBC Bank. Mark Cor­biere was charged with mis­chief for hang­ing a ban­ner read­ing “Boy­cott RBC” and “Stop the Tar Sands” from the roof of the branch, locat­ed in uptown Water­loo. More
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Pep­co announces plan to shift all pow­er facil­i­ties to wind and solar ener­gy, may can­cel planned rate hikes Pep­co noti­fies its cus­tomers that it wish­es “to serve the ener­gy needs of our cus­tomers for gen­er­a­tions to come — Wash­ing­ton DC. More

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Late last night vol­un­teers with Port­land Ris­ing Tide blast­ed the city with over 3,000 fake news­pa­per cov­ers wrap­ping the Willamette Week. With con­tent includ­ing an inter­view with Big­foot about pipeline plans. More

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Philadel­phia envi­ron­men­tal­ists told morn­ing com­muters not to be “fos­sil fooled” by PNC Bank – a bank that calls itself “A Green Bank with Eco-Friend­ly Ser­vice”. PNC Bank has direct and indi­rect con­nec­tions to moun­tain­top removal coal min­ing. More

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Blame Cana­da

In the spir­it of April Fools day, 13 Cities in Cana­da have pulled cre­ative pranks on fos­sil fuel indus­try sup­port­ers, or “Fos­sil Fools,” pleas­ant­ly con­fus­ing secu­ri­ty guards, police, and the gen­er­al pub­lic. More

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It’s not Down Under — New Zealand/

Camp for Cli­mate Action Auck­land has vis­it­ed the offices of OMFi­nan­cial to present them with this year’s Fos­sil Fools day award for help­ing New Zealand’s biggest pol­luters cheat their way out of deal­ing with cli­mate change. More

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Beware what hap­pens in The Nether­lands

Shell Apol­o­gis­es for Human Rights Vio­la­tions in Niger Delta, The Hague. More

Fos­sil Fools Day 2010