Category: London

3 pro­tes­tors who arrived to set up a peace­ful protest against Tesco’s invest­ments into bio­fu­els were man­han­dled by Police in cen­tral Lon­don on Decem­ber 8th who forced them into a met­al pen. Despite, this a peace­ful protest was held for an hour includ­ing a stop by 300 cyclists and 1 min­utes silence for those who are suf­fer­ing or who have died as the result of mas­sive expan­sion of large scale bio­fu­el plan­ta­tions across the South.

The protest had been well adver­tised as a peace­ful protest, part of the cycle ride before the Lon­don Glob­al Cli­mate Action D8 march, that would start at 1030am and last until 1130am. On arriv­ing at 1000 to set up, one pro­tes­tor found that there were 5 police vans wait­ing on the cor­ner of Regent Street and Jermyn Street.

As three pro­tes­tors set up, police insist­ed that they stand with­in a met­al ‘pen’ that had been placed on the pave­ment. The pro­tes­tors refused as the pave­ment was very wide (see pho­tos), there was only going to be a few of them, and they did not intend to obstruct pedes­tri­ans. The police then man­han­dled the pro­tes­tors into the ‘pen’ (see pho­tos).

The 3 pro­tes­tors, Dr Andrew Boswell of bio­fu­el­watch and a Green par­ty coun­cil­lor in Nor­folk, Dr Derek Wall, Prin­ci­ple speak­er of the Green Par­ty and Claire Sims were joined by about 4 oth­er pro­tes­tors who leaflet­ed shop­pers going into Tescos and passers- by.

Around 300 cyclists arrived at 1115am, and Andrew Boswell and Derek Wall spoke to them (Andrew Boswell’s speech is append­ed below). The protest then con­clud­ed peace­ful­ly as it had start­ed.

Tesco describe their bio­fu­els invest­ments on their web­page at:
http://www.tescocorporate.com/biofuels.htm

‘We are already the UK mar­ket leader in bio­fu­els and dur­ing 2007 we aim to dou­ble the pro­por­tion we sell. This means that cus­tomers will be able to buy a 5% bioethanol mix at over 300 petrol sta­tions in the UK. This helps our cus­tomers reduce their emis­sions, as a car dri­ven with our bioethanol mix petrol is respon­si­ble for 4.5% less CO2. We were the UK’s first major retail­er to incor­po­rate bio­fu­el into our stan­dard petrol and diesel, with no price pre­mi­um.

We also use a 50:50 biodiesel mix in our own vehi­cles — the high­est per­cent­age blend used by any major dis­tri­b­u­tion fleet. We have a 25% stake in bio­fu­el sup­pli­er Green­er­gy, which has opened the UK’s largest sin­gle-line biodiesel plant, on the Hum­ber estu­ary, with an annu­al pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty of 100,000 tonnes. Green­er­gy buys rape­seed for con­ver­sion to biodiesel from around 1,500 farm­ers con­tract­ed through Grain­farm­ers, a large agri­cul­tur­al co-oper­a­tive in the UK.’

An arti­cle in Auto indus­try mag­a­zine
http://www.autoindustry.co.uk/news/02–04-07_6
describes how ‘Green­er­gy’s biodiesel plant in north-east Eng­land began com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion on Fri­day 30 March(2007), and should ramp up to full capac­i­ty of 100,000 tonnes/year in a cou­ple of weeks, accord­ing to the com­pa­ny. The plant refines biodiesel from rape­seed oil, palm oil and soya oil. Chief Exec­u­tive Robert Owens told Reuters that the sec­ond phase, which should take capac­i­ty to 200,000 tonnes is on sched­ule to be com­plet­ed in Novem­ber.’

Cyclist pho­tos from Mike Greenville’s web­site at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikegrenville/2096155112/in/set-72157603404734034/
etc. Oth­er pho­tos by Andrew Boswell.

Speech by Andrew Boswell

Thanks for join­ing us here for this protest against Tesco and their invest­ment in the large scale biodiesel indus­try. Thank you com­ing in a zero-car­bon way by ped­al pow­er.

Bio­fu­els are a cli­mate jus­tice issue, a social jus­tice issue, a human jus­tice issue. We are protest­ing here because of Tesco’s cor­po­rate involve­ment in the bio­fu­el indus­try and in par­tic­u­lar­ly Palm Oil for biodiesel.

Palm oil is in a lot of food prod­ucts. In fact it is 1 in 10 of Tescos prod­ucts.

But we are here today to protest against Tesco’s invest­ment in Green­er­gy Bio­fu­els Ltd and their role as a major dis­trib­u­tor of bio­fu­els. Tesco have been mar­ket-lead­ers of bio­fu­els amongst super­mar­kets. Green­er­gy uses palm oil, soya and rape­seed oil in their biodiesel and also sells Brazil­ian sug­ar ethanol, and they thus con­tribute to fur­ther glob­al warm­ing, defor­esta­tion and threat­en the liveli­hoods of many com­mu­ni­ties in the glob­al South.

Let’s just touch on the eco­log­i­cal, social and human issues with bio­fu­els. As the bio­fu­el indus­try expands, we see bio­fu­els cause pover­ty to indige­nous peo­ples. Peo­ple who have lived for gen­er­a­tions on land and in the for­est have their land grabbed. Social and land con­flicts result. There’s abus­es in human rights and labour rights.

When large mono­cul­tures are grown, often the peo­ple remain in vil­lages with­in the large plan­ta­tions of Soya or Palm. When pes­ti­cides are used, the pes­ti­cide plane does not select where to spray – peo­ple are often poi­soned, become ill and some­times die from pes­ti­cide poi­son­ing.

Food secu­ri­ty and sov­er­eign­ty is anoth­er big issue. Glob­al­ly we are see­ing mas­sive amounts of food crops for exam­ple Corn, Wheat, Soya, being sold for fuel. Or land where com­mu­ni­ties grew food becomes tak­en over for grow­ing full crops. A more imme­di­ate prob­lem is that bio­fu­els, along with oth­er caus­es (cli­mate change droughts and increas­ing afflu­ence in Chi­na and India – EXPAND), have forced up world food com­mod­i­ty prices. Wheat has gone up 75% in just the last few months. This impacts poor coun­tries who can­not grow all their food and have to buy on the inter­na­tion­al mar­kets – they can buy less food. These coun­tries often have peo­ple close to star­va­tion who are forced into star­va­tion by these ris­ing prices.

The UN has also high­light­ed that land dis­place­ment could cause up to 60 mil­lion bio­fu­el refugees – 5 mil­lion in Kali­man­tan in Indone­sia alone. Once dis­placed from their tra­di­tion­al lands, peo­ple may try to eak out a less than sub­sis­tence exis­tence on what remains of their home­lands, often hav­ing lost their tra­di­tion­al food sources, or they may migrate in the mega-cities of the glob­al South and become the urban poor.

We will have 1 min­utes silence at the end of this speech for those peo­ple suf­fer­ing now or who have died as a result of the rich world’s mad rush to bio­fu­els.

Mas­sive bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion will also con­tribute to sys­temic eco­log­i­cal prob­lems such as water deple­tion, soil ero­sion and chem­i­cal poi­son­ing of the land by exces­sive fer­til­iz­ers and pes­ti­cides.

But let’s return to Palm Oil.

Defor­esta­tion and peat­land destruc­tion is a mas­sive con­trib­u­tor to glob­al green­house gas emis­sions – about 20% of emis­sions each year. In real­ly badyears like 1997 when there was mas­sive peat­land burn­ing in South East Asia, even more – pos­si­bly 40% in 1997. Palm Oil plan­ta­tions are planned on a mas­sive scale across South East Asia and into pris­tine rain­for­est and peat­lands.

So right now, Indone­sia and Malaysia are set to destroy mil­lions of hectares of rain­for­est and peat­lands for Oil palm plan­ta­tions to feed Euro­pean cars.
And Tescos and Green­er­gy are help­ing them.

The New Sci­en­tist report­ed last month that palm oil biodiesel, pro­duced this way, can pro­duce up to 36 times – yes, 36 times, that is 3600% — more car­bon emis­sions than ordi­nary fos­sil diesel.

We would do all bet­ter to start dri­ving Hum­mers than use this fuel!

In South Amer­i­ca, our demand for bio­fu­els is push­ing up the price of soya and fuelling the destruc­tion of the Ama­zon, on which all our sur­vival depends.
And Tescos and Green­er­gy want to sell us Soya biodiesel too.

We have to also address Gov­ern­ments.
Europe’s bio­fu­el poli­cies are dri­ving defor­esta­tion and the EU wants a 10 fold increase in bio­fu­els by 2020. If we do not stop them, then every­thing else we do as a move­ment will become irrel­e­vant, because we will have no hope of stop­ping run­away cli­mate change.

Such mas­sive bio­fu­el expan­sion is set to fur­ther dam­age the cli­mate, fur­ther risk food sup­plies for many of the world’s most vul­ner­a­ble, cause more strife and vio­lence in land dis­putes, and cre­ate even more bio­fu­el refugees dis­placed from their tra­di­tion­al lands.

We can­not grow all the nec­es­sary crops in the North.
Even bio­fu­els grown on Euro­pean soil with heavy nitro­gen fer­til­iz­er regimes pro­duce nitrous oxide – a green­house gas 300 times more dam­ag­ing than CO2 that dam­ages the cli­mate.
And Tescos and Green­er­gy pro­mote oil seed rape biodiesel too.
A recent study showed that the fer­til­iz­er used in grow­ing it can pro­duce up to 70% more GHG emis­sions that fos­sil diesel.

So Tesco and Green­er­gy are mak­ing us cli­mate loosers, what­ev­er biodiesel they sup­ply – Palm, Soya, or Oilseed rape. We have to stop them, the EU and the our Gov­ern­ment.

The UK Gov­ern­ment is blind­ly fol­low­ing the EU and has man­dat­ed 2.5% bio­fu­els at the pump from next April 15th. This will go down in cli­mate jus­tice his­to­ry as April Bio­fools day. Unlike Apartheid South Africa, no one will be able to boy­cott their part in increas­ing glob­al warm­ing.

We need deep real cuts in our trans­port emis­sions … by trav­el­ling less, by using cars less, by using pub­lic trans­port more, by using cycling and walk­ing more, by mak­ing the car indus­try deliv­er strict fuel effi­cien­cy stan­dards, by trans­port pol­i­cy that builds mass tran­sit sys­tems, by social and plan­ning pol­i­cy that helps peo­ple live clos­er to their work and trav­el less, by pro­duc­ing most of our food local­ly and by reduc­ing imports and the vol­ume of trade.

We must resist this ‘mad rush to bio­fu­els’. Today, we will be hand­ing in a let­ter to Gor­don Brown at 10, Down­ing Street with demands for cli­mate jus­tice.

• The UK and EU gov­ern­ments must aban­don all tar­gets for bio­fu­els
• They must ban all imports of bio­fu­els
• They must imple­ment a mora­to­ri­um on grow­ing large-scale bio­fu­els in the EU

There is only one way to stop bio­fu­els from push­ing us into run­away cli­mate change and that is such a mora­to­ri­um. Over 200 NGOs from North and South have signed such a call to the EU, and this week a large num­ber of NGOs from Africa pub­lished their own African Call for an Agro­fu­el Mora­to­ri­um.

This won’t hap­pen just because we ask the gov­ern­ments for it. We are up against the largest cor­po­rate inter­est alliance ever : big oil, big agribusi­ness, chem­i­cal, biotech, car man­u­fac­tur­ers and ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, with the sup­port of much of the glob­al polit­i­cal elite, includ­ing the top neo­con mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment of the US.

We won’t stop the destruc­tion with­out a large move­ment against agro­fu­els. We don’t want bio­fu­els, AND we don’t want the cli­mate, social and human injus­tice that they will cause. We must suc­ceed for all our oth­er efforts to com­bat cli­mate change to be worth­while.

This is why bio­fu­el­watch is call­ing for a nation­al week of local action against agro­fu­els from 26th Jan­u­ary and would like all of you to con­tribute how­ev­er you can in your area. Not just in Jan­u­ary, but for through­out com­ing years to help us build a grass­roots cam­paign through­out the UK.

Please help us with pub­lic­i­ty and events in your local area. Get one of our leaflets being hand­ed out today and check out our web­site www.biofuelwatch.org.uk.

We must demand that Tesco, and com­pa­nies like them, dis­in­vest from bio­fu­els. They must drop the plans to sell bio­fu­els.

We must resist and force the Gov­ern­ment to lis­ten.

We can defeat Brown’s bio­fu­el­ing bungling dri­ven by his US and EU mas­ters. We can defeat the bio­fu­el mad­ness. Let’s start resist­ing it today.

Let’s now have a min­utes silence for those who are suf­fer­ing for rapid, mas­sive bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion across the Glob­al South, and remem­ber those who have died in pro­tect­ing their land, or from pes­ti­cides, or from star­va­tion, or from pover­ty.

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk