Category: Wales

Wales

*Hit the Production of Climate Chaos — get involved* — 13th December call for actions

The cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe has not hap­pened by ran­dom chance and the melt­ing glac­i­er is not its place. Our eco­nom­ic sys­tem, the way it pro­duces goods, and the way they are trans­port­ed and final­ly con­sumed is the root of cli­mate change.

The cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe has not hap­pened by ran­dom chance and the melt­ing glac­i­er is not its place. Our eco­nom­ic sys­tem, the way it pro­duces goods, and the way they are trans­port­ed and final­ly con­sumed is the root of cli­mate change.

We do not believe that this COP will solve the cli­mate cri­sis. The del­e­gates, NGOs and com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives are stuck in an ide­ol­o­gy of nev­er end­ing eco­nom­ic growth and uni­ver­sal mar­ket solu­tions to all human-made prob­lems, such as eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion. Social jus­tice issues are con­se­quent­ly ignored.

On Decem­ber 13th we call for action on this eco­nom­ic sys­tem. We encour­age affin­i­ty groups to take action on tar­gets in Copen­hagen, and abroad. In the Morn­ing of Decem­ber 13th we will also shut down the har­bour of Copen­hagen through a mass action block­ade. The har­bour is a key sym­bol of the glob­al free-mar­ket econ­o­my. Here becomes vis­i­ble what is usu­al­ly hid­den: eco­log­i­cal dete­ri­o­ra­tion, eco­nom­ic and social exploita­tion, and utter injus­tice.

Since the dawn of colo­nial­ism the glob­al ship­ping indus­try has been char­ac­ter­ized by vio­lence. What was once gold pil­laged from the Incas is these days prof­it based on cheap resources and cheap labour — usu­al­ly trans­port­ed by ships. Today, con­tain­er ship­ping is one of the foun­da­tions of cap­i­tal­ism. There are hard­ly any reg­u­la­tions: fuel is not taxed, emis­sions are not sub­ject to con­trol and bor­ders are seem­ing­ly non-exis­tent for con­tain­er ships. At the same time, the nev­er end­ing need for more cheap goods is almost lim­it­less. The ‘free’ glob­al flow of goods con­tin­ues to grow — with ben­e­fits for only the few.

But where­as these flows of goods can enter the EU/ rich world freely, humans can­not. As soon as peo­ple do not have the right pass­port or enough mon­ey when enter­ing rich coun­tries, they are put in pris­ons, deport­ed and deprived of the most basic human rights. And the mil­i­tari­sa­tion of the seas is not just hap­pen­ing around the EU bor­ders. It is also used to pro­tect inter­na­tion­al ship­ping, like in Soma­lia where inter­na­tion­al fish­ing fleets have robbed Soma­li fish­er­men of the fun­da­men­tal ele­ments of their exis­tence.

Final­ly, inter­na­tion­al ship­ping is more than just a method of trans­port for the glob­al econ­o­my. It is in itself a pri­ma­ry cause of cli­mate change. Approx­i­mate­ly 5% of Glob­al Green­house Emis­sions are pro­duced by the ship­ping indus­try. Con­tain­er ship fuel is basi­cal­ly tox­ic waste left over from petrol pro­duc­tion, con­tain­ing high amounts of sul­phur and mer­cury. And like inter­na­tion­al flights, nobody is respon­si­ble for ship­ping indus­try emis­sions under the Kyoto Pro­to­col.

Cli­mate jus­tice and real social change will not come from above. Effec­tive change has to come from every­one — affect­ed, respon­si­ble, and observ­er. True change has to be orga­nized and real­ized by peo­ple all over the world — all peo­ple on the streets and in the fields. We say no to the pow­er of gov­ern­ments, com­pa­nies and so-called non-gov­ern­ment organ­i­sa­tions which are only inter­est­ed in main­tain­ing their pow­er, influ­ence and flows of cap­i­tal.

We will try to stop this mad­ness for a day. Fight­ing for cli­mate jus­tice means chang­ing our eco­nom­ic sys­tem and this needs to hap­pen here in the rich glob­al north, which reaps the most ben­e­fits from the dis­as­ter. For the free flow of peo­ple and ideas, instead of flows of goods to ben­e­fit the few.

Con­tact htp@riseup.net to get involved with plan­ning the action, or come to one of our next meet­ings: Berlin Octo­ber 3–4 & Copen­hagen Octo­ber 18.

Activists stop work at Ffos y Fran coal mine

- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -

Cli­mate activists stop work at Ffos-y-fran coal mine.

Clean Coal Dirty Joke – Keep it in the Ground

Wednes­day 23rd Sep­tem­ber 2009: Cli­mate activists have stopped work at the con­tro­ver­sial Ffoss-y-fran open­cast coalmine near Merthyr Tyd­fil, doing their bit to keep coal in the ground and switch to clean ener­gy to avoid run­away cli­mate change.

- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -

Cli­mate activists stop work at Ffos-y-fran coal mine.

Clean Coal Dirty Joke – Keep it in the Ground

Wednes­day 23rd Sep­tem­ber 2009: Cli­mate activists have stopped work at the con­tro­ver­sial Ffoss-y-fran open­cast coalmine near Merthyr Tyd­fil, doing their bit to keep coal in the ground and switch to clean ener­gy to avoid run­away cli­mate change.

Today’s action is part of a grow­ing move­ment of peo­ple address­ing the root caus­es of cli­mate change. In par­tic­u­lar the end­less pur­suit of eco­nom­ic growth on a finite plan­et is the dri­ving force behind cli­mate change and today’s action shows how effec­tive ordi­nary peo­ple can be, with just two peo­ple bring­ing Wales’ biggest coalmine to a stand­still.

Fol­low­ing the inau­gur­al Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru last month, today’s action draws inter­na­tion­al atten­tion to UK gov­ern­ment hypocrisy on cli­mate change and ensures the peo­ple of Wales play their part in the grow­ing glob­al move­ment of cli­mate action. Experts agree that glob­al­ly emis­sions must peak by 2015 or ear­li­er if we are to avoid run­away cli­mate chaos[i].

“Coal is near­ly all car­bon and must be left in the ground” said Paul Jones, from a net sus­pend­ed above the site’s access road. “Ffos-y-Fran is a big black hole in the cli­mate change poli­cies of our gov­ern­ments, we must switch to clean ener­gy to avoid cli­mate chaos!”

“Action like this is essen­tial to bring home the urgency to politi­cians in the build up to Copen­hagen” Dr. Larch Max­ey, from Swansea Uni­ver­si­ty said, “Cli­mate change is already killing three hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple every year[ii], yet our politi­cians push pol­lut­ing fuels like coal to chase eco­nom­ic growth at any cost. To stop cli­mate chaos we must leave fos­sil fuels in the ground”

Foot­notes

[1]The IPCC Fourth Assess­ment Report http://www.ipcc.ch/ pro­posed 2015 as the point at which emis­sions must peak, although this report is out of date, with the lat­est research indi­cat­ing that emis­sions should peak soon­er and be brought to zero by 2050. See, for exam­ple Pub­lic Inter­est Research Cen­tre “Cli­mate Safe­ty” (2008) http://climatesafety.org/

[1] Kofi Annan’s think-tank, the Glob­al Human­i­tar­i­an Forum, recent­ly cal­cu­lat­ed that 300,000 peo­ple a year are already being killed by cli­mate change, which is set to increase dra­mat­i­cal­ly with increas­ing green­house gas emis­sions in the atmos­phere. See “Human Impact Report: Cli­mate Change – The Anato­my of a Silent Cri­sis” (2009) avail­able at http://www.ghf-geneva.org/OurWork/RaisingAwareness/HumanImpactReport/tabid/180/Default.aspx

Lammas Ecovillage, Wales gets Planning Approval (finally!)

Today the Lam­mas group won plan­ning per­mis­sion for their ecov­il­lage project.

Today the Lam­mas group won plan­ning per­mis­sion for their ecov­il­lage project.

Lam­mas is a new set­tle­ment of 9 eco-small­hold­ings, a camp­site and a com­mu­ni­ty hub build­ing, to start con­struc­tion this autumn. It will be sit­ed on 76 acres of mixed pas­ture and wood­land next to the vil­lage of Gland­wr, Pem­brokeshire. The site is on land cur­rent­ly belong­ing to Pont-y-gafel farm, next to the vil­lage of Gland­wr, North Pem­brokeshire. The site is cur­rent­ly used as farm­land.

After their first appli­ca­tion was turned down for insuf­fi­cient detail, Lam­mas put in an amend­ed appli­ca­tion on March 17th 2008. The first appli­ca­tion had filled an entire wheel­bar­row (the sec­ond con­tain­u­ing 150 illus­tra­tions and 1200 pages of text would have requ­uired 2 bar­rows — so it was sub­mit­ted elec­tron­i­cal­ly!) How­ev­er, their sec­ond appli­ca­tion was again turned down in Sep­tem­ber 2008. Fur­ther frus­tra­tion was expe­ri­enced when the Welsh Assem­bly refused them the right to appeal on the grounds that the appli­ca­tion was invalid on some tech­ni­cal­i­ty. How­ev­er, appeal they did, and the appeal into the refusal of the revised plan­ning appli­ca­tion was heard ear­li­er this sum­mer. The inspec­tor, intrigued and unvon­ven­tion­al­ly, chose not to allow lam­ma’s expert wit­ness­es to present their full cas­es in favour, pre­fer­ring to open the debate about the appli­ca­tion to the whole floor so that all voic­es in favour and against the appli­ca­tion were heard. Insp­tec­tor took a few weeks to reach his deci­sion in con­sid­er­ing the whole appli­ca­tion.

Despite the launch of a pio­neer­ing low-impact pol­i­cy by Pem­brokeshire Coun­ty Coun­cil in 2006 and years of metic­u­lous ground­work, con­scien­cious ded­i­ca­tion and patient delib­er­a­tion, the long exact­ing process sought for approval of the project has tak­en over 2 years since the ini­tial appli­ca­tion was first sub­mit­ted. Empha­sis­ing the imbal­ance of the cur­rent plan­ning sys­tem which does­n’t take account of cli­mate change, Paul Wim­bush of the Lam­mas project even sug­gest­ed that it would have been eas­i­er to have applied for plan­ning per­mis­sion to build a pow­er sta­tion! That it has suc­ceed­ed is due to a tremen­dous dri­ve to suc­ceed born of an inspi­ra­tional vision of low impact/low car­bon liv­ing for the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Lam­mas was con­ceived as the first large-scale low impact project that would work with the plan­ning sys­tem, (ie: to apply for plan­ning per­mis­sion in advance of the con­struc­tion and estab­lish­ment of the project, or in oth­er word, not ret­ro­spec­tive­ly). The Lam­mas Ecov­il­lage will be com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent of all mains ser­vices. All water will be sourced from the site using a com­bi­na­tion of an exist­ing spring for drink­ing water and rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing from rooftops. All elec­tric­i­ty will be pro­duced on site using renew­ables. For­tu­nate­ly there is an exist­ing water tur­bine sys­tem on site which Lam­mas plans to ren­o­vate. All organ­ic waste will be com­post­ed on site using a com­bi­na­tion of com­post toi­lets, wormeries and com­post heaps. Fuel, in the form of cop­piced wil­low and ele­phant grass, will be grown on site.

The project will be man­aged by Lam­mas Low Impact Ini­tia­tives Ltd, a coop­er­a­tive reg­is­tered under the Indus­tri­al and Prov­i­dent Soci­ety Act. A com­pre­hen­sive man­age­ment plan has been com­piled which sets out how the project will be estab­lished and run.

The small­hold­ings will essen­tial­ly be agri­cul­tur­al lease­holds which are con­di­tion­al­ly tied to require­ments as set out in the man­age­ment plan. Thus the objec­tives of the project will be assured in the long term. The require­ments will cov­er issues such as liveli­hood, trans­port, ser­vices and mon­i­tor­ing.

The peo­ple select­ed for the first phase of the project have devel­oped well researched plans for their liveli­hoods. In addi­tion to sourc­ing fuel, water, elec­tric­i­ty and food from the site, the 9 house­holds will also run small-scale farm busi­ness­es pro­duc­ing a wide range of qual­i­ty goods includ­ing hazel­nuts, smoked ham, soft fruit, wood­land crafts, veg­eta­bles and cooked foods. The pro­duce will be mar­ket­ed through a vari­ety of out­lets includ­ing local shops and a Lam­mas mar­ket stall.

Com­mon Land
Some areas of the project will be man­aged in com­mon. There is an area of exist­ing broadleaf wood­land on site which will be con­served for its wildlife val­ue. The exist­ing conifer wood­land will be man­aged and har­vest­ed as a resource for build­ing. There will also be shared graz­ing and fuel crop areas as well as a millpond and vil­lage green.

In hind­sight
As Larch Max­ey has writ­ten: “Lam­mas soft­ly-soft­ly approach, seek­ing to work with the plan­ning sys­tem, has led to huge delays while prospec­tive res­i­dents liv­ing local­ly [have poured] sav­ings into inad­e­quate acco­mo­da­tion. Oppor­tu­ni­ties to har­ness peo­ple’s ener­gy have been lost. Whilst it remains invalu­able to have the Low-Impact Devel­op­ment move­ment broad­ened by projects seek­ing plan­ning per­mis­sion before mov­ing on, the plan­ning sys­tem is ill equipped for the speed and scale of the chal­langes we face. Until it is equipped, peo­ple must con­tin­ue to take direct action towards the sus­tain­abil­i­ty tran­si­tion in every way they can {includ­ing} build­ing low impact lives”.

More Info:
Ref: http://www.lammas.org.uk/ecovillage/news.htm Llamas Village Group

Climate campers stroll to Ffos-y-fran opencast mine

August 15th 2009

Cli­mate campers reclaim Ffos-y-fran

Campers at Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru near Merthyr Tyd­fil have upped the ante and have set off to enter Ffros-y-fran open cast coal mine, just yards from the camp.

Jill Lloyd said,

Ffros-y-fran first invasion from climate campFfros-y-franAugust 15th 2009

Cli­mate campers reclaim Ffos-y-fran

Campers at Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru near Merthyr Tyd­fil have upped the ante and have set off to enter Ffros-y-fran open cast coal mine, just yards from the camp.

Jill Lloyd said,

“We have been talk­ing to local peo­ple at the camp, in the town and on the hous­ing estates. The sto­ry is the same every­where — peo­ple feel aban­doned and used. Their hill­side is being ripped apart, a mas­sive incin­er­a­tor is pro­posed and a third phase of this mon­strous coal mine is now on the hori­zon, with plans to destroy the peace­ful wood­ed hill­side oppo­site.

“This action wasn’t planned at the start of the camp, but we feel it is impor­tant to show our oppo­si­tion to the mine with a ‘cli­mate stroll’ to sym­bol­i­cal­ly reclaim the land for the com­mu­ni­ty

“We have been hear­ing about peo­ple with res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions such as asth­ma which have start­ed or wors­ened since the mine opened, peo­ple unable to put their wash­ing out because it gets black, veg­eta­bles coat­ed in filthy dust.”

Wales could soon be self-suf­fi­cient in clean ener­gy but is still gen­er­at­ing fos­sil fuels for Eng­land. The coal from Ffos y Fran will gen­er­ate the same amount of CO2 per year as Mozam­bique. We have to stop cli­mate change, not make it worse. Coal is near­ly all car­bon and must be left in the ground.

Ang­harad Jones said:

“Reclaim­ing the land is a sym­bol­ic act. Com­ing here has been a real les­son for us, and we feel priv­i­leged to be part of the resis­tance to this mine. We have had talks from sci­en­tists and ecol­o­gists, but the most mem­o­rable lessons came from the local res­i­dents.

His­to­ry has shown that changes can be made by ordi­nary peo­ple doing extra­or­di­nary things. The suf­fragettes and the civ­il rights move­ment took action that was often ille­gal but very nec­es­sary. As our politi­cians fail us, we need deeds and not words.”

Between now and the Copen­hagen cli­mate sum­mit in Decem­ber, activists will take decen­tralised or col­lec­tive action in Wales against the root caus­es of cli­mate change.

Con­tact

* 07780914369 or 07875 868232 for Welsh lan­guage inter­views
* 07789898374 for Eng­lish lan­guage inter­views
* 07973298359 for video footage

Notes for edi­tors

Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru is being held in a green field near Merthyr Tyd­fil between 13 – 16 August. For maps and site infor­ma­tion, go to www.climatecampcymru.org

Access for jour­nal­ists is restrict­ed to the hours of 11am – 1pm on Sat­ur­day, but there is an edge of site media area where film­ing can take place at any time.

—–

Stroll pho­to essay

Get Your Selves Down to Climate Camp

The site was tak­en on Wednesday.Kitchens, com­post loos, wind and solar ener­gy and kids spaces are all up and run­ning; work­shops are go and we’ll soon have a cin­e­ma. The sun’s been shin­ing all day. Friend­ly locals!

Climate Camp Cymru welcome bannerClimate Camp Cymru 'clean coal: dirty joke' bannerThe site was tak­en on Wednesday.Kitchens, com­post loos, wind and solar ener­gy and kids spaces are all up and run­ning; work­shops are go and we’ll soon have a cin­e­ma. The sun’s been shin­ing all day. Friend­ly locals!

We’re rough­ly the same dis­tance from Ffos y Fran, the UK’s largest open-cast coal mine, as the near­est hous­es (36 metres!) — that’s so close the mar­quee pegs are hit­ting coal. Good to know, con­sid­er­ing how much dust and air pol­lu­tion is emit­ted by the mine, the coal from which will gen­er­ate as much CO2 per year as the whole of Mozam­bique.

Come and join us for four days of sus­tain­able liv­ing, edu­ca­tion, move­ment build­ing, and build­ing the capac­i­ty for action.

200+ peo­ple at camp now, with lots still arriv­ing. 2 kitchens run­ning, 2.5 wind tur­bines up (pos­si­ble?) & the wel­come space is all go!

The Res­i­dents Against Ffos-y-fran (RAFF) work­shop was very pop­u­lar & went down well, no sur­pris­es! http://stopffosyfran.co.uk

Fol­low updates at
http://twitter.com/CampCymru09

See: http://www.climatecampcymru.org for direc­tions etc.

Protesters seize site of Wales’ first Climate Camp

12.8.2009
At 7.30am this morn­ing, around 60 pro­test­ers set up the site of Wales’ first Cli­mate Camp on the edge of Merthyr Tyd­fil, next to the con­tro­ver­sial Ffos-y-Fran open­cast coal mine.

Climate Camp Cymru logo12.8.2009
At 7.30am this morn­ing, around 60 pro­test­ers set up the site of Wales’ first Cli­mate Camp on the edge of Merthyr Tyd­fil, next to the con­tro­ver­sial Ffos-y-Fran open­cast coal mine.

The Camp, which runs until 16 August, aims to high­light the hypocrisy in gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy of claim­ing to act on cli­mate change while expand­ing coal min­ing. Coal is the most car­bon-inten­sive fuel, and campers argue it should be left in the ground to avoid cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change.

Campers also aim to build a strong grass­roots move­ment against the caus­es of cli­mate change in Wales. They are invit­ing any­one con­cerned about cli­mate change to come for sev­er­al days of fam­i­ly-friend­ly dis­cus­sions, work­shops and sus­tain­able liv­ing.

The protest site is only 36 metres away from the edge of the mine – the same dis­tance as sev­er­al homes. This prox­im­i­ty is despite con­tin­u­ing local oppo­si­tion to the noise, dust and fumes from the 1,000 acre site. A report fund­ed by the Welsh Assem­bly Gov­ern­ment in June 2007 [1] expressed con­cern about the health effects of air pol­lu­tion and dust par­ti­cles.

Local cam­paign groups such as Res­i­dents Against Ffos-y-Fran (RAFF) have long been ignored by plan­ners and gov­ern­ment.

Camper Jill Lloyd said: “We need work that does not destroy lives or trash the plan­et, and we urgent­ly need green-col­lar jobs for Merthyr. Wales could soon be self-suf­fi­cient in clean ener­gy but if we keep min­ing fos­sil fuels such as coal, we will cause death and hard­ship for mil­lions of peo­ple around the world. To stop dev­as­tat­ing cli­mate change we must leave coal in the ground.”

————————————————————————————————————————

[1] The 2007 Health Impact Report can be found at http://www.stopffosyfran.co.uk/files/Final%20report%20June%2007.pdf

A map to the site is avail­able at www.climatecampcymru.org

EF! summer gathering — exact location, travel info & updated workshop programme announced; coal-blighted communities visit

Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, 18th-24th August 2009, Cum­bria

Nev­er has halt­ing the destruc­tion of our plan­et been so impor­tant… Learn how to make them stop!

The gath­er­ing this year will be held at Seath­waite in the beau­ti­ful Bor­row­dale. The site is right in the heart of the Lake Dis­trict and sur­round­ed by moun­tains, streams and tarns. The near­est train sta­tion is Pen­rith. More detailed direc­tions, pub­lic trans­port, walks & cycle rides to the site

Work­shop pro­gramme in a vari­ety of for­mats

EF!-rabbit-in-canoeEarth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, 18th-24th August 2009, Cum­bria

Nev­er has halt­ing the destruc­tion of our plan­et been so impor­tant… Learn how to make them stop!

The gath­er­ing this year will be held at Seath­waite in the beau­ti­ful Bor­row­dale. The site is right in the heart of the Lake Dis­trict and sur­round­ed by moun­tains, streams and tarns. The near­est train sta­tion is Pen­rith. More detailed direc­tions, pub­lic trans­port, walks & cycle rides to the site

Work­shop pro­gramme in a vari­ety of for­mats

WHO
Earth First! is a net­work of peo­ple and cam­paigns who fight eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion and the forces dri­ving it. We believe in doing it our­selves rather than rely­ing on gov­ern­ments or indus­try. Direct action is at the heart of what we do, whether we’re stand­ing in front of a bull­doz­er, shut­ting down an open­cast mine or rip­ping up a field of GM crops.

Join us for 5 days of work­shops, net­work­ing and plan­ning actions at a low impact eco-liv­ing camp organ­ised non-hier­ar­chi­cal­ly

WHAT
Plan­ning actions and cam­paigns, meet­ing and shar­ing skills with oth­ers who care. Over 80 train­ing work­shops plus games and evening fun:
• Learn skills for direct action. Tree Climb­ing, Ori­en­teer­ing, Secu­ri­ty for activists, Legal brief­ing, Escap­ing pub­lic order sit­u­a­tions, street medics – first aid, self defence, Boat blockad­ing using kayaks, radio pro­ce­dures and rock abseil­ing.
• Net­work your cam­paign against eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion. open­cast min­ing, genet­ic engi­neer­ing, agro­fu­els, dam-build­ing, hunt-sab­bing, cli­mate actions, oil pipeline resis­tance, road stop­ping, anti-whal­ing, squat­ting, rain­for­est pro­tec­tion.
• Learn about ecol­o­gy, eco­cen­tric ethics and alter­na­tives to the cor­po­rate world of exploita­tion.
• Prac­ti­cal skills for eco­log­i­cal restora­tion and sus­tain­able liv­ing, field trips and hands-on work.

YOU
We are all crew! This is your gath­er­ing come pre­pared to help run the camp and con­tribute to the pro­gramme. Con­tact us in advance with ideas for work­shops, help with organ­is­ing the gath­er­ing, come ear­ly to help set­up the site or stay on for a cou­ple of days for take­down.
If you can help get in touch!

BRING
Bring tent and sleep­ing bag. You can either cook food for your­self or for £4 per day chip in with col­lec­tive cook­ing of deli­cious veg­an organ­ic food. There’ll be qui­et sleep­ing areas, toi­lets and run­ning water, a children’s space and spaces for work­shops and info stalls.
Veg­gies will pro­vide veg­an cake and snacks. Chil­dren and young adults wel­come with sub­si­dized meals.

Arrive Tues pm. Work­shops from Wed am until Sun pm.

Loads of cam­paigns are tak­ing to the water in defence of the plan­et, like at Ross­port where Shell are try­ing to lay onshore pipelines and the Great Rebel Raft Regat­ta at last sum­mers cli­mate camp. This sum­mer’s EF! gath­er­ing will be build­ing on these tac­tics with train­ing in water based actions.

An excur­sion to vis­it com­mu­ni­ties in the North East threat­ened by an expan­sion of coal min­ing on Mon­day 24th August. Vis­it beau­ti­ful val­leys and strong spir­it­ed com­mu­ni­ties and make links for ongo­ing resis­tance.

We aim to make the site as acces­si­ble as we can please con­tact us in advance if you have spe­cial needs, ques­tions or con­cerns.

WHERE
The site is near in the Lake Dis­trict, Cum­bria. The near­est train sta­tion is Pen­rith and there is a bus ser­vice to the site, there are car and liv­ing vehi­cle spaces out­side the camp.

Dogs: We are for­tu­nate this year to be able to accom­mo­date well behaved own­ers with dogs on leads but think about whether your dog will feel com­fort­able in work­shops. Please call before­hand so we know num­bers.

Cost: £20 — £30 accord­ing to what you can afford. We are not for prof­it all extra cash goes to help fund next year. Under 14’s free.

For more info con­tact us at :
summergathering@earthfirst.org.uk
www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk

Latest EF! Action Update bursts forth

Car tyres deflate in the night, dig­gers halt­ed in their tracks, build­ings and MPs cov­ered in slime…airports plagued by crazy golf, pic­nics, city gents and hostage-taking…eco-villages and oth­er autonomous spaces sprout, as oth­ers are under threat…tree-sits, banks evict­ed, fake phone-masts and whal­ing ships sunk.…it must be time for anoth­er Earth First! Action Update, bring­ing you a con­cen­trat­ed quar­ter­ly blast of inspi­ra­tion and con­tacts to get out there and take direct action against the bas­tards threat­en­ing this plan­et and its inhab­i­tants.

News from the front-lines — per­ma­nent protest camps old and new, and tem­po­rary gath­er­ings in a field near you, all the dates and info you need for a sum­mer of blis­ter­ing action and tor­ren­tial out­pour­ings!

Suc­cess­es here, across the pond and round the very oth­er side of the world.

People stop logging trucksCar tyres deflate in the night, dig­gers halt­ed in their tracks, build­ings and MPs cov­ered in slime…airports plagued by crazy golf, pic­nics, city gents and hostage-taking…eco-villages and oth­er autonomous spaces sprout, as oth­ers are under threat…tree-sits, banks evict­ed, fake phone-masts and whal­ing ships sunk.…it must be time for anoth­er Earth First! Action Update, bring­ing you a con­cen­trat­ed quar­ter­ly blast of inspi­ra­tion and con­tacts to get out there and take direct action against the bas­tards threat­en­ing this plan­et and its inhab­i­tants.

News from the front-lines — per­ma­nent protest camps old and new, and tem­po­rary gath­er­ings in a field near you, all the dates and info you need for a sum­mer of blis­ter­ing action and tor­ren­tial out­pour­ings!

Suc­cess­es here, across the pond and round the very oth­er side of the world.

A report back from the Coal Car­a­van, plus info about the com­mu­ni­ties along its route.

Court news — what hap­pened after pro­test­ers planned to shut a coal-fired pow­er plant, and climbed atop a train, plus handy Secu­ri­ty Tips for Going on Actions.

Leav­ing it All in the Ground — news of glob­al fights against the min­ing of gold, cop­per, baux­ite and alu­mini­um — blockad­ing, torch­ing and night-time pix­ieing.

A View from the Trees — a sto­ry from our eco-cen­tric cousins. And indige­nous Peru­vians fight on against the whole­sale onslaught on our world.

And a round-up of your favourite pub­lic order sit­u­a­tions — G20, SmashE­DO and Athen­ian rub­bish dumps!

Read, down­load and print it here, sub­scribe so you get it direct to your door, or look out for it at a cli­mate camp near you.

If you want to be list­ed or get a bunch of them to dis­trib­ute, please get in touch.

Share your inspi­ra­tional news at EF! Action Reports, and it’ll find it’s way into your very own print­ed EF!AU, in good old black and white print.

Why climate camping & other protest? Ecological debt day for your city…coming soon!

Eco­log­i­cal debt: no way back from bank­rupt

3 planetsEco­log­i­cal debt: no way back from bank­rupt

While most gov­ern­ments’ eyes are on the bank­ing cri­sis, a much big­ger issue — the envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis — is pass­ing them by, says Andrew Simms. In the Green Room this week, he argues that fail­ure to organ­ise a bailout for eco­log­i­cal debt will have dire con­se­quences for human­i­ty.

“Nature Does­n’t Do Bailouts!” said the ban­ner strung across Bish­ops­gate in the City of Lon­don.

Civil­i­sa­tion’s biggest prob­lem was out­lined in five words over the entrance to the small, par­al­lel real­i­ty of the peace­ful cli­mate camp. Their tents bloomed on the morn­ing of 1 April faster than daisies in spring, and faster than the police could stop them.

Across the city, where the world’s most pow­er­ful peo­ple met simul­ta­ne­ous­ly at the G20 sum­mit, the same prob­lem was almost com­plete­ly ignored, mer­it­ing only a sin­gle, after­thought men­tion in a long com­mu­nique.

World lead­ers dropped every­thing to tack­le the finan­cial debt cri­sis that spilled from col­laps­ing banks.

Gripped by a pan­ic so com­plete, there was no pol­i­cy dog­ma too deeply engrained to be dug out and instant­ly dis­card­ed. We went from tri­umphant, finance-dri­ven free mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism, to bank nation­al­i­sa­tion and mov­ing the dec­i­mal point on indus­try bailouts quick­er than you can say sub-prime mort­gage.

But the eco­log­i­cal debt cri­sis, which threat­ens much more than pen­sion funds and car man­u­fac­tur­ers, is left to lan­guish.

It is like hav­ing a Com­mis­sion on House­hold Ren­o­va­tion ago­nise over which expen­sive design­er wall­pa­per to use for paper­ing over plas­ter cracks whilst ignor­ing the fact that the walls them­selves are col­laps­ing on sub­sid­ing foun­da­tions.

Beyond our means

Each year, human­i­ty’s eco­log­i­cal over­draft gets larg­er, and the day that the world as a whole goes into eco­log­i­cal debt — con­sum­ing more resources and pro­duc­ing more waste than the bios­phere can pro­vide and absorb — moves ever ear­li­er in the year.

The same pic­ture emerges for indi­vid­ual coun­tries like the UK — which now starts liv­ing beyond its own envi­ron­men­tal means in mid-April.

Because the glob­al econ­o­my is still over­whelm­ing­ly fos­sil-fuel depen­dent, the accu­mu­la­tion of green­house gas­es and the prog­no­sis for glob­al warm­ing remain our best indi­ca­tors of “over­shoot”.

World famous French free-climber Alain Robert, known as Spi­der­man, climbed the Lloyds of Lon­don build­ing for the OneHundredMonths.org cam­paign as the G20 met, to demon­strate how time is slip­ping away.

Using thresh­olds for risk iden­ti­fied by the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC), on cur­rent trends, in only 92 months — less than eight years — we will move into a new, more per­ilous phase of warm­ing.

It will then no longer be “like­ly” that we can pre­vent some aspects of run­away cli­mate change. We will begin to lose the cli­mat­ic con­di­tions which, as Nasa sci­en­tist James Hansen points out, were those under which civil­i­sa­tion devel­oped.

Small div­i­dend

As “nature does­n’t do bailouts”, how have our politi­cians fared who ripped open the nation’s wal­let to save the banks?

Not good.

Accord­ing to the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF), the UK spent a stag­ger­ing 20% of its GDP in sup­port of the finan­cial sec­tor.

Yet the amount of mon­ey that was new and addi­tion­al, announced in the “green stim­u­lus” pack­age of the Trea­sury’s Pre-Bud­get Report, added-up to a van­ish­ing­ly small 0.0083% of GDP.

Glob­al­ly, the green shade of eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus mea­sures has var­ied enor­mous­ly. For exam­ple, the shares of spend­ing con­sid­ered in research by the bank HSBC to be envi­ron­men­tal were:

* the US — 12%
* Ger­many — 13%
* South Korea — 80%

The inter­na­tion­al aver­age was around 15%. HSBC found the UK planned to invest less than 7% of its stim­u­lus pack­age (dif­fer­ent from the bank bailout) in green mea­sures.

Com­par­ing the IMF and HSBC fig­ures actu­al­ly reveals an inverse rela­tion­ship — pro­por­tion­ate­ly, those who spent more on sup­port for finance had weak­er green spend­ing.

So here we are, faced with the loss of an envi­ron­ment con­ducive to human civil­i­sa­tion, and we find gov­ern­ments pros­trate before bare­ly repen­tant banks, with their backs to a far worse eco­log­i­cal cri­sis.

Extreme mar­kets

On top of low and incon­sis­tent fund­ing for renew­able ener­gy, the shift to a low car­bon econ­o­my is being fur­ther frus­trat­ed by anoth­er mar­ket fail­ure in the trade for car­bon seen, for exam­ple, in the EU’s Emis­sions Trad­ing Scheme.

Bad mar­ket design, fee­ble car­bon reduc­tion tar­gets and the reces­sion have all con­spired to dri­ve down the cost of car­bon emis­sion per­mits, wreck­ing eco­nom­ic incen­tives to grow renew­able ener­gy.

Worse still, the dif­fi­cul­ty of account­ing to ensure that per­mits rep­re­sent real emis­sions has led both ener­gy com­pa­nies and envi­ron­men­tal­ists to warn of an emerg­ing “sub-prime car­bon mar­ket”.

Rely­ing on mar­ket mech­a­nisms is attrac­tive to gov­ern­ments because it means they have less to do them­selves. But they will fail if car­bon mar­kets are just hot air.

There seems to be a hard-wired link between mem­o­ry fail­ure and mar­ket fail­ure.

As the his­to­ri­an E J Hob­s­bawm observed in The Age of Extremes: “Those of us who lived through the years of the Great Slump still find it almost impos­si­ble to under­stand how the ortho­dox­ies of the pure free mar­ket, then so obvi­ous­ly dis­cred­it­ed, once again came to pre­side over a glob­al peri­od of depres­sion in the late 1980s and 1990s”.

Per­haps the great­est fail­ure is one of imag­i­na­tion.

Some peo­ple alive today lived through those past reces­sions and depres­sions. They know they can be nasty and need avert­ing.

But the last time the Earth­’s cli­mate real­ly flipped was at the end of the last Ice Age, more than 10,000 years ago. No one can remem­ber what that felt like.

Lessons of his­to­ry

Look­ing for­ward, the IPC­C’s worst case sce­nario warns of a max­i­mum 6C rise over the next cen­tu­ry.

Look­ing back, how­ev­er, indi­cates that an unsta­ble cli­mate sys­tem holds worse hor­rors.

Work by the sci­en­tist Richard Alley on abrupt cli­mate change indi­cates the plan­et has pre­vi­ous­ly expe­ri­enced a 10C tem­per­a­ture shift in only a decade, and pos­si­bly “as quick­ly as in a sin­gle year”.

And, around the turn of the last Ice Age, there were “local warm­ings as large as 16C”.

Imag­ine that every day of your life you have tak­en a walk in the woods and the worse thing to hap­pen was an acorn or twig falling on your head.

Then, one day, you stroll out, look up and there is a threat approach­ing so large, unex­pect­ed and out­side your expe­ri­ence that can’t quite believe it, like a mas­sive goth­ic cathe­dral falling from the sky.

In tack­ling cli­mate change we need urgent­ly to recal­i­brate our respons­es, just as gov­ern­ments had to when they res­cued the reck­less finance sec­tor.

Then offi­cials had to ask them­selves “is what we are doing right, and is it enough?”

They must ask them­selves the same ques­tions on the eco­log­i­cal debt cri­sis and cli­mate change.

The dif­fer­ence is, that if they fail this time, not even a long-term busi­ness cycle will come to our res­cue. If the cli­mate shifts to a hot­ter state not con­vivial to human soci­ety, it could be tens of thou­sands of years, or nev­er, before it shifts back.

Remem­ber; nature does­n’t do bailouts.

Andrew Simms is pol­i­cy direc­tor of the New Eco­nom­ics Foun­da­tion (nef), and author of Eco­log­i­cal Debt: Glob­al Warm­ing and the Wealth of Nations

——

One Plan­et Liv­ing http://www.oneplanetliving.org

Your city’s Eco­log­i­cal Debt Day:

Using the lat­est data avail­able WWF has cal­cu­lat­ed when res­i­dents of British cities will have con­sumed their fair share of nat­ur­al resources for 2008 – or when their eco­log­i­cal debt day is.

City Eco­log­i­cal debt day

Win­ches­ter 10 April
St Albans 13 April
Chich­ester 14 April
Brighton & Hove 14 April
Can­ter­bury 17 April
Oxford 17 April
Southamp­ton 21 April
Durham 22 April
Cam­bridge 23 April
Portsmouth 23 April
Edin­burgh 23 April
Chester 24 April
Aberdeen 24 April
Ely (East Cambs) 26 April
Here­ford (Coun­ty of Here­ford­shire) 28 April
Stir­ling 28 April
Lon­don 29 April
Lich­field 29 April
Lan­cast­er 30 April
New­cas­tle upon Tyne 30 April
Wells (Bath and NE Som­er­set) 1 May
Bath (Bath and North East Som­er­set) 1 May
Ripon (Har­ro­gate) 2 May
Man­ches­ter 2 May
Inver­ness (High­land) 2 May
Pre­ston 2 May
Nor­wich 2 May
Peter­bor­ough 2 May
Dundee City 3 May
Leeds 3 May
York 3 May
Sheffield 3 May
Der­by 4 May
Carlisle 4 May
Leices­ter 4 May
Worces­ter 4 May
Ban­gor (Gwynedd) 4 May
St Davids (Pembrokeshire)4 May
Not­ting­ham 4 May
Liv­er­pool 4 May
Bris­tol 5 May
Birm­ing­ham 5 May
Lin­coln 5 May
Brad­ford 5 May
Glas­gow 6 May
Cardiff 6 May
Exeter 6 May
Coven­try 7 May
Swansea 8 May
Sal­ford 8 May
Wolver­hamp­ton 8 May
Truro (Car­rick) 8 May
Sun­der­land 8 May
Wake­field 9 May
Glouces­ter 9 May
Stoke on Trent 10 May
Kingston upon Hull 10 May
Sal­is­bury 10 May
Ply­mouth 11 May
New­port 11 May

Fossil Fools Day 2009, 1st April — actions & resources

FFD is only five weeks away! We know of var­i­ous affin­i­ty group actions around the UK but thought we’d upload some inspi­ra­tional pub­lic actions you can get involved with on the April 1st and some resources to help inspire you to take action in you local area.

PUBLIC ACTIONS

12 Noon

FFD 09FFD is only five weeks away! We know of var­i­ous affin­i­ty group actions around the UK but thought we’d upload some inspi­ra­tional pub­lic actions you can get involved with on the April 1st and some resources to help inspire you to take action in you local area.

PUBLIC ACTIONS

12 Noon

Help build a Camp for Cli­mate Action in the City of London.Stopping car­bon mar­kets — because nature does­n’t do bailouts. Meet at the Euro­pean Cli­mate Exchange, Hasil­wood House, 62 Bish­ops­gate, EC2N 4AW. Bring a pop-up tent, sleep­ing bag, wind tur­bine, mobile cin­e­ma, action plans and ideas … let’s imag­ine anoth­er world. Don’t let the finan­cial and fos­sil fools make the rules!

For more details vis­it — http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20

6PM — *** POSTPONED by BP fol­low­ing police advice. ***

For rea­sons unfath­omable yet deeply pleas­ing, BP* has cho­sen Fos­sil Fools Day to cel­e­brate its cen­te­nary. This will take place at the British Muse­um, where the not-so-great and the far-from-good will quaff cock­tails, snaf­fle canapes and watch a cel­e­bra­to­ry film. And Ris­ing Tide and Art Not Oil will be there too, between 6–7pm, to say ‘Your Par­ty’s Over!’ Bring ban­ners, musi­cal instru­ments, a sense of cli­mate jus­tice and a non­sense of fool­ery. Meet at 6pm at the British Muse­um’s Gt. Rus­sell St. gate. * BP = Burn­ing Plan­et, British Plun­der, Bloody Prof­its, Bro­ken Promises,Boring Par­ties, Breath­tak­ing Protests and..? Send your unrav­elled acronyms to info@artnotoil.org.uk

RESOURCES

Media — Ris­ing Tide has pro­duced an 11 page Media Q&A for Fos­sil Fools Day. If you think you’ll be talk­ing to the media on the day and want a few tips for tricky ques­tions send us an email (info@risingtide.org.uk) and we’ll email you a copy.

Action Ideas — For a short guide on why and how to take direct action against the fos­sil fuel indus­try … includ­ing plan­ning tips, tar­get loca­tions, exam­ples of suc­cess­ful actions and much more vis­it the RT Resources page were you can down­load ‘15 Actions to Top­ple the Fos­sil Fuel Empire’.

FFD is only 5 weeks away so whether you’ve been look­ing for a chance to dip a toe into the grow­ing cli­mate action move­ment, or have had your kick-ass action planned since last year, now is the time to do it — what­ev­er it is. On April 1st, join the glob­al day of resis­tance and pull a prank that packs a punch.

http://risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday2009