Climate Protestors in Court Following Defacing of Canadian Flag

Three cli­mate activists are this morn­ing due in West­min­ster Magistrate’s Court charged with crim­i­nal dam­age against the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don fol­low­ing an action to stop the Tar Sands..

On Decem­ber 15th, while the Inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Sum­mit was tak­ing place in Copen­hagen, the pro­test­ers scaled the entrance to the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion in Grosvenor Square. They cut loose the Cana­di­an flag, before defac­ing it with crude oil while unfurl­ing a ban­ner read­ing “Shut Down the Tar Sands”.

The action was a response to Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harper’s obstruc­tion of the sum­mit in Copen­hagen in order to pro­tect Canada’s Tar Sands Indus­try [1]. Tar Sands are the dirt­i­est fuel known to man, both in terms of its impact on the cli­mate and the dev­as­ta­tion inflict­ed on the
local com­mu­ni­ties [2].

There is an enor­mous open cast mine in the Alber­ta Tar Sands region of Cana­da, where an area the total size of Eng­land will be exploit­ed. This is the largest indus­tri­al devel­op­ment in the world and is dev­as­tat­ing for the indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties that live there, not only destroy­ing the land
itself but increas­ing lev­els of can­cer, poi­son­ing much of their tra­di­tion­al food sources and leav­ing the water unsafe to drink [3]. This vio­lates the indige­nous treaty rights legal­ly bound to this region.

Jake Col­man, 20, Bradley Day, 22, and Daniel White­ly, 19, are all par­tic­i­pants in the Camp for Cli­mate Action [4], an action group that occu­pied Trafal­gar Square for the two-week dura­tion of the Cli­mate Sum­mit.

Bradley Day, a wait­er from Oxford, speak­ing after the action:

“This is just the begin­ning of a UK-based direct action cam­paign to stop Cana­di­an Tar Sands. These mur­der­ous ven­tures are being fund­ed from with­in the UK, with the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, now 84%-owned by the pub­lic invest­ing bil­lions, and British Petro­le­um cur­rent­ly prepar­ing to move in
to Tar Sands. [5] We won’t stand by and let these greed dri­ven cor­po­ra­tions cause cat­a­stroph­ic envi­ron­men­tal and human destruc­tion.”

Clay­ton Thomas-Muller, an Indige­nous activist with the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work (IEN), spoke dur­ing the Copen­hagen sum­mit:
“The Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to ignore its own laws, which state they must con­sult with Indige­nous Peo­ples who have been try­ing to con­vey con­cerns about Tar Sands devel­op­ment. Tar Sands are killing our com­mu­ni­ties and tram­pling over our rights. Fur­ther­more, the envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion wreaked by the Tar Sands is direct­ly threat­en­ing thou­sands of lives now and is dri­ving our cli­mate into chaos. The world has wok­en up to the fact that Cana­da is now Pub­lic Cli­mate Ene­my Num­ber One. It’s time Cana­da did its glob­al duty and shut down the Tar Sands,”

NOTES TO EDITORS:

[1] At the failed Copen­hagen Cli­mate Sum­mit, Cana­da pro­posed an inad­e­quate tar­get for reduc­ing green­house emis­sions by only 3% by 2020 ignor­ing world sci­en­tists’ rec­om­men­da­tions to com­mit to over 40% reduc­tions below 1990 lev­els in order to avoid dan­ger­ous run­away cli­mate change. Cana­da already failed to meet its com­mit­ments to the Kyoto Treaty and refus­es to sign the UN’s Dec­la­ra­tion of Rights for Indige­nous Peo­ples whilst con­tin­u­ing devel­op­ment of Tar Sands oil extrac­tion.

[2] Tar Sands fuel is a way of extract­ing oil who’s ener­gy inten­sive process has not only com­plete­ly destroyed areas of the Bore­al forests the size of Eng­land, burns enough nat­ur­al gas to pow­er 6 hun­dred thou­sand homes a year, pro­duces lakes of tox­ic waste 66km wide ‑which fil­ters into
all local life and drink­ing water- but would itself be enough to push our cli­mate into chaos.

http://tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com/about/

[3] http://tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com/about/

[4] http://climatecamp.org.uk

[5] This is the start of a fast grow­ing UK cam­paign against Tar Sands. Although we do not receive oil direct­ly from Cana­di­an Tar Sands, Cor­po­ra­tions such as RBS which is now 84% owned by the British Tax Pay­er invests bil­lions and British Petro­le­um have plans to move in to the ‘Sun Rise’ site in the com­ing months. Action on these issues and these cor­po­ra­tions are soon to become a focus of UK activism as we begin to stand up to Inter­na­tion­al injus­tices such as Tar Sands in Cana­da.

Stop the Tar Sands