Climate Rush at UK Coal HQ & coal awards — Doncaster & London — and next one 5th March at RBS

North­ern Cli­mate Rush vis­it to UK coal head­quar­ters

Around 15 cli­mate activists from the North of Eng­land vis­it­ed the head­quar­ters of UK Coal near Don­cast­er yes­ter­day, 26th Feb­ru­ary, in a protest against new coal and call­ing for tougher mea­sures to con­trol CO2 emis­sions.

Two peo­ple climbed up lam­posts to sus­pend a 6m ban­ner read­ing ‘Leave it in the Ground’, while on the ground below the pro­tes­tors played a bit of sam­ba, danced, and had a pic­nic. The pro­tes­tors wore Edwar­dian themed dress includ­ing red sash­es with the words ‘No New Coal’ writ­ten across them.

UK Coal is the UK’s largest coal com­pa­ny. The Don­cast­er protest was timed to coin­cide with the Cli­mate Rush at the UK Coal Awards, host­ed by UK coal, in Lon­don.

The police reac­tion was fair­ly low-key and non-obstruc­tive, although they did take an awful lot of pho­tos (I sup­pose they had noth­ing else to do). A van dri­ver was has­sled by cops, had his details checked and was told he was not insured to dri­ve the vehi­cle (which was not the case).

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Thurs­day 26th Feb­ru­ary 2009
PRESS RELEASE: North­ern Cli­mate Rush vis­its UK Coal head­quar­ters

Cli­mate activists from the North vis­it­ed the head­quar­ters of UK Coal near Don­cast­er today in a protest against new coal and call­ing for tougher mea­sures to con­trol CO2 emis­sions. The protest coin­cid­ed with the ‘Cli­mate Rush’ in Lon­don where peo­ple intend­ed to gate­crash the Coal UK Con­fer­ence and Awards 2009 at the Land­mark Hotel in Regents Park. How­ev­er, the Lon­don pro­test­ers arrived to find the Con­fer­ence had moved venue at the last minute. Around 200 pro­test­ers in Lon­don occu­pied the lob­by of the Land­mark and dropped ban­ners. They asked that the hotel to refrain from host­ing any future events with fos­sil fuel indus­tries such as UK Coal, to which the man­age­ment agreed.

The pro­tes­tors of both demon­stra­tions wore Edwar­dian themed dress includ­ing red sash­es with the words ‘No New Coal’ writ­ten across them. In Don­cast­er two female pro­test­ers scaled lamp-posts to hang a ban­ner read­ing ‘Leave it in the ground’ across the entrance to the UK coal head­quar­ters.

Coal is the dirt­i­est form of ener­gy pro­duc­tion yet the gov­ern­ment has plans to expand the coal indus­try, includ­ing a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in Kent. UK Coal are respon­si­ble for oper­at­ing sev­er­al open cast mines across the UK. Open cast coal min­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly dam­ag­ing to the local envi­ron­ment since it involves scalp­ing the land­scape and typ­i­cal­ly pro­vides an aver­age of only 40 jobs per site, for a hand­ful of years only.

Vanes­sa Hall, spokes­woman for the North­ern Cli­mate Rush said, “It is essen­tial that we take cli­mate change seri­ous­ly and move away from dirty fos­sil fuels like coal. There is no way we can avoid run­away cli­mate change if we con­tin­ue to burn coal.”

Megan Beech, 24, said, “The coal indus­try talk about Car­bon Cap­ture and Stor­age (CCS) as the mag­ic bul­let that will allow us to keep burn­ing coal. How­ev­er CCS is as yet an unproven tech­nol­o­gy. You don’t start a fire on the promise that one day we”ll invent a fire extin­guish­er with which to put it out.”

ENDS

Notes to Edi­tors

This is the third major ‘Cli­mate Rush’ event, fol­low­ing from the first in Par­lia­ment square in Octo­ber 2008 on the cen­te­nary of the Suf­fragette rush on Par­lia­ment. Pro­test­ers demand­ed ‘Deeds Not Words’ on cli­mate change, includ­ing an end to air­port expan­sion and no new coal. The sec­ond was at Heathrow and Man­ches­ter air­ports to draw atten­tion to the threat of avi­a­tion and cli­mate change.

The North­ern Cli­mate Rush is made up of cam­paign­ers from Man­ches­ter, Leeds, Hud­der­s­field, Brad­ford and Liv­er­pool.

www.climaterush.co.uk
www.northernclimaterush.wordpress.com

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Cli­mate Rush host­ed cock­tail par­ty for the coal indus­try out­side of the Land­mark Hotel on Maryle­bone Road, Lon­don.

Coal UK planed to pre­sent­ed cel­e­bra­to­ry awards to the most dam­ag­ing com­pa­nies in the coal indus­try. Cli­mate Rush offered an alter­na­tive awards based on the eco­log­i­cal dam­age that the coal indus­try is inflict­ing on the envi­ron­ment.

How­ev­er after sev­er­al tries at rush­ing the hotel peo­ple dis­cov­ered that the award din­ner had been can­celled.

Brochure for the awards din­ner:
http://conf.mccloskeycoal.com/journals/McCloskey/Conferences/Conferences/attachments/Coal%20UK%20Brochure%20web.pdf

Cli­mate Rush calls for:

1. No new coal to avoid run­away cli­mate change

Coal is the dirt­i­est fos­sil fuel, and by far the dirt­i­est way to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty. We must leave coal in the ground and not build any new coal fired pow­er sta­tions if we want to avoid run­away cli­mate change. CCS is an unproven tech­nol­o­gy that may nev­er be a viable option. Cli­mate change is hap­pen­ing now and we must act now to stop it.

2. We can’t have infi­nite growth on a finite plan­et

At this out­dat­ed and fos­silized awards cer­e­mo­ny UK Coal is cel­e­brat­ing the worst excess­es of our fail­ing eco­nom­ic sys­tem. Just like over­paid bankers these heads of cor­po­ra­tions are receiv­ing plau­dits for plun­der­ing the plan­et.

3. A tran­si­tion to a low car­bon soci­ety with sus­tain­able jobs

We must coun­ter­act any jobs loss­es from the coal indus­try with a major re-skilling pro­gram in sus­tain­able trades. Many more jobs will be cre­at­ed by a huge retro­fitting pro­gram of old hous­ing stock and in the new renew­able ener­gies sec­tor than in new coal. The Ger­man clean ener­gy rev­o­lu­tion has seen the cre­ation of 250,000 new jobs.

More pho­tos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/filkaler/tags/climaterush/

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Land­mark Deci­sion Against Coal Indus­try
For imme­di­ate release: 26 Feb­ru­ary 2009

LANDMARK DECISION

A top class Lon­don hotel has vowed com­pa­nies and organ­i­sa­tions which con­tribute to cli­mate chaos will no longer be wel­come to use their facil­i­ties for cor­po­rate pro­mo­tion and enter­tain­ment

The move fol­lows a Cli­mate Rush action on the Land­mark Hotel in Maryle­bone, where hun­dreds of pro­test­ers con­verged on Thurs­day to halt a coal indus­try awards cer­e­mo­ny.

Coal is acknowl­edged among sci­en­tists and cli­mate change activists as the world’s worst con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change in the form of CO2 emis­sions.*

The coal indus­try under the ban­ner of UK Coal were booked into the Land­mark to host an awards cer­e­mo­ny with five star food and drink where they planned to hand out gongs for UK coal per­son­al­i­ty of the year and the best open cast min­ers among oth­er cat­e­gories.

Pro­test­ers dropped ban­ners and staged a peace­ful sit-in to speak out at the hotel’s sup­port and the coal industry’s insis­tence of “busi­ness as usu­al” in the face of evi­dent esca­lat­ing cli­mate chaos.

The Landmark’s land­mark deci­sion has been applaud­ed by activists. “At Last! For too long prof­i­teer­ing from cli­mate change has been sold to the pub­lic as a neces­si­ty of ‘busi­ness as usu­al’. But with glob­al tem­per­a­tures ris­ing and cli­mate chaos run­ning riot in the form of drought (Africa and Aus­tralia) and flood­ing (low lying lands all over), we all need to work togeth­er.

“ We applaud the Land­mark for their good sense and the vision to say ‘enough is enough’. They right­ly don’t want to be asso­ci­at­ed with the cor­rupt sys­tem that needs over­turn­ing. We wel­come the Land­mark to play their role in the new way of doing things so need­ed.”

The Land­mark now plans to deny com­pa­nies such as the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (the biggest sin­gle investor in coal and oil indus­tries) and oil com­pa­nies, such as ESSO, BP and Shell, as well as the coal indus­try from using their ball­rooms and ban­quet halls to pro­mote their cause.

The hotel has also pledge to com­mu­ni­cate with the 24 oth­er five star hotels in its’ group to sug­gest they do the same.

Cli­mate Rush has pledged to work with the Land­mark Hotel to ensure the right com­pa­nies are blocked, to send a clear mes­sage to pol­luters: they’re not wel­come.

ENDS
Notes and foot­notes to Edi­tors

Coal is respon­si­ble for 50 % of the cli­mate change gas­es in the atmos­phere caused by human activ­i­ty.

Cli­mate Rush is a cut­ting edge move­ment of car­bon cut­ting indi­vid­u­als who have seen the light and want to spread the word through their remit: Deeds not words, based on the clar­i­on call of the suf­fragettes

For high qual­i­ty pho­tos and fur­ther com­ments please ring 075 2839 8441 or email media@climaterush.co.uk

For com­ments from the land­mark hotel please ring Fran­cis T Green 0207 631 8000

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UK No New Coal Awards

Cli­mate Rush is delight­ed to announce that it will be pre­sent­ing the fol­low­ing “Canary in the Coalmine” awards:

Sci­ence Fic­tion award
goes to the most unbe­liev­able tech­nol­o­gy not yet avail­able to stop CO2 emis­sions, Car­bon Cap­ture and Stor­age.

Finan­cial Fool award
goes to the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, for help­ing to raise $16 bil­lion in loans to finance the world­wide coal indus­try over the past two years.

Life­time Achieve­ment award
goes to Drax coal fired pow­er sta­tion, for the Great­est Emis­sions in the UK, equiv­a­lent to that of the 54 poor­est coun­tries in the world.

Best Sup­port­ing Role
goes to the biggest Cli­mate Cow­ard, Gor­don Brown, for his use­less lead­er­ship over Cli­mate Change.

Best New­com­er
goes to the next like­ly “fac­to­ry of death”, Kingsnorth coal fired pow­er sta­tion in Kent.

and final­ly…

UK Coal Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year
goes to Paul Gol­by, CEO of ener­gy com­pa­ny E.ON, for out­stand­ing ser­vices to Green­wash (whilst plot­ting to build Kingsnorth)

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CLIMATE RUSH: THURSDAY 5TH MARCH, 1PM, RBS HQ

GIVE US OUR MONEY BACK and STOP TRASHING THE PLANET

Roy­al Bank of Scot­land: £33 bil­lion in bail outs SO FAR!

Using OUR MONEY!

RBS boss 50-year-old Sir Fred: retires ear­ly with a whop­ping £16 mil­lion pen­sion fund.

Using OUR MONEY!

OUR bank: arranges £16 bil­lion in loans to the coal indus­try in just two years.

RBS: the BIGGEST investor in cli­mate chaos.

FOR THE LOVE OF OUR MONEY, WHAT PLANET ARE THEY ON?

Grab your mates, bring some lunch and get down to the bank to demand OUR mon­ey back.

Roy­al Bank of Scot­land HQ

Thurs­day 5th March

1.OOPM PROMPT: think flash­mob…

280 Bish­ops­gate, near Liv­er­pool Street Sta­tion

ANGRY? You bet­ter believe it: Let’s rush!

See what they’re say­ing about the RBS Cli­mate Rush in the Guardian here

Face­book invite here: invite ALL your friends

Please help spread the word by down­load­ing the poster as a pdf here to print out and stick up wher­ev­er you go!

Be sure to keep check­ing the site for updates… and don’t for­get to sub­scribe and join our face­book group!