German coal blockade during climate camp

30.08.2011
Since 10.30 this morn­ing a group of over 50 activists have been blockad­ing a coal trans­port rail­way in the Cologne area. The action takes place at the same time as the near­by inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Camp, protest­ing the open-cast min­ing of brown coal (www.klimacamp2011.de)

30.08.2011
Since 10.30 this morn­ing a group of over 50 activists have been blockad­ing a coal trans­port rail­way in the Cologne area. The action takes place at the same time as the near­by inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Camp, protest­ing the open-cast min­ing of brown coal (www.klimacamp2011.de)

The activists peace­ful­ly blocked the line ear­ly this morn­ing, erect­ing ban­ners and green­wash­ing the rail­way tracks. The protest is aimed at ener­gy giant RWE, which oper­ates a num­ber of pow­er sta­tions in the area and is respon­si­ble for about 10% of Ger­many’s car­bon diox­ide emis­sions.

The protest is being kept well-sup­plied with blan­kets and food by mem­bers of the cli­mate camp, and is cur­rent­ly prepar­ing for a night on the tracks.

The inter­na­tion­al cli­mate camp is sit­u­at­ed in the vil­lage of Man­heim which is sched­uled to be destroyed in order to enlarge a brown coal strip mine. Brown coal, or lig­nite, is a less pure form of coal and is there­fore much less ener­gy-effi­cient and cre­ates greater emis­sions than reg­u­lar coal.

The inter­na­tion­al cli­mate camp includes guests from as far afield as Colom­bia and Azer­bai­jan and aims to build links with­in the inter­na­tion­al cli­mate jus­tice move­ment, call­ing for urgent sys­tem change, not cli­mate change.