‘Leave it in the ground’ national meeting on 11 and 12 October in Manchester

Announce­ment – ‘Leave it in the ground’ nation­al meet­ing

Cli­mate change is the biggest threat fac­ing us, and burn­ing coal is the biggest his­tor­i­cal cause of cli­mate change. Every day more coal is burned, yet indus­try and gov­ern­ment seem intent on burn­ing even more.

Announce­ment – ‘Leave it in the ground’ nation­al meet­ing

Cli­mate change is the biggest threat fac­ing us, and burn­ing coal is the biggest his­tor­i­cal cause of cli­mate change. Every day more coal is burned, yet indus­try and gov­ern­ment seem intent on burn­ing even more.

‘Leave it in the ground’ is the slo­gan of a new net­work for groups tak­ing action oppos­ing new coal devel­op­ments in the UK, includ­ing the 30+ planned open­cast sites and sev­en new coal-fired pow­er sta­tions. Added to those already oper­at­ing, and the coal import and trans­port facil­i­ties, these projects rep­re­sent a mas­sive threat to our abil­i­ty to cut green­house gas emis­sions to safe lev­els, and would be a dis­as­ter for the cli­mate as well as for local areas.

The first ‘Leave it in the ground’ meet­ing will be held at the Yard The­atre, 41 Old Bir­ley
Street, Hulme, Man­ches­ter M15 5RF, on 11 and 12 Octo­ber.

The net­work plans to be a way for groups to share skills and expe­ri­ence in dif­fer­ent areas and to encour­age col­lab­o­ra­tion on com­mon goals. It is a loose net­work of equals, and is not affil­i­at­ed to any polit­i­cal par­ty or NGO.

The pro­posed agen­da for this meet­ing includes:

Sat­ur­day 11th

§ Intro­duc­tion to the UK coal indus­try
§ Updates on oppo­si­tion to coal devel­op­ments in the UK, includ­ing the cam­paigns against the Ffos-y-Fran (near Merthyr Tyd­fil) and Lodge House (Der­byshire) open­cast sites, the 2008 Cli­mate Camp and the pro­posed Kingsnorth coal-fired pow­er sta­tion block­ade.
§ Dis­cussing cli­mate change solu­tions, includ­ing the impor­tance of a social­ly just tran­si­tion to a low-car­bon econ­o­my.
§ Think­ing about how our net­work will func­tion, its deci­sion-mak­ing struc­ture, name and com­mu­ni­ca­tions
§ Plan­ning ini­tial events and strat­e­gy for the net­work
§ Region­al net­work­ing between groups

Sun­day 12th

§ Media train­ing
§ Intro­duc­tion to direct action plan­ning
§ Fur­ther dis­cus­sions on cli­mate change, cli­mate jus­tice and inter­na­tion­al net­work­ing

If you can only make one day of the meet­ing, please try to come on Sat­ur­day. We will aim to start at 10:00 and to fin­ish by 18:00 to allow for trav­el. The meet­ing will free, lunch and evening meal on Sat­ur­day and lunch on Sun­day will be avail­able for dona­tions.

If you would like to attend, please reg­is­ter by email­ing info@leaveitintheground.org.uk, with ‘meet­ing’ in the sub­ject line, stat­ing how many of your group wish to attend, any spe­cial dietary or access require­ments and whether you want accom­mo­da­tion for Sat­ur­day night. Free accom­mo­da­tion will prob­a­bly be ‘crash­pad’ only, but we can pro­vide details of near­by hotels etc.

For those trav­el­ling from far off, we will oper­ate a ‘pool fare’ sys­tem to even out the costs of trav­el. The venue is about ten min­utes walk from Man­ches­ter Oxford Road sta­tion, and is served by num­ber 54 and 86 bus­es, with many oth­ers serv­ing the near­by Stret­ford road. More details on the GMPTE web­site.