New Zealand climate camp report-back

15 Decem­ber 2009
Prepa­ra­tions for New Zealand’s first Cli­mate Camp are going well with peo­ple mov­ing onto the site yes­ter­day. Campers spent the day set­ting up some of the infra­struc­ture required for the camp includ­ing the kitchen and stor­age tents. As the day pro­gressed water lines could be seen snaking across the field, solar pan­els popped up next to tents and by the end of the day hot food was being pre­pared in the kitchen. The site is per­fect, large trees dot the field, a riv­er with swim­ming holes runs beside the camp and there is easy vehic­u­lar access.

Cli­mate camp offi­cial­ly kicks off tomor­row (Wednes­day) and will be going until the 21st. The camp will be a work­ing demon­stra­tion of sus­tain­able liv­ing with com­post­ing toi­lets and elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed on site. It will also host work­shops on dozens of sub­jects as well as pro­vid­ing space for peo­ple to organ­ise to take action against the root caus­es of cli­mate change. The 21st will see campers tak­ing to the streets in protests which will be organ­ised at camp. As details of these protests are organ­ised they will be dis­trib­uted wide­ly.

Feel free to bring any­thing you think might be use­ful – tools, bikes, koha to help pay for food and tents etc. The camp is being organ­ised and run by par­tic­i­pants so feel free to make it your own. If you want to run a work­shop or spend a few hours in the kitchen that would be great! Weath­er has been a mixed bag over the past day so a good tent and heaps of warm clothes in case you get wet would be a real­ly good idea. Food will be pro­vid­ed through­out the camp.

So if you have any spare time over the next week be it an after­noon or the entire camp pop on down to Moon­shine park in Upper Hut from today.

For more infor­ma­tion and reg­u­lar updates on how the camp is going please vis­it climatecamp.org.nz

For the days pho­tos please vis­it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/45638777@N08/

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Activists dis­rupt pre­sen­ta­tion by head of the New Zealand Car­bon Exchange.
18 Decem­ber 2009

This action coin­cides with New Zealand’s first cli­mate camp in Upper Hut Welling­ton and pecedes mon­days day of direct action against false solu­tions planned for Welling­ton on mon­day.

Yes­ter­day mem­bers of Car­bon Progress Response (CPR) dis­rupt­ed a pre­sen­ta­tion by Stu­art Fraz­er mem­ber of the New Zealand Car­bon Exchange. The pro­test­ers dis­rupt­ed the meet­ing at three points hold­ing ban­ners say­ing “Our Cli­mate Not Your Busi­ness”, “Food Mar­kets Not Car­bon Mar­kets” as well as talk­ing about why car­bon trad­ing would not result in real action being tak­en to pre­vent cli­mate change. Dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion Stu­art Fraz­er talked of how we need to sta­bilise atmos­pher­ic CO2 lev­els at 450ppm and glob­al tem­per­a­tures at a 2 degrees Cel­sius rise. The pro­test­ers point­ed out that at these lev­els hun­dreds of mil­lions of the worlds poor will be affect­ed by drought and famine.

The action was tak­en in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the 100,000 pro­test­ers in Copen­hagen as well as the 300 civ­il soci­ety del­e­gates which walked out of the con­fer­ence.

The CPR activists involved in the dis­rup­tion explained their actions in this way “Car­bon trad­ing, also known as Cap and Trade, allows wealthy, indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries and com­pa­nies to keep pol­lut­ing at the same rates by trad­ing car­bon cred­its amongst them­selves. This allows busi­ness to con­tin­ue as usu­al and encour­ages the dis­ad­van­taged and poor to sell their liveli­hoods for the gain of the rich.”

After the first two groups of pro­test­ers were removed around a dozen pro­test­ers held ban­ners out­side as well as using a siren to empha­sis that we are fac­ing a cli­mate emer­gency. After the pre­sen­ta­tion had fin­ished an activist slipped back into the meet­ing and dis­rupt­ed it for a third time.

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21 Decem­ber 2009
About 150 peo­ple took to the streets ear­ly this morn­ing in Welling­ton as two ban­ners were hung overnight in promi­nent loca­tions. First stop was the Stock Exchange, to dis­rupt busi­ness as usu­al and tell the prof­i­teers of cli­mate change that our cli­mate is not their busi­ness. While peo­ple entered the build­ing a sam­ba band, rad­i­cal cheer­lead­ers and a kids block were out­side all main entrances. There was also a vocal bunch from a group claim­ing to be counter-protest­ing for the right to prof­it from exploit­ing the envi­ron­ment. Nine peo­ple were arrest­ed in a sit-in block­ade but lat­er released with no charge.

After 9 arrests the protest took over Lamp­ton Quay to go and sup­port two climbers occu­py­ing the out­side of the Min­istry for For­eign Affairs and Trade with a giant ban­ner denounc­ing Foter­ra for its part in New Zealand’s high emis­sions from agri­cul­ture. The action was tak­en to draw atten­tion to the fact that 51% of New Zealand’s cli­mate chang­ing emis­sions come from agri­cul­ture. The pro­test­ers who were ini­tial­ly at the stock exchange, marched down Lambton Quay to sup­port the two activists hang­ing off MFAT. The two climbers came down lat­er and were not arrest­ed. A Reclaim the Streets style protest con­tin­ued for over half and hour.

The nine from ear­li­er are com­ing out of the police sta­tion now, some or all with­out charge…

OUR CLIMATE IS NOT YOUR BUSINESS!!

http://climatecamp.org.nz/