Grapes of wrath

Vine­yards in Sark  sab­o­taged.

Sup­port wires – some up to 200 yards long – have been cut and repairs will take up to six months. The cost is esti­mat­ed at tens of thou­sands of pounds.

Vine­yards in Sark  sab­o­taged.

Sup­port wires – some up to 200 yards long – have been cut and repairs will take up to six months. The cost is esti­mat­ed at tens of thou­sands of pounds.

Kevin Delaney of Sark Estate Man­age­ment says staff who have been work­ing on the project are dis­traught.

In all 40,000 vines have been affect­ed out of the 100,000 plant­ed. The sup­port wires were sev­ered at both ends and in the mid­dle. Mr Delaney said it was a “night of dev­as­ta­tion”.

The act of sab­o­tage came ahead of a protest about the scale of vine­yard plan­ta­tions in the island. The Agri­cul­ture Com­mit­tee have called for a halt on the con­ver­sion of graz­ing land. They fear it will lead to the col­lapse of farm­ing and dam­age bio­di­ver­si­ty.

More than 80 islanders staged a protest near a field cur­rent­ly being ploughed for vine­yard devel­op­ment.

In a pub­lic state­ment the com­mit­tee say

“The scale of this new mono­cul­ture will have a dev­as­tat­ing effect on Sark’s unique and diverse wildlife. Many species which rely on Sark’s healthy fields – from earth­worms, insects, but­ter­flies, moths, bats, birds, up to Pere­grine Fal­cons which nest around our cliffs, will suf­fer as the tra­di­tion­al envi­ron­ment is impov­er­ished.

“We call on the Sark Estate Man­age­ment to halt present work and recon­sid­er the agri­cul­tur­al plans and pri­or­i­ties for their land in Sark.”

The agri­cul­ture com­mit­tee say they have wor­ries about the use of Bor­deaux Mix­ture, which con­tains cop­per sul­phate, becom­ing air­borne and spread­ing out­side the vine­yards. 

TAMPAKAN MASSACRE: International solidarity requested against SMI-Xstrata corporation (Philippines, Switzerland)

SMI-Xstra­ta is a Swiss cor­po­ra­tion which has a min­ing appli­ca­tion in south Cota­ba­to, Min­danao. despite the resis­tance of the com­mu­ni­ty the Philip­pine gov­ern­ment is back­ing-up the said appli­ca­tion.

SMI-Xstra­ta is a Swiss cor­po­ra­tion which has a min­ing appli­ca­tion in south Cota­ba­to, Min­danao. despite the resis­tance of the com­mu­ni­ty the Philip­pine gov­ern­ment is back­ing-up the said appli­ca­tion.

In order to silence the resis­tance the gov­ern­ment use the mil­i­tary. 13 peo­ple were killed includ­ing an 8 years old boy and 3 months preg­nant woman. The cul­prit is based in Switzer­land. We are ask­ing for your sup­port to put pres­sure on the cor­po­ra­tion to stop the destruc­tion of nat­ur­al resources and to seek jus­tice for the vic­tims.

At 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 18, in Datal Aliong, Kiblawan, Davao del Sur, Juvy, 27, wife of B’laan leader Daguil Capi­on, was shot in cold blood togeth­er with her two sons, Jor­dan, 13, and John, 8 by ele­ments of the 27th Infantry Bat­tal­ion, led by 1st Lt. Dante Jimenez. The youngest daugh­ter Vicky, 4, escaped but was wound­ed.

When a rel­a­tive of the vic­tims said that it was bet­ter if the chil­dren were not harmed, a sol­dier replied “mas maayo nga tiwa­son  ang  mga bata para wala’y wit­ness” (bet­ter to fin­ish off the chil­dren, so there are no wit­ness­es). Before Juvy was shot, the rel­a­tive heard Juvy say, “tama na ayaw namo sige ug pab­u­to kay nai­go nako” (please stop fir­ing your guns,  as I am already wound­ed). But the sol­diers kept fir­ing their guns.

Imme­di­ate­ly after the inci­dent, Colonel Alex­is Bra­vo, com­man­der of the 27th Infantry Batal­lion, con­duct­ed press con­fer­ences for radio and print, claim­ing the inci­dent was an ‘encounter’ with the NPA. Evi­dence how­ev­er showed there was will­ful intent to kill inno­cent chil­dren and their moth­er. They even talked to the unarmed moth­er before killing her. How can that be an encounter? Juvy, the moth­er, togeth­er with her hus­band Daguil, are active lead­ers in oppos­ing the min­ing project. Col. Bra­vo, Lt. Jimenez and sev­en oth­er sol­diers were relieved of duty imme­di­ate­ly after the mas­sacre.

Kiblawan May­or Mariv­ic Dia­mante, who is an active sup­port­er of Xstra­ta-SMI and receives mil­lions in ‘devel­op­ment’ funds from them, and who is often a guest speak­er in min­ing con­fer­ences in Mani­la, attempt­ed to take pos­ses­sion of two chil­dren who were vital wit­ness­es, say­ing they would be brought to the hos­pi­tal. The moth­er of Daguil refused, trig­ger­ing a tug of war, paci­fied by Atty. Haw­tay of the Com­mis­sion on Human Rights (CHR). The chil­dren are now safe­ly in the hands of the Social Action Cen­ter of Mar­bel. (Sources – Task Force Detainee of the Philip­pines, Social Action Cen­ter Mar­bel, rappler.com, LILAK).

The mil­i­tary wants to con­vince every­one it is a counter-insur­gency war. They do not see it as a people’s war against the multi­na­tion­al they pro­tect. They talk of sus­pect­ed com­mu­nist rebels. That is the way they jus­ti­fy their pres­ence. They say they are there because the rebels are there. They say they want to pro­tect the peo­ple from the rebels. But they kill instead the peo­ple they say they pro­tect. In truth, from their actions, they are there to sup­port and pro­tect the min­ing project. Before the multi­na­tion­als came, there was peace in Tam­pakan. Now the domain of the B’laans has been muti­lat­ed.

For more details (WARNING: Con­tains graph­ic pho­to’s of masacre) http://onsiteinfoshopphilippines.wordpress.com/newsupdate/

Residents protest at Manchester Airport

On Sat­ur­day 3rd Novem­ber around 100 local res­i­dents and cam­paign­ers took part in a protest walk against the pro­posed World Logis­tics Hub at Man­ches­ter Air­port. The pro­test­ers braved the cold to take a route around the 90 acre for­mer green­belt site, which is threat­ened by the plans to build 43 car­go sheds and almost 1,500 car park­ing space

Local res­i­dents, wildlife enthu­si­asts and envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers spoke at var­i­ous points along the walk, shar­ing their expe­ri­ences of fight­ing Man­ches­ter Air­port expan­sion and high­light­ing the numer­ous ways that the plans would affect local peo­ple and the envi­ron­ment.

 

The Wildlife Walk came the week after the Wythen­shawe Area Committee‘recommended for approval’ the World Logis­tics Hub plans, on the 25th Octo­ber.  The appli­ca­tion will now be sent to the Plan­ning and High­ways Com­mit­tee at Man­ches­ter City Coun­cil for a final deci­sion on 22nd Novem­ber 2012. A num­ber of atten­dees at the Wildlife Walk, keen for their con­cerns to be brought to this Com­mit­tee, pledged to attend this Novem­ber meet­ing at Man­ches­ter Town Hall.

Sev­er­al Coun­cil­lors of the Wythen­shawe Area Com­mit­tee backed the Logis­tics Hub plans based on the Air­port’s promis­es of local job oppor­tu­ni­ties. How­ev­er cam­paign­ers argue that

job cre­ation fig­ures pro­posed by the Air­port are inflat­ed.

Jane Beet­son from ‘Stop Expan­sion at Man­ches­ter Air­port’ cam­paign  said “When Man­ches­ter Air­port first announced plans for a sec­ond run­way, they claimed 50,000 jobs would be cre­at­ed.  No-where near that num­ber of jobs mate­ri­alised.  Just like then, they are mis­lead­ing the pub­lic now.”

She added, “Local Coun­cil­lors say they will force the Air­port to give jobs to local peo­ple but in prac­tice they will have no way of enforc­ing this on the firms that move into the new office and ware­house spaces.  We need to cre­ate green jobs in sus­tain­able indus­tries not dirty avi­a­tion.” 

The Wildlife Walk was also an oppor­tu­ni­ty for wildlife experts to explain that Air­port’s promis­es of pre­serv­ing wildlife are also unre­al­is­tic, and that cre­at­ing a ‘mit­i­ga­tion zone’ is no sub­sti­tu­tion for leav­ing habi­tats untouched.

Along the route, cam­paign­ers encoun­tered the threat­ened habi­tats of numer­ous plant and ani­mal species. Sev­er­al mature oak trees line Sun­bank Lane, pro­vid­ing nest­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for rare birds, and poten­tial roost­ing spots for endan­gered bat species. The site is also home to 12 ponds occu­pied by Great Crest­ed Newts, an endan­gered species found only in the North West of Eng­land. Walk­ers were also able to spot signs of pro­tect­ed ani­mals for exam­ple bad­ger snuf­fle holes and mole hills in the green space around Sun­bank.

Campaigners prevent carbon emissions in longest-ever power station occupation

Government’s dash for gas brand­ed ‘inde­fen­si­ble’ in wake of Hur­ri­cane Sandy

Government’s dash for gas brand­ed ‘inde­fen­si­ble’ in wake of Hur­ri­cane Sandy

EDF has con­firmed that the UK’s newest gas-fired pow­er sta­tion will remain shut down after more than thir­ty No Dash for Gas cli­mate change cam­paign­ers evad­ed secu­ri­ty and entered the site on Mon­day morn­ing. Six­teen of them are spend­ing their third day at the top of two 300 ft smoke­stacks at the West Bur­ton plant in Not­ting­hamshire, and last night built new bar­ri­cades out of scaf­fold­ing, lad­ders and wood. They have abseiled down inside one of the chim­neys to set up camp in tents sus­pend­ed from ropes inside the flues. [1] As long as they hold their posi­tion above the fur­nace the plant is unable to oper­ate.

Because the plant was not yet ful­ly oper­a­tional and not con­nect­ed to the grid, the cam­paign­ers claim they have pre­vent­ed 2371 tonnes of CO2 emis­sions a day by shut­ting down the one work­ing chim­ney. This is equiv­a­lent to the ener­gy that an aver­age home uses for 182 years, or tak­ing 465 cars off the road for a year. [2] As the human and eco­nom­ic costs of Hur­ri­cane Sandy become clear­er, the need to take action on cli­mate change and avoid many more instances of such extreme weath­er-relat­ed dis­as­ters has nev­er been more press­ing.

Anneka Kel­ly is one of the activists occu­py­ing one of the chim­neys. Speak­ing on a mobile phone she said:

“Ener­gy bills are going through the roof, the East Coast of the US has been dev­as­tat­ed by Hur­ri­cane Sandy, we’re see­ing droughts and floods across the world and glob­al tem­per­a­tures are ris­ing. Yet the gov­ern­ment, at the behest of the Big Six ener­gy com­pa­nies, wants to build 20 new gas pow­er sta­tions. This is inde­fen­si­ble. Gas is expen­sive, high­ly pol­lut­ing and we don’t need it. We should be invest­ing in clean high-tech renew­ables that slash pol­lu­tion and in the long run will cost a lot less.”

West Bur­ton pow­er sta­tion in Not­ting­hamshire has been tar­get­ed because it’s one of the first in a new gen­er­a­tion of high­ly pol­lut­ing gas plants planned for the UK. [3] The Coali­tion Gov­ern­ment recent­ly announced it intends to give the green light to as many as 20 new gas plants – a move that would crash Britain’s car­bon tar­gets, con­tribute to the cli­mate cri­sis and push up bills. This deci­sion is like­ly to be con­firmed when the delayed Ener­gy Bill is pub­lished towards the end of Novem­ber. But the activists echo many sci­en­tists and the government’s own advis­ers in call­ing for an end to plans for a new dash for gas and invest­ment in a high-tech car­bon-free elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem instead. [4]

Con­trary to claims by min­is­ters and the indus­try, gas is a dirty fuel that pos­es an unac­cept­able threat to the envi­ron­ment. It’s also expen­sive — offi­cial fig­ures from Ofgem show that the aver­age UK ener­gy bill rose £150 last year, with £100 of that due to ris­ing whole­sale gas prices.[5] Only last week EDF raised their prices, fol­low­ing most of the oth­er major com­pa­nies and plung­ing even more peo­ple into fuel pover­ty. Mean­while high-tech renew­able sys­tems are rapid­ly com­ing down in price, mean­ing that soon they will be cheap­er, while com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try are turn­ing their back on the Big Six ener­gy com­pa­nies in favour of coop­er­a­tive com­mu­ni­ty ener­gy schemes.

The activists have not yet decid­ed when they are going to come down, but have pledged to give the police sev­er­al hours warn­ing, and hand them­selves in. Nev­er­the­less, the police have crit­i­cised them for wast­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey on an expen­sive police oper­a­tion.

Ewa Jasiewicz, one of the activists occu­py­ing one of the chim­neys, said : ‘It’s EDF who are wast­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey. There is no need for such a heavy police pres­ence on the ground and heli­copters in the sky. It’s not like we’re try­ing to escape! We have com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the police from the start and assured them this is a respon­si­ble protest, with safe­ty at its heart. We will give them plen­ty of warn­ing when we intend to come down, and will hand our­selves over.’

Find out more at www.nodashforgas.org.uk
Fol­low us on Twit­ter: @nodashforgas
Like us on Face­book: No Dash for Gas

ENDS

Notes to edi­tors:

  1. The night-time incur­sion was launched at 2am when the raiders got through the secu­ri­ty fence. Under cov­er of dark­ness fif­teen of them crossed the expanse to the chim­neys then split into two groups and began the 300ft climb to the top. They are now build­ing bar­ri­cades to defend their posi­tions. They have enough sup­plies with them to last at least a week and say they’re in it for the long haul. The plant was shut down short­ly after the cam­paign­ers began the ascent. A fur­ther team remained on the ground to liaise with the plant’s man­agers. Before launch­ing the protest they engaged in exten­sive con­sul­ta­tion with an expert engi­neer and each under­went inten­sive safe­ty train­ing.
  2. Accord­ing to the gov­ern­ment, Com­bined Cycle Gas Tur­bine plants like this emit 353g of CO2 per kilo­watt hour: http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/policy-legislation/emr/2179-eps-impact-assessment-emr-wp.pdf . This plant had been gen­er­at­ing 280 megawatts:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/30/no-dash-for-gas-occupy . 353g per hour for a day is 8.47 kg a day (353 x 24 = 8470g) and 8.47 x 280,000 is 2371 tonnes a day. That’s the same as ener­gy that an aver­age home uses for 182 years, or tak­ing 465 cars off the road for a year. A dri­ver would have to dri­ve their car non-stop, night and day, for ten and a half years to emit that much…
    http://www.yousustain.com/footprint/howmuchco2?co2=2371+tons
  3. West Bur­ton gas pow­er sta­tion is a 1,300MW Com­bined Cycle Gas Tur­bine (CCGT) plant, cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion in Not­ting­hamshire. It is com­prised of three tur­bine hous­es and chim­neys, labelled Units 1, 2 and 3. Unit 2 is com­plete and is oper­at­ing at almost full capac­i­ty. Units 1 and 3 are fur­ther behind, with Unit 1 clos­er to com­ple­tion than 3. When com­plete, the new CCGT plant will emit approx­i­mate­ly 4.5 mil­lion tonnes CO2 per year when oper­at­ing at full capac­i­ty. This is more than the annu­al emis­sions of Paraguay. [i]
  4. The Gov­ern­men­t’s inde­pen­dent cli­mate advis­ers, the Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, have called for our elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem to be almost entire­ly car­bon free by 2030.[ii] They have defined this as mean­ing that our elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem should pro­duce no more than 50g of CO2 for every kilo­watt hour of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed, by 2030. The Chair of the Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, John Gum­mer, recent­ly wrote to the Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change Sec­re­tary, Ed Dav­ey, to warn that George Osborne’s plans for a new gen­er­a­tion of gas pow­er could be ille­gal: “exten­sive use of unabat­ed gas-fired capac­i­ty… in 2030 and beyond would be incom­pat­i­ble with meet­ing leg­is­lat­ed car­bon bud­gets.” [iii]
  5. Fig­ures from Ofgem show that in 2011 the aver­age UK ener­gy bill rose by £150, with £100 of this due to the ris­ing cost of gas. [iv]

Facts and fig­ures on the dash for gas:

· Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change Sec­re­tary, Ed Dav­ey, has called for 20GW of gas pow­er sta­tions to be built by 2030, approx­i­mate­ly 20 new pow­er sta­tions. [v]

· He has also guar­an­teed that gas pow­er sta­tions that already have plan­ning con­sent can, if built, con­tin­ue emit­ting CO2 unabat­ed until 2045, i.e. their full life-span, by exempt­ing them from emis­sions reg­u­la­tions. [vi] There is cur­rent­ly 13GW of gas that has either recent­ly been com­plet­ed, is in con­struc­tion, or has been grant­ed plan­ning con­sent. [vii]

· Lord Turn­er, in his for­mer role as Chair of the Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, wrote to the Ener­gy Sec­re­tary to warn this would lead to “the risk that there will be too much gas-fired gen­er­a­tion instead of low car­bon invest­ment” and that the pol­i­cy could take emis­sions “beyond the lim­its implied by car­bon bud­gets.”[viii]

· Last week, EDF hiked their ener­gy prices by 10.8%, the high­est of any of the big six ener­gy com­pa­nies so far this win­ter.

· Recent polling by YouGov found that 55% of peo­ple want more wind­farms, com­pared to just 17% who want more gas pow­er sta­tions. [ix]

· An ICM poll found that more than two-thirds of peo­ple would rather have a wind tur­bine than a shale gas well near their home. [x]

· The Off­shore Wind Val­u­a­tion Group found that har­ness­ing just 29% of the prac­ti­cal off­shore renew­able resource by 2050 would gen­er­ate the elec­tric­i­ty equiv­a­lent of 1 bil­lion bar­rels of oil annu­al­ly, match­ing North Sea oil and gas pro­duc­tion and mak­ing Britain a net elec­tric­i­ty exporter. [xi]

[xi] http://offshorevaluation.org/downloads/offshore_valuation_full.pdf

No Dash for Gas 40 hours and counting: Update & Photos

Yes­ter­day more than 20 cli­mate change activists evad­ed secu­ri­ty to shut down the UK’s newest gas-fired pow­er sta­tion. 16 of them have remained in the pow­er sta­tion occu­py­ing two of its chim­neys to pre­vent it from being turned on again. They climbed two smoke­stacks at EDF Energy’s West Bur­ton plant in Not­ting­hamshire and abseiled down the insides of the chim­neys. The plant was shut down short­ly after the cam­paign­ers began the ascent. They’ve now been up there for over 40 hours, they intend to stay there until it is no longer pos­si­ble to remain. They have set up camp with tents sus­pend­ed from ropes inside the flues. They have also instal­let­ed solar pan­els and are build­ing bar­ri­cades to defend their posi­tions.

The group have come togeth­er under the ban­ner ‘No Dash For Gas’, from across the coun­try to take action against the new wave of invest­ment in gas. Prof­it-hun­gry cor­po­ra­tions have been suc­cess­ful in lob­by­ing politi­cians to replace coal with gas as the new back­bone to our high­ly-pol­lut­ing and inse­cure ener­gy infra­struc­ture, whilst doing noth­ing to tack­le cli­mate change or ris­ing ener­gy bills.

For as long as we have an eco­nom­ic sys­tem dri­ven by prof­it, our ener­gy sys­tem will con­tin­ue to dri­ve us towards cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change. We’re here to fight back against an eco­log­i­cal­ly irre­versible deci­sion to con­tin­ue with a fos­sil-fuel pow­ered ener­gy sys­tem despite the fact that renew­able tech­nolo­gies are capa­ble of pow­er­ing a sus­tain­able future. The effects of anthro­pogenic cli­mate change have been more wide­spread and more severe this year than any so far on record – the arc­tic melt smashed through all pre­vi­ous records, the drought in the USA has sparked the begin­ning of a world­wide food cri­sis and there has been a marked increase in extreme weath­er events across the globe.

This action is one of many that have tak­en place this year as part of a renewed effort by activists across the UK to take action against cli­mate change and the eco­nom­ic sys­tem dri­ving it. Dur­ing our time up the chim­ney we want to con­nect with groups and organ­i­sa­tions who share our belief that the time to take rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change is now; and rad­i­cal action stretch­es from find­ing ways for com­mu­ni­ties to adapt and be resilient to cli­mate change, to stand­ing up to the vest­ed eco­nom­ic inter­ests that are pre­vent­ing the tran­si­tion to an eco­log­i­cal­ly viable and more humane soci­ety.

 

 

 

 

 

 

West Bur­ton pow­er sta­tion in Not­ting­hamshire is being tar­get­ed because it’s one of the first in a new gen­er­a­tion of high­ly pol­lut­ing gas plants planned for the UK. The Coali­tion Gov­ern­ment recent­ly announced it intends to give the green light to as many as 20 new gas plants—a move that would crash Britain’s car­bon tar­gets, con­tribute to the cli­mate cri­sis and push up bills.

Keep in touch with lat­est devel­op­ments by fol­low­ing us on twit­ter: @nodashforgas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Protest camp on top of chim­ney

 

 

 

Zombie Roads — Hastings

A Combe Haven Defend­ers protest against not only the Bex­hill-Hast­ings Link Road, but all the ‘zom­bie road’ plans pre­vi­ous­ly believed to be dead and buried but res­ur­rect­ed by the UK coali­tion gov­ern­ment.

A Combe Haven Defend­ers protest against not only the Bex­hill-Hast­ings Link Road, but all the ‘zom­bie road’ plans pre­vi­ous­ly believed to be dead and buried but res­ur­rect­ed by the UK coali­tion gov­ern­ment.

Combe Haven Defend­ers protest­ed in the streets of Hast­ings today, cul­mi­nat­ing in a die-in out­side the offices of local MP Amber Rudd, who is fer­vent­ly in favour of the Bex­hill-Hast­ings Link Road which will destroy the beau­ti­ful Combe Haven Val­ley if it is built next year.

The Zom­bie Roads, pre­vi­ous­ly believed to be dead and buried but res­ur­rect­ed by the UK coali­tion gov­ern­ment, did meet with some resis­tance, how­ev­er.…

No Dash For Gas: Campaigners shut down UK’s newest gas plant

Ear­ly on Mon­day 29th Octo­ber, fif­teen peo­ple scaled the chim­neys of West Bur­ton gas-fired pow­er sta­tion, shut­ting it down and halt­ing fur­ther con­struc­tion. West Bur­ton is one of the first of up to 20 new gas-fired pow­er sta­tions the Gov­ern­ment has planned.

Ear­ly on Mon­day 29th Octo­ber, fif­teen peo­ple scaled the chim­neys of West Bur­ton gas-fired pow­er sta­tion, shut­ting it down and halt­ing fur­ther con­struc­tion. West Bur­ton is one of the first of up to 20 new gas-fired pow­er sta­tions the Gov­ern­ment has planned.

The new ‘dash for gas’ will leave us depen­dent on a high­ly pol­lut­ing and increas­ing­ly expen­sive fos­sil fuel for decades to come. It would make even our mod­est car­bon reduc­tion tar­gets impos­si­ble to hit, and cause house­hold ener­gy bills to soar even fur­ther. While ener­gy com­pa­nies prof­it, our chances of a secure and sus­tain­able future are slip­ping away.

This action is there­fore in defence of the glob­al com­mons, which are under sus­tained attack by pol­lut­ing fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies. We are here to chal­lenge cor­po­rate pow­er and the rush to fur­ther ingrain an ener­gy sys­tem that puts short term prof­its of the few, above the col­lec­tive needs of the many.

Replac­ing our out­dat­ed ener­gy infra­struc­ture with clean alter­na­tives will gen­er­ate hun­dreds of thou­sands of jobs. The tech­nol­o­gy is already pow­er­ing thou­sands of homes across the UK, and enjoys over­whelm­ing pub­lic sup­port.

This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to wrest pow­er from a car­tel of ener­gy com­pa­nies, and back into the hands of com­mu­ni­ties.   The dash for gas makes no sense for any­one except the big ener­gy com­pa­nies. We need a clean­er, more resilient and eco­nom­i­cal­ly just ener­gy sys­tem — and we’re here to fight for it. This is the new bat­tle­ground for our ener­gy future.

Climbers abseil down inside of chim­neys and halt con­struc­tion

 

This morn­ing, more than twen­ty cli­mate change cam­paign­ers evad­ed secu­ri­ty to shut down the UK’s newest gas-fired pow­er sta­tion. They have climbed two smoke­stacks at EDF’s West Bur­ton plant in Not­ting­hamshire and have abseiled down the insides of the chim­neys. They are now set­ting up camp in tents sus­pend­ed from ropes inside the flues. As long as they hold their posi­tion above the fur­naces the plant is unable to oper­ate.

The occu­pa­tion fires the start­ing gun on a huge nation­wide bat­tle over Britain’s ener­gy future, with activists deter­mined to stop gov­ern­ment plans for a new dash for gas. They are call­ing instead for a high-tech car­bon-free elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem.

The night-time incur­sion was launched at 2am when the raiders got through the secu­ri­ty fence. Under cov­er of dark­ness fif­teen of them crossed the expanse to the chim­neys then split into two groups and began the 300ft climb to the top. They are now build­ing bar­ri­cades to defend their posi­tions. They have enough sup­plies with them to last at least a week and say they’re in it for the long haul.

The plant was shut down short­ly after the cam­paign­ers began the ascent. A fur­ther team remained on the ground to liaise with the plant’s man­agers. Before launch­ing the protest they engaged in exten­sive con­sul­ta­tion with an expert engi­neer and each under­went inten­sive safe­ty train­ing.

 

West Bur­ton pow­er sta­tion in Not­ting­hamshire is being tar­get­ed because it’s one of the first in a new gen­er­a­tion of high­ly pol­lut­ing gas plants planned for the UK. The Coali­tion Gov­ern­ment recent­ly announced it intends to give the green light to as many as 20 new gas plants – a move that would crash Britain’s car­bon tar­gets, con­tribute to the cli­mate cri­sis and push up bills.

Anneka Kel­ly is one of the activists occu­py­ing the chim­ney. Speak­ing on a mobile phone she said:

“Ener­gy bills are going through the roof, peo­ple are get­ting flood­ed out of their homes, we’re see­ing droughts across the world but the ener­gy com­pa­nies are mak­ing a killing. We’re here because we want an elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem that doesn’t cause our world to warm and our bills to rise ever high­er. Gas is expen­sive and high­ly pol­lut­ing, but if the Gov­ern­ment gets its way we’ll be reliant on it for decades. Instead we should be invest­ing in clean high-tech renew­ables that slash pol­lu­tion and in the long run will cost a lot less.”

Con­trary to claims by min­is­ters and the indus­try, gas is a dirty fuel that pos­es an unac­cept­able threat to the envi­ron­ment. It’s also expen­sive — offi­cial fig­ures from Ofgem show that the aver­age UK ener­gy bill rose £150 last year, with £100 of that due to ris­ing whole­sale gas prices. Only last week EDF raised their prices, fol­low­ing most of the oth­er major com­pa­nies and plung­ing even more peo­ple into fuel pover­ty. Mean­while high-tech renew­able sys­tems are rapid­ly com­ing down in price, mean­ing that soon they will be cheap­er, while com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try are turn­ing their back on the Big Six ener­gy com­pa­nies in favour of coop­er­a­tive com­mu­ni­ty ener­gy schemes.

Ewa Jasiewicz is on top of one of the chim­neys. She said:

“A new dash for gas will leave the UK utter­ly reliant on this dirty expen­sive fuel for decades to come. Our ener­gy sys­tem is being run by a car­tel of cor­po­ra­tions that has this gov­ern­ment in its pock­et. As long as we have an eco­nom­ic sys­tem dri­ven by prof­it, we will have an ener­gy sys­tem that ignores the needs of those suf­fer­ing most from cli­mate change and ris­ing ener­gy bills. With a quar­ter of the UK’s out­dat­ed ener­gy infra­struc­ture need­ing to be replaced, we have a once-in-a-gen­er­a­tion oppor­tu­ni­ty to invest in renew­ables that could gen­er­ate hun­dreds of thou­sands of jobs, rad­i­cal­ly cut emis­sions of car­bon diox­ide and sta­bilise ener­gy bills. Clean green tech­nol­o­gy is already pow­er­ing thou­sands of homes across the UK, and enjoys over­whelm­ing pub­lic sup­port.”

Notes to edi­tors: · West Bur­ton gas pow­er sta­tion is a 1,300MW Com­bined Cycle Gas Tur­bine (CCGT) plant, cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion in Not­ting­hamshire. · It is com­prised of three tur­bine hous­es and chim­neys, labelled Units 1, 2 and 3. Unit 2 is com­plete and is oper­at­ing at almost full capac­i­ty. Units 1 and 3 are fur­ther behind, with Unit 1 clos­er to com­ple­tion than 3. · When com­plete, the new CCGT plant will emit approx­i­mate­ly 4.5 mil­lion tonnes CO2 per year when oper­at­ing at full capac­i­ty. This is more than the annu­al emis­sions of Paraguay.[i] · The Gov­ern­men­t’s inde­pen­dent cli­mate advis­ers, the Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, have called for our elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem to be almost entire­ly car­bon free by 2030.[ii] They have defined this as mean­ing that our elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem should pro­duce no more than 50g of CO2 for every kilo­watt hour of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed, by 2030. · The Chair of the Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, John Gum­mer, recent­ly wrote to the Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change Sec­re­tary, Ed Dav­ey, to warn that George Osborne’s plans for a new gen­er­a­tion of gas pow­er could be ille­gal: “exten­sive use of unabat­ed gas-fired capac­i­ty… in 2030 and beyond would be incom­pat­i­ble with meet­ing leg­is­lat­ed car­bon budgets.”[iii] · Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change Sec­re­tary, Ed Dav­ey, has called for 20GW of gas pow­er sta­tions to be built by 2030, approx­i­mate­ly 20 new pow­er sta­tions. [iv] · He has also guar­an­teed that gas pow­er sta­tions that already have plan­ning con­sent can, if built, con­tin­ue emit­ting CO2 unabat­ed until 2045, i.e. their full life-span, by exempt­ing them from emis­sions regulations.[v] There is cur­rent­ly 13GW of gas that has either recent­ly been com­plet­ed, is in con­struc­tion, or has been grant­ed plan­ning consent.[vi] · Lord Turn­er, in his for­mer role as Chair of the Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, wrote to the Ener­gy Sec­re­tary to warn this would lead to “the risk that there will be too much gas-fired gen­er­a­tion instead of low car­bon invest­ment” and that the pol­i­cy could take emis­sions “beyond the lim­its implied by car­bon budgets.”[vii] · Fig­ures from Ofgem show that in 2011 the aver­age UK ener­gy bill rose by £150, with £100 of this due to the ris­ing cost of gas. [viii] · Last week, EDF hiked their ener­gy prices by 10.8%, the high­est of any of the big six ener­gy com­pa­nies so far this win­ter. · Recent polling by YouGov found that 55% of peo­ple want more wind­farms, com­pared to just 17% who want more gas pow­er sta­tions. [ix] · An ICM poll found that more than two-thirds of peo­ple would rather have a wind tur­bine than a shale gas well near their home. [x] · The Off­shore Wind Val­u­a­tion Group found that har­ness­ing just 29% of the prac­ti­cal off­shore renew­able resource by 2050 would gen­er­ate the elec­tric­i­ty equiv­a­lent of 1 bil­lion bar­rels of oil annu­al­ly, match­ing North Sea oil and gas pro­duc­tion and mak­ing Britain a net elec­tric­i­ty exporter. [xi] [i] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2012/jun/21/world-carbon-emissions-league-table-country [ii] http://www.theccc.org.uk/pdf/7980-TSO%20Book%20Chap%205.pdf and http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cc7ad3ee-fd8d-11e1-8e36-00144feabdc0.html#axzz27O6cJ1io [iii] http://hmccc.s3.amazonaws.com/EMR%20letter%20-%20September%2012.pdf [iv] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/28/gas-fired-power-stations-uk?INTCMP=SRCH [v] http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn12_025/pn12_025.aspx [vi] http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/meeting-energy-demand/energy-security/3425-statutory-security-of-supply-report-2011.pdf [vii] http://downloads.theccc.org.uk.s3.amazonaws.com/Letters/EdwardDaveyMP_Letter270312.pdf [viii] http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Markets/RetMkts/rmr/smr/Documents1/SMR%20update%2028–03-12.pdf [ix] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/30/germany-renewable-energy-revolution [x] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/23/wind-shale-gas-icm-poll [xi] http://offshorevaluation.org/downloads/offshore_valuation_full.pdf

(France) La ZAD prepares for another week of eviction NON A LA AEROPORT

In La ZAD, a zone occu­pied to stop the con­struc­tion of a new air­port for Nantes, the evic­tion looks set to con­tin­ue from tomor­row. La Saulce is now evictable and it is pos­si­ble the police will also tar­get some of the places that require spe­cial forces to evict tree­hous­es and such. Call­out for sol­i­dar­i­ty actions against VINCI, the com­pa­ny who will be con­struct­ing. Call­out for peo­ple here to help. All means to increase aware­ness.

The police have been evict­ing la ZAD for two weeks now, only stop­ping for lunch­break and the week­ends. and the nights.
We are still expect­ing them to return tomor­row to con­tin­ue. Theyve been pass­ing by with the heli­copter today, hav­ing a look around. Since Sat­ur­day night la saulce has become legal­ly evictable. La secherie won an appeal in court, and is now not evictable till decem­ber, and la rosier also is not evictable til the mid­dle of novem­ber.
But it seems like­ly they will come next week for the places they can already evict, and havent already, most­ly la saulce, sabot, and the oth­er cab­ins that dont have a real ‘house’ on the prop­er­ty.
There is a lot more info on the web­site  http://www.zad.nadir.org if you dont read french you can change the langue to eng­lish.
get in con­tact if you want to come over, or just arrive
or do some­thing in your place, the com­pa­ny which build the aero­port is called VINCI (  http://stopvinci.noblogs.org/ ) and they have many things every­where. They are also respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of the khim­ki for­est (  http://www.khimkiforest.org/ ) in rus­sia for the con­struc­tion of a high­way and the evic­tion of the protest camp there. There has already been a lot of stuff done to humil­i­ate them in the last weeks it is very cheer­ing.
Let every­one know.
The resis­tance wont end with evic­tion.
Need peo­ple to help with reoc­cu­pa­tion.
Peace and love.

(USA) LOGGING COMPANY HIT AGAIN

anony­mous report:

“Gilliar­di Log­ging and Con­struc­tion have not got­ten the mes­sage. so we poi­soned one of their semi-trucks, car­ry­ing a vicious wood-chip­per. the evict­ed hawks and owls will be pleased.”

anony­mous report:

“Gilliar­di Log­ging and Con­struc­tion have not got­ten the mes­sage. so we poi­soned one of their semi-trucks, car­ry­ing a vicious wood-chip­per. the evict­ed hawks and owls will be pleased.”

EF! Winter Moot 2013: 22–24th February, near Preston

A week­end get-togeth­er for peo­ple involved in eco­log­i­cal direct action, from fight­ing open­cast coal, frack­ing, GM, nuclear pow­er to road build­ing. There’ll be dis­cus­sions and cam­paign plan­ning – with the empha­sis on the tac­tics and strate­gies we use, com­mu­ni­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty and sus­tain­able activism.

A week­end get-togeth­er for peo­ple involved in eco­log­i­cal direct action, from fight­ing open­cast coal, frack­ing, GM, nuclear pow­er to road build­ing. There’ll be dis­cus­sions and cam­paign plan­ning – with the empha­sis on the tac­tics and strate­gies we use, com­mu­ni­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty and sus­tain­able activism. This year we’ll be in Lan­cashire…

 

Update: full trans­port details and pro­gramme at link below.

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