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Campaign Against Climate Change |
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Campaign Against Climate Change |
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Campaign Against Climate Change on:
Campaignagainst Climate Change is part of the Stop Climate Chaos coalition.
Campaign against Climate Change
Top Floor
5 Caledonian Road
London N1 9DX
+44 (0)2078339311
+44 (0)7903316331
info@campaigncc.org
CCC is always looking for volunteers of all kinds: if youthink you can help at all please contact info@campaigncc.org .There are also the following vacant volunteer posts : Finance & FundraisingManager, International Outreach Assistant and Events Coordinator .
Join the Mili-band
Saturday 4th July 2009
The fight against Kingsnorth and New coal goes on ! We're demanding No New Coal without 100% CCS from the start !
Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband has invited people to mobilise to demand action on climate change so we are doing just that On Saturday July 4, thousands of people will come together to form what is being called "the Mili-band" which will be a human chain surrounding Kingsnorth power station in Kent, to renew our demand (see below) that no new new coal-fired power plant is built here unless it has CCCS working at 100% (or very close) from the start.
Campaign against Climate Change supporters will be meeting at 9.00 -9.15 am at Victoria Station to take the train to Rochester where there will be a shuttle service to join the Miliband at Kingsnorth
The timetable for the day then looks like this :
| 9.30-11am | Shuttle buses ferry people from Rochester station to the event centre |
| 10-12am | Assembly on site and registration |
| 12-1pm | Groups set off to take up their positions in the Mili-band |
| 1.30pm | Photographs and video of the Mili-band |
| 2pm | Finish and return to events centre |
| 2.30pm | Live music on stage |
| 3.00 | Summer fête starts |
| 3pm-5pm | Shuttle buses return people to Rochester station |
If you have to come by car you need to park in Rochester and get the shuttle bus becasue there is no on-site parking for private cars at Kingsnorth
For any group hiring their own minibus, please arrive at the Kingsnorth holding site no later than 11.30 (maps available soon). Parking for minibuses must be arranged either by contacting Will Tucker on 0121 634 3611, or emailing him at wtucker@oxfam.org.uk
If you are coming from outside London coaches are being organised by Oxfam from : Birmingham (8am), Bristol (8am), Cardiff (7.30am), Coventry (8am) and Oxford (9am). You can book a coach place on the Oxfam website here
The suggested donation for the return coach journey is £10 per person. Coaches will arrive at Kingsnorth between 10.30am and 11.30am and leave at 4pm.
After the 'Miliband' itself there will be a big summer fete, with stalls, music and plenty to do for kids - as well as some great speakers. So this will be a family-friendly, fun, event. So bring your family, your friends etc... not to forget outdoor gear (appropriate to the weather), some water and a picnic if you fancy, though there should be some food available.
Remember that this is to show Ed Miliband - and the national media - that the UK won't be able to show real leadership at Copenhagen in December if we are building new coal fired power stations at home.
FULL SOLUTIONS
not HALF SOLUTIONS
NO NEW COAL without 100% CCS
Demonstration, 6.00pm Thursday 30th April, opposite Downing Street, Whitehall
Jean Lambert MEP (Green Party, London) addressed demonstrators (see photo left) as wll as Joss Garman from Greenpeace.
The government's decision to ban new unabated coal-fired power stations represents a big move for the government in a green direction, and we congratulate them for that..But building new coal-fired power stations without 100% CCS (or close) is a recipe for disaster. Does anyone think the government will close down these new power plants if full scale CCS is found to be unworkable or hopelessly uneconomic ?
And even in the - arguably rosy case scenario - that the four power stations with 20 -25 % CCS are successfully upgraded to 100% after 15 years they will still emit up to 275 m tonnes of CO2 -around 50% of the UK's annual emissions. The latest science makes it clear that we cannot afford those kinds of levels of emissions if we are to have any half decent chance of preventing catastrophic climate change (see eg www.climatesafety.org ). We cannot afford to get it just half right in the fight against climate change. The government must be told there should be no new coal-fired power stations unless they can be guaranteed to have 100% CCS from the start.
This is also about the kind of lead we're giving to other nations in the run-up to Copenhagen . We should be using CCS to reduce emissions from existing coal-fired power stations, not as an excuse to build more. This could just encourage a rash of new coal build around the world on the basis of some vague promise about CCS in the future.
The demonstration featured 2 messages for the government - one on a green poster to congratulate them on banning unabated coal, the other on a carbon-black one - to demand that they go the whole way and ban new coal without 100% CCS.
March from Rochester to Kingsnorth
Sunday August 3rd 2008
Organised by Campaign aganst Climate Change and Kingsnorth Climate Action Medway (KCAM).
Hundreds gathered in Rochester for a rally in the high street followed by a 7 mile march to Kingsnorth power station, to demand NO NEW COAL - and no new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth. This was a great showpiece event to help launch the Camp for Climate Action and generally emphasise
the critical importance of the decision over Kingsnorth and the need to stop and reverse the expansion of coal-burning for power around the world. The march was joined by the Climate Camp "caravan" which had spent the previous week making its way from Heathrow, the site of last year's climate camp.
Speakers included Ashok Sinha, Executive Director of Stop Climate Chaos, Caroline Lucas MEP ( Green Party principal speaker), Sean Furey, Deputy Director of the Kent Branch, Campaign to Protect Rural England, Benedict Southworth Executive Director of the World Development Movement, James Lloyd of People and Planet, Penny Eastwood from the Camp for Climate Action, Maureen Ruparel Lib Dem Medway councillor, Steve Wilkins from Medway Trade Council, James Willis from Kingsnorth Climate Action Medway and Phil Thornhill from the Campaign against Climate Change.
The day began with a series of short but punchy speeches delivered from a soapbox, near the Blue Boar lane car park, on Rochester High Street. There was a great mix of 'national' and local speakers - making for a genuinely varied perspective on the issue. Then the cavalcade gathered to march down Rochester High street led by 2 "dinosaurs", the (7 foot square) globe-in-a-greenhouse, CCC banner, Caravan banner, Caravan polar bear, all manner of cycle-drawn paraphernalia and an endless parade of dinosaurs...(well, dinosaur posters..)... emphasising the theme that unabated coal-burning power stations should belong to prehistory !
The march numbers held up well over the 7 mile route - we even gained a few as well as losing some. There was a quite surprising amount of sympathetic support from local people - though also we have to report some shouted abuse from the head-in-sand brigade whose courage seemed to be mainly of the dutch variety given that they seemed to be concentrated at certain drinking establishments. All the while the distant looming sillhouette of the power station grew closer untill we finally gathered together at one of its subsidiary gates - under the watchful eyes of a very considerable police presence. There were brief final speches and notices before we dispersed - many going 'en masse' with the 'caravan' to the Climate Camp - others being shuttled back to Rochester station. At this point the weather broke ..but reinforced our appreciation for the clement weather up till now...
The media coverage for the march was excellent - with some TV, lots of radio, before during & after the march, pictures in the Metro, Financial times, London Paper, lots of lcoal papers etc...etc...
During the following week the Climate Camp made a very great splash in the media, of course, very succesfully highlighting the issue - the insanity of building new coal-fired power stations in the midst of the climate crisis. The CCC had a stall in camp advertsing the December National climate March and Global Day of Action and many CCC members were involved with the camp. The situation with the police was especially fraught at this year's camp (cue endless stories, personal anecdotes....etc..) but a mixture of determination and restraint saw the camp through, sticking to its goal of highlighting the issue through Direct Action. Many of Sunday's marchers found themselves back at the gates of the power station just under a week later on the Saturday Climate Camp Day of Action.
Humorous Aside : Amongst the dangerous items seized by the police were 2 dinosaur costumes !!! ( presumably under the little known ordinance of 1384, article 3 para 2 "wilfully causing alarm by impersonating a prehistoric animal etc.." or the Statute of Silly Costumes 1493, "conspiracy to masquerade as an evolutionary anachronism...etc etc.." ).
Kingsnorth and New Coal
See pics from April 1st 2008 demo here.
The new threat to the global climate coming from the UK.
There has been no new coal-fired power station in the UK for 30 years but now it looks like we are about to see the first of a whole new wave of coal-fired power stations, at Kingsnorth in Kent.
Coal produces more CO2 than oil or gas. Coal is much the biggest single fossil fuel source of greenhouse gases globally. It was only the "dash for gas" ( away from coal) in the 90s which has allowed the UK to reach its 'Kyoto targets'. (In fact subsequent to the 'dash' and under the Labour government UK emissions of CO2 have actually risen. )
A justification used for new coal is that a new technology called CCS ("Carbon Capture and Storage") will allow us trap the carbon from burning coal before it can reach the atmosphere. This technology will be really great if anybody can make it work (safely) but so far unfortunately no-one has got anywhere near it (see here ).
Building a whole new generation of coal-fired power stations represents a huge leap backwards - it will lock us into a massive increase in emissions for decades to come. This is just the kind of disastrous big investment decision that we really don't need if we want the UK to play any serious part in the global struggle to prevent the catastrophic destablisation of the world's climate. Its no use Brown giving us promises in the shape of the Climate Bill ( see here ) if he fails to adopt policies that give us any chance of reaching the emissions reductions targets, set by that Bill. It is currently coal, perhaps more than anything else that is wrecking the world's climate - in particular the huge expansion of coal-fired power stations in India and China. We are in no position to ask these countries to constrain their expansion into coal if we are doing it ourselves. This is a recipe for global catastrophe !
The new coal-fired power plant at Kingsnorth is planned by E-on, a giant German energy corporation. They have recently got planning permission from Medway Council and and now that application is sitting on Brown's desk awaiting approval. Greenpeace have uncovered correspondence between E-on and the government that suggests they are going to get it : see here.
To email John Hutton, the Business minister who is pressing for the new coal-fired power plant at Kingsnorth, and demand that there is a public enquiry before this is allowed to go ahead click here
For more info :
See what leading climate scientist and director of Nasa's Goddard Institute James Hansen has to say about Kingsnorth and new coal here.
See what The World Developmemt Movement has to say about Kingsnorth here.
See what WWF has to say about Kingsnorth here.
See what Christian Aid has to say about Kingsnorth here.
Not only is the government pushing plans to build a new wave of coal-fired power stations - it is also also pushing renewed efforts to get the stuff out of the ground - even at a heavy environmental and social cost.
The Uk's biggest opencast coal mine is now being dug at Ffos-y-fran, near Merthyr Tidfyl, just 36 metres away from nearby homes....
see more here.
Demonstration on "Fossil Fool's Day" Tuesday April 1st 2008 at 12 noon, Parliament Square.
Campaign against Climate Change joined 'People and Planet' (the student environmentalists' organisation) in exposing the foolery of building a new coal-fired power plant at Kingsnoth and reverting to dinosaur coal technology just when we urgently need to reduce emissions.
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 Some familiar CCC faces (and a familiar CCC t shirt) at the demo, with a message for the people across the road. (And those fossil fools again !) |
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On Friday 25th January CCC took part in a what may be the first shot in a long battle - a small demonstration outside E-on's London offices at 100 Pall Mall, near Trafalgar Square. This was organised by by LSE students, and also attended by WDM ("World Development Movement")
The Campaign against Climate Change is pioneering a
Global Climate Campaign
Climate Protestors in Osasca, Brazil. See more pics of the Global Day of Action here
See more here.
CLIMATE EMERGENCY - read more here.
