November 2000

Traffic jam

Saturday morning. The fuel convoy and the Greenpeace team at Ferrybridge services near Leeds.

Ironically the convoy had parked up next to a fleet of army trucks who are on route to help with the clean up of local towns and villages after the recent flooding.

Greenpeace challenges fuel blockaders and argues the case for maintaining current levels of fuel tax

Sunday

Before the convoy departed at around noon some of the Greenpeace team took their two natural gas powered vehicles to one of only 20 gas refueling points in Britain in near by Walsall.

As many parts of Britain lie under flood water, the relationship that these bouts of extreme weather have with fossil fuel pollution can no longer be separated. With more than 3000 homes and key transport networks falling foul of the flood waters, the answer can only be to change our ways, leaving coal and oil behind. If we don't, grab those sandbags because it's going to get worse.

So what? you cry, I can whip out my dinghy and pop down the local. Fun and community spirited it may be, but what many of us don't know are the underlying costs that these climatic changes have. In 1999, insurance claims wieghed in at a hefty 860 million, and this Autumn's stormy weather has already reached 500million, just think what is going to happen to your premium!

On the first day of the fuel protests Greenpeace volunteers met face to face with the protestors before their convoy set off for London, They explained to them the link between cheap petrol and diesel and increased flooding.

As the truckers and farmers gathered for their increasingly unpopular protest the Greenpeace activists told them that Greenpeace was completely opposed to any reductions in tax on oil based fuels. They made it clear that Gordon Brown's pledge to reduce tax on low sulphur fuels was not green but a recipe for runaway climate change since it would increase the use of oil based fuels.