Zac Goldsmith outside Maidstone Crown Court © Rezac/Greenpeace
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First, a quick announcement: following Jim Hansen (the world's leading climate scientist) yesterday and Zac Goldsmith (environmental advisor to the Conservatives and former Ecologist editor) today, tomorrow Inuit leader Aqqaluk Lynge will be appearing court by videolink from Greenland, as a witness for the defence in the Kingsnorth Six trial. Having seen him speak before, I'm looking forward to it.
Back to today though, when Zac Goldsmith took the stand along with the last two defendants: Will and Huw.
Goldsmith was there to give a political context to the defendants' actions and, almost immediately, he told the court that there was "a staggering mismatch between what we've heard from government and what we've seen from government in terms of policy". The key points of his evidence were:
- Despite the rhetoric, emissions have increased since 1997 - and they continue to rise. They're doing so disproportionately within the energy sector.
- On the international stage, coal is the defining challenge. Building new coal plants here in Britain will make it much harder for us to exert influence internationally, especially with China and India. There is an "obvious hypocrisy" here.
- One third of the 30 most polluting coal plants in Europe are in the UK - and the combined emissions from these 10 plants have increased by nearly 30 per cent since 1999. A new coal plant at Kingsnorth "can only exacerbate these problems".
- Power companies have received an enormous windfall of billions - one widely accepted report said that E.ON alone got £466 million - from permits to pollute (the Emissions Trading Scheme, or ETS). This cost is passed onto customers. Consumers are actually paying power companies for polluting more (my emphasis).
- There's been a "profound lack of imagination in government" when it comes to looking at energy solutions.
After Goldsmith's evidence, Will was called to the stand. Will is a photographer (Kingsnorth was "the hardest day's work I've ever done in my life," he told the jury) from a mining family in Northumberland. Taking action at Kingsnorth was a "hard option for me", he said, for pretty obvious reasons. But burning coal in the face of climate change "is absolute insanity".
Will - like most of the defendants - was questioned about what other routes he'd used to try to stop climate change, apart from nonviolent direct action. Quite a few, it turned out. He'd petitioned politicians, written to MPs, campaigned locally around Kingsnorth and been to the Climate Clinic (a fringe party conference event) several times.
After hearing Malcolm Wicks, David Miliband, Hilary Benn, John Hutton and other politicians in positions of influence speaking at various events and then watching their actual policies, Will said he became convinced that "politicians aren't brave enough to take action... We have all the technology ready to go", he said, yet the government is letting British people and British businesses down.
The last of the defendants to take the stand was Huw, who's been volunteering for Greenpeace for around 15 years and has a background in agriculture, caving, cave rescue, mountain rescue and climb training (among other things).
When asked about his motives for taking action on climate change, Huw said that, having spent a lot of time there and personally witnessing progressive climate changes like encroaching deserts, the pressure on water supplies and flooding, he was especially interested sub-Saharan Africa.
"I've witnessed people suffering starvation," he said. Huw talked about Kenyan pastoralists who lose over 90 per cent of their cattle after a succession of droughts that have been directly attributed to climate change. He'd personally seen people lose cattle, homes, crops and livelihoods after severe floods in Africa. Every tonne of CO2, he said, increases the damage globally.
So all of the defendants have now taken the stand. Tomorrow, it's the turn of the Inuit leader, Aqqaluk Lynge. More from Maidstone then.
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