Greenpeace Blog

Greetings from the black hole: protesters at Ffos-y-Fran open cast pit in South Wales

Climate change campaigners marked the third annual "Fossil Fool's Day" on Tuesday with a series of protests around the world highlighting the need for us all to reduce the amount of carbon we burn. Here in the UK the focus was very much on coal, and sending a message to ministers that if new coal plants like Kingsnorth are built, they'll ruin any realistic chance that we have of meeting our commitments to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and represent a devastating failure of the government's resolve to tackle climate change. Key events included:

• the shutting down one of Europe's largest open cast coal mines at Ffos-y-Fran in South Wales;
• Earth First! activists blockading the UK's largest gas Terminal at Bacton in Norfolk;
• People and Planet building a 12ft high model of a coal-fired power station in Parliament Square;

The undercover experts down the road at the Environmental Investigation Agency have released this short video exposing the trade in illegal timber from the forests of Laos. Shady deals and corruption allow large amounts of dodgy lumber to be processed in Vietnam and Thailand, where it's made into products like garden furniture for export to (among other places) the UK. Yet another reason why we need laws in Europe to ban the import of illegal timber.

Roll up, roll up! The climate circus is in town. Confronted with melting ice caps, unprecedented species extinction, droughts and extreme weather, climate change threatens our very survival. The fools at the head of the fossil fuel empire continue to plunder the earth, with the governments as willing court jesters at their side.

They would have us believe that we can escape climate change with techno-fixes, market mechanisms and offset schemes - all technocratic acrobatics that distract us from the truth: the only real solution to climate change is to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

Actions will be happening all over the world. Here in the UK there'll be a protest against new coal-fired power stations. From 8am London World Development Movement groups are co-ordinating a protest outside the Department for Enterprise Business and Regulatory Reform (or Dberr) to laugh at the minister for business, John Hutton. Hutton is currently set to make a right fool of the government's climate policy if he signs off on EON's new Kingsnorth power station.

Energy minister John Hutton has been caught trying to sabotage the EU renewable energy targets again. A minister from Hutton's department has been working in Brussels to try and redefine what constitutes 'renewable energy.' After last year's fiasco when Hutton’s department were seen trying to wreck EU renewable targets altogether, now the business minister Lady Vadera has been filmed trying to water them down at an EU energy council meeting.