Thirty climate campaigners today stopped a coal train on its way to Drax power station in Yorkshire, Britain's single largest source of CO2 emissions. Dressed in white overalls and canary outfits, they used safety signals to stop the train at a bridge on a branch line used exclusively by the power station, before jumping aboard and shovelling coal off onto the tracks. Some used climbing ropes to suspend themselves under the bridge from the train, making it impossible to move the train while the protest continues.
This is just the latest in a series of actions organised by anti-coal groups since the government announced plans to build a new generation of coal-fired power stations and develop new open-cast mines last year. Last week the Derbyshire based Leave it in the Ground group held a protest at the headquarters of UK Coal, the developers of an open-cast at Lodge House in Derbyshire, from which they plan to extract a million tonnes of coal over the next 5 years. A few days earlier protesters blockaded largest coal-fired power plant in Wales at Aberthaw, and students from the University of Warwick marched on energy utility E.ON's Coventry HQ to protest against their plans to build a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent.
It looks as though Al Gore's question "why aren't there rings of young people blocking bulldozers, preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants?" is starting to find some traction. The third annual Fossil Fool's Day on April 1st this year saw a range of action against new coal plants and mines, including:
- the shutting down one of Europe's largest open cast coal mines at Ffos-y-Fran in South Wales;
- People and Planet building a 12ft high model of a coal-fired power station in Parliament Square;
- a "laugh-in" at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (Dberr) over plans for a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, Kent;
- in Glasgow, Fossil Fools presented their local climate change criminals with awards recognising their contribution to climate chaos;
- in Cambridge protesters targeted the Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the main financiers of climate crime.
The penny is dropping that the government and the big utilities and energy companies are not serious about tackling climate change. On the one hand, they sign up to international agreements committing the UK to reducing its CO2 emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020; on the other they embark on a series of new coal power plants and mines which, when completed, will render those 2020 targets completely unachievable.
They are relying on so-called 'clean-coal' technolgy to strip the CO2 from the coal and bury it underground - a technology which, even if it can eventually be made to work, will not be commercially available on a large scale for decades, by which time it will be too late. They are paying lip service to climate change but doing very little to minimise its impacts - and daring us to call them on it.
Fortunately, it looks as though there are now some new kids in town with different ideas, who think that that climate change impacts of coal and aviation are worth making a major fuss about, and who are not afraid to engage in a little strategic direct action to get their point across. Long may it continue. Hats off to you guys – and big love from Greenpeace.
