Posted by jamie — 21 August 2008 at 11:12am
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Slightly later than planned (blame summer holidays and technical snaffus) but in the latest edition of our podcast we take a trip to the recent Climate Camp. Somewhere in the region of two thousand people pitched up for ten days in the shadow of Kingsnorth power station in Kent, where plans to build a new coal-fired plant are afoot - with climate change in mind, this is probably not the wisest thing to do.
In between helping with activities like shifting hay bales and washing up, we talked to some of the other people from all over the country to find out what brought them to the camp. We also caught up with Dave Douglas of the National Union of Mineworkers who was there with Arthur Scargill to get involved in the debate, plus we hear from Jim Footner, one of our campaigners working on the issue, to find out why a coal-powered future is unrealistic.
Not one, not two but at least three climate change-related happenings popped up around the country yesterday, many of them carried out by Climate Camp attendees. Although the camp is primarily focused on coal and the proposed new power station at Kingsnorth, today's activities also highlighted other climate threats such as aviation and biofuels. Here is just a taste of what's been happening:
While I've been stuck at my desk following the debates about Climate Camp police tactics, activists’
intentions and whether environmentalists are mostly ‘filthy
adulterers’ (Julie Burchill, bless), the Climate Campers have been busy
turning a quiet field into a living/working space powered by renewable energy,
and debating the future of coal, the climate change movement and the planet.
In
a pleasant grazing meadow outside Strood, the Climate Camp is open for business and
I'm here for a couple of days to see what's going on, cover it for the blog
and, more importantly, get involved.
It's
difficult to talk about the camp without touching on some of fractiousactions
of the police. Fortunately, nothing much happened and, after a frustrating period when we could all have been doing
something more constructive, the police withdrew.
This summer's Camp for Climate Action takes place next week at Kingsnorth in Kent, where German utility company E.On aims to build the UK's first coal-fired power station for decades. If the government gives the go-ahead, which could happen in October, the CO2 emissions from this one new plant would equal that of the 30 lowest emitting countries in the world combined.
Coal is the most polluting of all fossil-fuels, and if Kingsnorth is built then plans for six similar plants are likely to be approved, emitting a colossal 50 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. So this decision is crucial, which is why activists from all over the country and around the world will be coming to make their voices heard.
Posted by jossc — 22 July 2008 at 3:31pm
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Stop Climate Chaos activists were at Kingsnorth in Kent this morning to urge the Prime Minister to abandon plans for a new generation of coal-fired power plants. They planted flags outside the existing power station as a symbol of opposition to Kingsnorth 2, a new development which, if it gets the go-ahead, will be the first new coal plant to be built in the UK for 30 years.
Developer E.ON UK plans to demolish the existing plant and replace it with a new coal-fired unit that is 20 per cent cleaner. But coal is the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fuel known to mankind, and despite the industry's efforts to talk up 'clean coal' technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS), such developments are in their infancy and would not be available for at least a decade, even if they can be made to work.
Today, the leaders of the UK's largest coalition dedicated to stopping climate change warned Gordon Brown that a green light for a new unabated coal plant at Kingsnorth will lock Britain into decades of spiralling emissions and severely undermine the government's ability to meet its climate targets.