15 November 2007 - New
South Wales, Australia — Before dawn this
morning our activists occupied and took
peaceful direct action to shut down a coal-fired
power plant in Australia - locking onto
the conveyor system to prevent coal from
feeding the plant.
Other activists hung a huge banner reading
"Climate change starts here",
and a third team climbed on the roof of
the main building to paint the message "Coal
Kills".
Energy campaigner John Hepburn, who was
on the climb team, talks about why he took
action:
The Munmorah coal-fired power station,
110km northeast of Sydney, is the oldest
in New South Wales and one of the most inefficient
in the country.
"We need to cut carbon emissions right
now. It’s not complicated," said Hepburn.
"If we installed solar hot water heaters
in half of NSW’s households we could switch
off Munmorah and cut 1.5 million tonnes
of CO2."
The protest was timed just one week before
Australian federal elections, to highlight
that both political parties back policies
which would see greenhouse emissions increase.
Meanwhile scientists meet in Spain
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) is meeting to finalise the
‘Synthesis Report’ that brings together
the current scientific understanding on
climate change and will guide climate change
policymaking over the next few years.
"In less than three weeks time, negotiators
from governments around the world will meet
in Bali to decide the next steps they need
to take to protect the climate," said
Stephanie Tunmore, one of our policy experts.
"The urgency of the science must be
front and foremost in their minds and must
drive their decision-making. The report
being finalised this week is central to
that."
The Bali talks were postponed specifically
so that this IPCC report could be finished.
In the meantime, the IPCC has been awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize, which it will receive
at a ceremony in Oslo on 10 December (the
10th anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol).
Earlier this year, the IPCC concluded that:
- Most of the observed warming over the
past half-century is caused by human activities
(greater than 90 per cent certainty).
- Over the next decades the number of people
at risk of water scarcity is likely to rise
from tens of millions to billions.
- Sea level rise, storm surges and river
flooding threaten huge numbers of people
in the Asian Megadeltas such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra
(Bangladesh) and the Zhujiang (Pearl River).
- Projected reductions in food production
capacity in the poorest parts of the world
would bring more hunger and misery and undermine
achievement of the Millennium Development
Goals.
- Renewable energy generally has a positive
effect on energy security, employment and
on air quality.
The scientists and economists of the IPCC
already know how precarious the situation
is. But policymakers still aren't acting.
To show them how it's done, our activists
blockaded the unloading of a 145,000 tonne
coal shipment at the port of Tarragona,
just south of Barcelona.
Some activists locked onto the unloading
equipment while others painted, "El
carbon destruye el clima" on the ship
and more occupied the coal pile with a giant
banner.
In the last two days, dozens of people
have been arrested at these actions, but
it's only a start. The debate is over, time
for the energy revolution to begin.
