The Independent has made the camp and the protest its front page story, this is big!

Green protesters mass to close 'Drax the Destroyer'
By Paul Vallely
Published: 31 August 2006

In the east of England the skies seem unnaturally wide. Lift your eyes from the fields of gently waving wheat and barley and there is nothing to interrupt the broad skyscape. But not in Drax. Here the largest coal-fired power station in Europe rises from the floodplains like a great beast, belching steam and gas into the air in an unending stream.

It is as a terrible beast that the plant is seen by the 600 climate change activists who have for the past week been living in a squatters' camp near by. Drax the Destroyer they call it, after a comic-book villain whose humanoid body was fashioned from the earth's soil and empowered with a malign human spirit. Today, they say, they hope to bring Drax's destruction to a halt.

Drax, which lies just to the south of the Yorkshire town of Selby, last year burned 9 million tonnes of coal. It emitted 20.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, making it the largest single polluter in the UK. It produces almost 4 per cent of the nation's CO2, as much as a quarter of all the nation's cars put together.

Which is why it has been targeted in a "mass day of action" aimed at shutting the plant down today. The authorities, determined to stop them, have flooded the area with more police than this part of the world has seen since the epoch-changing miners' strike of 1984-85.

What is happening today marks a turning point too. For it is the first large-scale direct action protest aimed at combating climate change. It could become the template for things to come.

For the past six days the 600 activists at the camp set up on farmland near the Barlow Common nature reserve have been undergoing disobedience training focusing on what they call "tools and tactics for blockading". Their plans are thought to include a mass invasion, trespassing into dangerous areas of the plant in an attempt to force the management to shut down the generators which supply seven million of the UK's homes.

Police are responding seriously to the threat to the plant. It produces 7 per cent of the nation's electricity and a shutdown could lead to power cuts.

The police presence could not be more visible. Uniformed officers in luminous yellow jackets are patrolling the perimeter fence of the power station, and also those of the nearby Eggborough and Ferrybridge power plants in an area the protesters have dubbed Megawatt Valley - a 10-mile stretch of the Humber, Ouse and Aire floodplains that houses some of the biggest power plants in Britain.

Private security guards with dogs stand sentry at the perimeters. Police officers on horseback patrol the complex. Police vans with riot visors circle the roads, as do marked police video vehicles. More are parked prominently behind hedges in the woodland all around Drax. Officers count and photograph protesters entering the Climate Action camp and, in Selby town centre, they monitor the coming and going of the camp shuttle-bus, which runs on bio-fuel.

Requests for police leave have been turned down. Officers have been drafted in from South Yorkshire, Durham and as far away as Hampshire to enforce the plant's High Court injunction banning protesters from its land and a nearby footpath. Copies of the document, with a map showing its extent, are fixed to the Drax perimeter fence at 50-yard intervals.

Today's action marks a step change in concern over climate change. Scientists and green lobby groups have been vocal in their concern that there is no bigger issue. Even measured mainstream commentators like David Attenborough have described it as the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. But until now there has been no large-scale direct action.

One of the groups behind the camp, Reclaim Power, has staged some smaller direct-action stunts. On Tuesday, 20 of its members blockaded the entrances of a nuclear power station in Hartlepool by locking themselves to welded tubes. In July, three of its members scaled a tower at Didcot power station and unfurled a 50-foot orange-and-black-protest banner.

But nothing has hitherto been done on the scale of the 600 who have gathered in the Drax camp, and campaigners claim that extra protesters will arrive today to take the numbers to 2,000.

The protesters are a wide-ranging coalition. There are smart, new tents among the travellers' benders in the camp. Many of the protesters have taken time off work to join the action. They include scientists, engineers, computer programmers, students and parents whose children are still in the school summer holidays. There was even a woman in a hijab and full Islamic dress in one of the marquees erected in the midst of the camp. "The majority have impressed us as sincere, responsible people," said the local police chief, Deputy Chief Constable Ian McPherson.

What is concerning the police is the group of anarchists at the core of the protest. Many of these are veterans of violent May Day protests, the anti-globalisation riots in Seattle and the British anti-road protests of the 1990s.

For many of these, climate change is just another battleground in the struggle against capitalism. They are not merely campaigning for low-carbon energy generation but against all economic growth. They have upped the emotional temperature with talk of "climate criminals" and comparing those who run power stations with mass murderers. Police are investigating the chopping down of poles carrying power lines at Fryston further down "megawatt valley".

None of this is going down well with the locals, for whom Drax provides 625 jobs. The chairman of Barlow Parish Council, Stephen Penn, has branded the activists, who were leafleting workers as they left the plant on Tuesday, as "eco-bullies". He has dismissed a letter sent to residents by the campaigners to explain their actions as "childish" and " insulting".

Workers at the plant are looking on somewhat bemused. Drax, they say, is the cleanest and most efficient coal-fired power station in the UK, emitting less CO2 per unit of electricity produced than other coal stations. Why are the less efficient generators not the target, they wonder?

"We are just as committed to action on climate change, but working from the inside," says Melanie Wedgbury of Drax. She has plausible responses to many of the protesters' points on Drax's legal challenge to badly-formulated current EU carbon emission levels, on how changes in government rules on Renewables Obligation Certificates have forced reductions in the co-burning of eco-friendly bio-mass fuels and on why dodgy gas and oil suppliers in Russia and the Middle East mean coal must stay part of the UK energy mix.

But today's protest, she concludes, is not about debate on detail. It is about a large symbolic gesture. On that, at any rate, many of the Climate Action protesters will agree.

Readying for eco-battle

Laura Yates Environmental activist from London

My particular concern is the need for decentralised energy. With coal-fired plants like Drax, two-thirds of the energy produced is wasted through lost heat. But because it's a long way from a centre of population that can't be harnessed because you can't transport heat very far. We need lots of small power stations near where people live. Alternative systems are well advanced in places like Denmark and the Netherlands. We're not saying shut all the plants like Drax tomorrow but we need to phase them out.

Stephen Stretton Cambridge physics graduate

Tony Blair's target on curbing emissions is based on the science of 1990 not that of 2006. This year we've seen the evidence that the Earth is becoming effectively ill. We've already reached the tipping point on the permafrost. It will come in the Amazon in the next three to five years.We need a 90 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. That means less air and car travel, electric cars, banning night flights, congestion charging, changes to domestic heating and electricity from renewable sources.

Alex Harvey Post-graduate student from London

I helped to set up the site and it's been really exciting to watch it grow into this village, with us living together sustainably. Climate change is one of the issues that I'm really concerned about so this was a natural thing for me to get involved with. It's inspiring to see people use these new technologies, like a compost toilet, and realise that it's not all bad. There's also the workshops, which combined with the action, is a chance for people to come here and hopefully they will leave with a few skills.

Matthew Robbins Post-graduate student from London

I wanted to take part in the camp because over the past few years I've taken notice of the reports in the media about climate change and you see figures like 150,000 people die each year because of climate change. Some countries are polluting very heavily and the people who suffer are largely blameless. It's actually people who have to go out and change the world. I think people are excited about the day of action against Drax because one of the main aims of the camp is to shut down the Drax power station.

Almuth Ernsting Environmental activist from Aberdeen

Since 1998 I have had a deepening sense that climate change was something really bad. I joined Friends of the Earth and did all the conventional campaigning like writing to MPs, and I still do. I think that's important. But it does not feel enough. Climate change is not just another environmental issue like GM crops. It's a life and death issue. This direct action is necessary because we've got to get the urgency across. What we're doing [against Drax] is symbolic of what everyone should be doing.

In the east of England the skies seem unnaturally wide. Lift your eyes from the fields of gently waving wheat and barley and there is nothing to interrupt the broad skyscape. But not in Drax. Here the largest coal-fired power station in Europe rises from the floodplains like a great beast, belching steam and gas into the air in an unending stream.

It is as a terrible beast that the plant is seen by the 600 climate change activists who have for the past week been living in a squatters' camp near by. Drax the Destroyer they call it, after a comic-book villain whose humanoid body was fashioned from the earth's soil and empowered with a malign human spirit. Today, they say, they hope to bring Drax's destruction to a halt.

Drax, which lies just to the south of the Yorkshire town of Selby, last year burned 9 million tonnes of coal. It emitted 20.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, making it the largest single polluter in the UK. It produces almost 4 per cent of the nation's CO2, as much as a quarter of all the nation's cars put together.

Which is why it has been targeted in a "mass day of action" aimed at shutting the plant down today. The authorities, determined to stop them, have flooded the area with more police than this part of the world has seen since the epoch-changing miners' strike of 1984-85.

What is happening today marks a turning point too. For it is the first large-scale direct action protest aimed at combating climate change. It could become the template for things to come.

For the past six days the 600 activists at the camp set up on farmland near the Barlow Common nature reserve have been undergoing disobedience training focusing on what they call "tools and tactics for blockading". Their plans are thought to include a mass invasion, trespassing into dangerous areas of the plant in an attempt to force the management to shut down the generators which supply seven million of the UK's homes.

Police are responding seriously to the threat to the plant. It produces 7 per cent of the nation's electricity and a shutdown could lead to power cuts.

The police presence could not be more visible. Uniformed officers in luminous yellow jackets are patrolling the perimeter fence of the power station, and also those of the nearby Eggborough and Ferrybridge power plants in an area the protesters have dubbed Megawatt Valley - a 10-mile stretch of the Humber, Ouse and Aire floodplains that houses some of the biggest power plants in Britain.

Private security guards with dogs stand sentry at the perimeters. Police officers on horseback patrol the complex. Police vans with riot visors circle the roads, as do marked police video vehicles. More are parked prominently behind hedges in the woodland all around Drax. Officers count and photograph protesters entering the Climate Action camp and, in Selby town centre, they monitor the coming and going of the camp shuttle-bus, which runs on bio-fuel.

Requests for police leave have been turned down. Officers have been drafted in from South Yorkshire, Durham and as far away as Hampshire to enforce the plant's High Court injunction banning protesters from its land and a nearby footpath. Copies of the document, with a map showing its extent, are fixed to the Drax perimeter fence at 50-yard intervals.

Today's action marks a step change in concern over climate change. Scientists and green lobby groups have been vocal in their concern that there is no bigger issue. Even measured mainstream commentators like David Attenborough have described it as the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. But until now there has been no large-scale direct action.

One of the groups behind the camp, Reclaim Power, has staged some smaller direct-action stunts. On Tuesday, 20 of its members blockaded the entrances of a nuclear power station in Hartlepool by locking themselves to welded tubes. In July, three of its members scaled a tower at Didcot power station and unfurled a 50-foot orange-and-black-protest banner.

But nothing has hitherto been done on the scale of the 600 who have gathered in the Drax camp, and campaigners claim that extra protesters will arrive today to take the numbers to 2,000.

The protesters are a wide-ranging coalition. There are smart, new tents among the travellers' benders in the camp. Many of the protesters have taken time off work to join the action. They include scientists, engineers, computer programmers, students and parents whose children are still in the school summer holidays. There was even a woman in a hijab and full Islamic dress in one of the marquees erected in the midst of the camp. "The majority have impressed us as sincere, responsible people," said the local police chief, Deputy Chief Constable Ian McPherson.

What is concerning the police is the group of anarchists at the core of the protest. Many of these are veterans of violent May Day protests, the anti-globalisation riots in Seattle and the British anti-road protests of the 1990s.

For many of these, climate change is just another battleground in the struggle against capitalism. They are not merely campaigning for low-carbon energy generation but against all economic growth. They have upped the emotional temperature with talk of "climate criminals" and comparing those who run power stations with mass murderers. Police are investigating the chopping down of poles carrying power lines at Fryston further down "megawatt valley".

None of this is going down well with the locals, for whom Drax provides 625 jobs. The chairman of Barlow Parish Council, Stephen Penn, has branded the activists, who were leafleting workers as they left the plant on Tuesday, as "eco-bullies". He has dismissed a letter sent to residents by the campaigners to explain their actions as "childish" and " insulting".

Workers at the plant are looking on somewhat bemused. Drax, they say, is the cleanest and most efficient coal-fired power station in the UK, emitting less CO2 per unit of electricity produced than other coal stations. Why are the less efficient generators not the target, they wonder?

"We are just as committed to action on climate change, but working from the inside," says Melanie Wedgbury of Drax. She has plausible responses to many of the protesters' points on Drax's legal challenge to badly-formulated current EU carbon emission levels, on how changes in government rules on Renewables Obligation Certificates have forced reductions in the co-burning of eco-friendly bio-mass fuels and on why dodgy gas and oil suppliers in Russia and the Middle East mean coal must stay part of the UK energy mix.

But today's protest, she concludes, is not about debate on detail. It is about a large symbolic gesture. On that, at any rate, many of the Climate Action protesters will agree.

Readying for eco-battle

Laura Yates Environmental activist from London

My particular concern is the need for decentralised energy. With coal-fired plants like Drax, two-thirds of the energy produced is wasted through lost heat. But because it's a long way from a centre of population that can't be harnessed because you can't transport heat very far. We need lots of small power stations near where people live. Alternative systems are well advanced in places like Denmark and the Netherlands. We're not saying shut all the plants like Drax tomorrow but we need to phase them out.

Stephen Stretton Cambridge physics graduate

Tony Blair's target on curbing emissions is based on the science of 1990 not that of 2006. This year we've seen the evidence that the Earth is becoming effectively ill. We've already reached the tipping point on the permafrost. It will come in the Amazon in the next three to five years.We need a 90 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. That means less air and car travel, electric cars, banning night flights, congestion charging, changes to domestic heating and electricity from renewable sources.

Alex Harvey Post-graduate student from London

I helped to set up the site and it's been really exciting to watch it grow into this village, with us living together sustainably. Climate change is one of the issues that I'm really concerned about so this was a natural thing for me to get involved with. It's inspiring to see people use these new technologies, like a compost toilet, and realise that it's not all bad. There's also the workshops, which combined with the action, is a chance for people to come here and hopefully they will leave with a few skills.

Matthew Robbins Post-graduate student from London

I wanted to take part in the camp because over the past few years I've taken notice of the reports in the media about climate change and you see figures like 150,000 people die each year because of climate change. Some countries are polluting very heavily and the people who suffer are largely blameless. It's actually people who have to go out and change the world. I think people are excited about the day of action against Drax because one of the main aims of the camp is to shut down the Drax power station.

Almuth Ernsting Environmental activist from Aberdeen

Since 1998 I have had a deepening sense that climate change was something really bad. I joined Friends of the Earth and did all the conventional campaigning like writing to MPs, and I still do. I think that's important. But it does not feel enough. Climate change is not just another environmental issue like GM crops. It's a life and death issue. This direct action is necessary because we've got to get the urgency across. What we're doing [against Drax] is symbolic of what everyone should be doing.

 http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1222823.ece

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