Today, Monday 19th of February, peaceful protesters from the Camp For Climate Action had planned a series of events to highlight the environmental cost of widening the M1. Unfortunately, a massive police presence, totally out of proportion to the proposed protest, appears to have contributed to massive tail-backs on the motorway near Sheffield. The protesters decided not to go ahead with their event after being offered a ridiculously limited space in which to make their point and no protester actions took place at any time. At no point did any of them approach close to the motorway, and they could not have therefore caused the tailbacks as the Police suggested to local radio. In fact, there had been an accident on that stretch, which combined with the roadworks and the police presence, was probably the cause of the delays.

In a second embarrassing mistake, the Police seem to have believed that the action had been planned by the No M1 Widening Campaign. In fact, the Camp For Climate Action was solely responsible. The police probably don't realise the link between traffic growth and worsening climate change which threatens us all.

Sam Nexter said “Tony Blair has claimed that the government is taking climate change seriously but billions of pounds of taxpayer's money is now being wasted on a scheme that will do nothing to ease congestion but will increase emissions. There are much more effective and economic ways to tackle congestion such as improving public transport and transferring freight onto the railways.”

"Its mad that, on top of paying for dangerous motorway building, money is also wasted paying large numbers of police to sit around in vans." he added.

The work to widen this stretch of M1 started a month ago, and work on the section between junction 6a-10 is already well under way. In total 115 miles of the M1 is due to be widened from the M25 to Milton Keynes and from Leicester to Leeds, costing a total of over £3.74 billion. Many people believe the widening will allow traffic to grow, causing more CO2 emissions. Road transport already accounts for 21% of emissions in the UK and rises every year.