Climate Camp injuction - INFO INDYMEDIA IS HIDING
happy camper | 01.08.2007 08:08 | Climate Camp 2007 | Climate Chaos
The power-crazed aviation giant, BAA, is trying to bully over five million people who are critical of their plans to massively increase their output of greenhouse gases on a scale that will ruin any chance we have of avoiding catastrophic climate change. It is desperate to put the brakes on the emerging and diverse grassroots movement tackling the root sources of damaging emissions, a movement that has pledged to establish a camp at Heathrow this August.
While BAA is planning to stamp on peaceful protest this summer, the police is citing security fears to protect BAA's corporate interests from the upcoming Camp for Climate Action, which the BAA application for an injunction says is organised by Plane Stupid.
Touched as we are by this claim, the climate camp is about much more than us. There is no single organiser. Instead, hundreds of people have been openly meeting each month to plan everything from compost toilets to wind energy for the camp site in an inclusive and pioneering project in direct democracy. In this painstaking and often lengthy process, everyone gets an equal voice over everything to do with all aspects from climate policy, to where to put cooking areas.
Over the last couple of years, a big tent of individuals and organisations
have come together under the banner of AirportWatch. Together with national environment groups, such as the RSPB, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, and local residents groups such as HACAN and Stop Stansted, the coalition has now broadened to include the World Development Movement who articulate most clearly how millions will die from BAA's plans. Now, Christian Aid too are getting involved. In fact, it is planning to send a delegation from its 'Cut the Carbon' march to visit the summer's camp.
But if BAA gets its way on Wednesday at the High Court, there could be
no camp. Everyone who supports the camp - from AirportWatch, to the locals
threatened with losing their homes for a third runway - everyone's voice of
opposition would be legally silenced at the whim of a single company.
By employing Tim Lawson-Cruttenden, a lawyer notorious for representing arms firms such as EDO/MBM and GM crop companies, to misuse laws designed to protect women from stalkers, BAA will seek to literally gag millions of people. It wants us to be ordered from "creating, forming or establishing protest camps and/or setting up tents on Heathrow Airport or in the vicinity of Heathrow Airport." In BAA's view we should also be legally prevented from "carrying…balloons [and] kites" or using, "any megaphone, claxon, siren, whistle, drum or any noise amplification device or other appliance used or capable of being used to generate noise." A tad ironic from the company responsible for disrupting thousands of residents sleep!
BAA is right to be worried by the climate camp – not for security reasons,
we're talking about several thousand people armed only with peer-reviewed
science detailing the very great danger the company's business model poses
to all our lives. No, BAA should be worried because normal people with
normal lives are about to gather in numbers outside Heathrow to shine a
light on our nation's single biggest polluter. The company wants to scare
the British people into ignoring us. Nice try, but that bird just won't fly.
Touched as we are by this claim, the climate camp is about much more than us. There is no single organiser. Instead, hundreds of people have been openly meeting each month to plan everything from compost toilets to wind energy for the camp site in an inclusive and pioneering project in direct democracy. In this painstaking and often lengthy process, everyone gets an equal voice over everything to do with all aspects from climate policy, to where to put cooking areas.
Over the last couple of years, a big tent of individuals and organisations
have come together under the banner of AirportWatch. Together with national environment groups, such as the RSPB, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, and local residents groups such as HACAN and Stop Stansted, the coalition has now broadened to include the World Development Movement who articulate most clearly how millions will die from BAA's plans. Now, Christian Aid too are getting involved. In fact, it is planning to send a delegation from its 'Cut the Carbon' march to visit the summer's camp.
But if BAA gets its way on Wednesday at the High Court, there could be
no camp. Everyone who supports the camp - from AirportWatch, to the locals
threatened with losing their homes for a third runway - everyone's voice of
opposition would be legally silenced at the whim of a single company.
By employing Tim Lawson-Cruttenden, a lawyer notorious for representing arms firms such as EDO/MBM and GM crop companies, to misuse laws designed to protect women from stalkers, BAA will seek to literally gag millions of people. It wants us to be ordered from "creating, forming or establishing protest camps and/or setting up tents on Heathrow Airport or in the vicinity of Heathrow Airport." In BAA's view we should also be legally prevented from "carrying…balloons [and] kites" or using, "any megaphone, claxon, siren, whistle, drum or any noise amplification device or other appliance used or capable of being used to generate noise." A tad ironic from the company responsible for disrupting thousands of residents sleep!
BAA is right to be worried by the climate camp – not for security reasons,
we're talking about several thousand people armed only with peer-reviewed
science detailing the very great danger the company's business model poses
to all our lives. No, BAA should be worried because normal people with
normal lives are about to gather in numbers outside Heathrow to shine a
light on our nation's single biggest polluter. The company wants to scare
the British people into ignoring us. Nice try, but that bird just won't fly.
happy camper