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Power station 10 found guilty

defendant | 28.02.2008 13:22 | Climate Chaos

The Nottingham district judge on monday refused to accept the defence of necessity and found the 10 activists who walked into Ratcliffe on Soar power station in April guilty of aggravated trespass.


The defendants locked themselves to vital machinery in the power station to try to close it down and massively reduce CO2 emissions and to save lives. At least 150,000 people a year, already die from climate change.

The judge decided that because the science of climate change and counting climate related deaths relies on probabilities (surely all science does...) there was no clear link between climate change and deaths. He also said that it was not the activists responsibility to try to reduce emissions but the governments.

The government is in the middle of a massive road building programme and is planning on a massive airport expansion programme. The governments policies are quite simply causing the problem. The defendants were defiant and stated that they felt it WAS their responsibility to do something when the government was making such a mess of it.

defendant

Comments

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Responsibility

28.02.2008 16:46

Under international law, which has precendence over the laws of any individual nation, it is up to the individual to prevent its government's illegal actions - not the other way round. So I guess, asuming the illegality of the government not doing anything about climate change is established, that there are strong grounds for appeal here. Go for it!

Or you could just "keep following orders"...

IANAL


Well done!

28.02.2008 19:47

Well done to all the defendants - they convinced me! They were all fined, by the way, so if you see them in the pub, buy them a drink as they will be skint for a while!

Eco-worrier


Taken from the last Sea Sheperd news story on IMC UK...

29.02.2008 22:34

...
"...and we do so within the definition of intervention in the United Nations World Charter for Nature that allows for non-governmental enforcement of international conservation laws and regulations."

o rly