26/10/09: A day to remember in the fight against coal
No New Coal | 30.10.2009 20:35 | Climate Chaos | Social Struggles | Oxford
We defeated E.On’s plans to build the first coal-fired power station in over 30 years, which is definitely something to be proud of. But, as this week’s actions have shown, the fight against coal is far from over and concerned individuals are showing no sign in slowing down their activities.
The first of three inspirational actions on Monday morning took place in the early hours at RWE npower’s Didcot Power Station in Oxfordshire. 20 intrepid cyclists rode right past the gate to the faces of perplexed security guards, with one team locking onto the coal conveyor belt for over 13 hours, and a second team ascending the 200m chimney and occupying it for two days and nights.
RWE npower were forced to admit that the action had stopped all coal fired electricity generation. Furthermore, the ability to bypass RWE n-power’s massively ramped up security and gain access to crucial machinery was truly inspirational, and demonstrated that nothing can hold back committed people determined to do something about climate change. Here’s what one participant who made it to the chimney top had to say:
"I'm a qualified builder and will be 52 in a week's time. I never thought in my life I would do anything like this. It's amazing how working with committed people can empower you to confront these massive companies and help force real change in the world."
With all recent attention focused on E.On’s now shelved Kingsnorth plans, RWE npower has been able to hide in the shadows. Yet the company is not only behind two possible new coal plants in the UK, at Tilbury and Hunterston, but it also plans to build over 30 more across Europe. To use the bad pun featured in the Daily Mail, this action has shown that activists will go to great heights in order to halt RWE npower’s lethal intentions.
Monday’s second action began a couple of hours later at Mainshill Wood, South Lanarkshire. Mainshill Wood is currently being destroyed by Scottish Coal to make way for a new coal mine. It is one of 20 new mines to be given planning permission in Scotland, and is situated within one of the most heavily mined areas in Europe.
Refusing to let the coal beneath the ground get anywhere near a furnace, individuals blocked the site’s access road and this prevented destruction taking place for several hours. The blockade formed part of a long term battle at Mainshill Wood. A solidarity camp has been occupying part of the site for over four months, from which relentless action has sprouted including tunnelling, tree climbing and jumping on machinery.
With two actions already well underway, at 9.20am coal received its third strike when 20 activists climbed on machinery at Shipley opencast coal mine. Work was stopped at the site, with the participants having climbed on six vehicles. The target was particularly poignant given that coal mined from Shipley is supplied to Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station (the second biggest in the UK) where The Great Climate Swoop saw 1000 people collectively target the week before.
Those taking part in the protest highlighted that, in addition to climate change, opencast mines bring a range of catastrophic local issues. As one participant from the Shipley area stated, “the handful of jobs that opencast coal mining provides hardly compensate for the noise, traffic and pollution that we have to suffer. Local people fought long and hard against the this mine, not just for our sakes but also for that of our children.”
So, Monday the 26th of October will certainly go down as a day to remember in the ongoing struggle against coal. It demonstrated the range of targets that need to be hit, from the operational mine, to the mine not yet created, to the power station itself. But it also heralded a new stage in stopping coal, with none of the three actions being a one day affair. Resistance against new opencast mines will continue to rage. Work on existing mines will be stopped with ever increasing vigour. New coal fired power stations will not be built.
E.On may have F’d Off, but our job is far from done!
RWE npower were forced to admit that the action had stopped all coal fired electricity generation. Furthermore, the ability to bypass RWE n-power’s massively ramped up security and gain access to crucial machinery was truly inspirational, and demonstrated that nothing can hold back committed people determined to do something about climate change. Here’s what one participant who made it to the chimney top had to say:
"I'm a qualified builder and will be 52 in a week's time. I never thought in my life I would do anything like this. It's amazing how working with committed people can empower you to confront these massive companies and help force real change in the world."
With all recent attention focused on E.On’s now shelved Kingsnorth plans, RWE npower has been able to hide in the shadows. Yet the company is not only behind two possible new coal plants in the UK, at Tilbury and Hunterston, but it also plans to build over 30 more across Europe. To use the bad pun featured in the Daily Mail, this action has shown that activists will go to great heights in order to halt RWE npower’s lethal intentions.
Monday’s second action began a couple of hours later at Mainshill Wood, South Lanarkshire. Mainshill Wood is currently being destroyed by Scottish Coal to make way for a new coal mine. It is one of 20 new mines to be given planning permission in Scotland, and is situated within one of the most heavily mined areas in Europe.
Refusing to let the coal beneath the ground get anywhere near a furnace, individuals blocked the site’s access road and this prevented destruction taking place for several hours. The blockade formed part of a long term battle at Mainshill Wood. A solidarity camp has been occupying part of the site for over four months, from which relentless action has sprouted including tunnelling, tree climbing and jumping on machinery.
With two actions already well underway, at 9.20am coal received its third strike when 20 activists climbed on machinery at Shipley opencast coal mine. Work was stopped at the site, with the participants having climbed on six vehicles. The target was particularly poignant given that coal mined from Shipley is supplied to Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station (the second biggest in the UK) where The Great Climate Swoop saw 1000 people collectively target the week before.
Those taking part in the protest highlighted that, in addition to climate change, opencast mines bring a range of catastrophic local issues. As one participant from the Shipley area stated, “the handful of jobs that opencast coal mining provides hardly compensate for the noise, traffic and pollution that we have to suffer. Local people fought long and hard against the this mine, not just for our sakes but also for that of our children.”
So, Monday the 26th of October will certainly go down as a day to remember in the ongoing struggle against coal. It demonstrated the range of targets that need to be hit, from the operational mine, to the mine not yet created, to the power station itself. But it also heralded a new stage in stopping coal, with none of the three actions being a one day affair. Resistance against new opencast mines will continue to rage. Work on existing mines will be stopped with ever increasing vigour. New coal fired power stations will not be built.
E.On may have F’d Off, but our job is far from done!
No New Coal
Comments
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New coal now!
31.10.2009 20:28
Those "20 intrepid cyclists" were riding coal-based technology (and no, there isn't an alternative). Same goes for anyone using a wind genny or solar panels. Or many thousands of other things down to a metal fork to eat your dinner with (unless you want a plastic one?) or a pen, for fuck's sake. How do you lock on or cut a fence without coal? Err..you can't! How do you post something on the Indymedia newswire without using coal? I guess in theory that might just be done without coal, but in practice it can't, and the alternatives are as bad or worse (more oil, bauxite, mega hydro power trashing wild places, and no more trees).
Oh, and you can't have your head stitched up when the cops have tonked you with a baton or get a dodgy knee sorted out or a hip replaced when you're old without coal either. At the other end of life, it's back to loads of women and babies dying in childbirth, too. No surgical instruments without coal. No tools to make things responsibly from wood or natural fibres, either, unless you reckon it can all be done by flint-knapping.
No coal = no iron, no steel. No softer metals either (copper, tin, bronze etc.) after you've chopped down all the remaining trees for charcoal.
Come on, get real! Let's start talking about the new, responsible, extraction and use of coal for the things we really need. I could go on about that, too, but what's the point when you've got your fingers in your ears?
Opencasting and pissing coal away into the atmosphere to generate power have got to stop, but you seem determined to chuck the baby out with the bathwater. Tell you what, I'm fed up with the BNP giving out leaflets and capitalists plastering billboards with adverts for crap. So....
JOIN THE FIGHT AGAINST PAPER!
NO NEW PAPER!
That'll sort it out, won't it?
Stroppyoldgit
e-mail:
dodgy@umpire.com
The sound of your own voice
01.11.2009 08:14
@non
About women and babies dying in childbirth
01.11.2009 23:57
This is not necessarily the case. As a recent-ish parent myself, having spent a lot of time looking into birth options (and weighing up the various risks from a pretty cold, mathematical perspective), we came to the informed conclusion that the worst possible place the birth of our child could happen is in a hospital.
Women's bodies are "designed" (for want of a better word) to give birth. Babies deliver themselves.
The Western preoccupation with over-medicalising everything and treating birth like a medical emergency (when it isn't in the vast majority of cases) has done far less to help the majority of births go safely than far simpler things like improved maternal nutrition and a sound understanding of hygiene and how illnesses spread. Interventions in birth "just in case" lead on to more and more interventions, until before you know it, something which is a natural process has been turned into an "emergency" (which actually means "unplanned" in most cases) cesarean.
What causes this is not "necessity", but the control-freakery of consultants who don't trust in nature or the human body, working against the backdrop of a litigation culture and pen-pushers who's job it is to avoid getting sued. All of this can easily be avoided - just by de-medicalising birth. (In countries where there is a significantly higher rate of home-births such as the Netherlands, there is no significant statistical difference in the number of complications - and that is with a far lower rate of medical intervention.)
So this point of your argument is specious at best - you just don't appear to know what you're talking about. (Which is fair enough - grass-roots knowledge about birth is one of the most lacking and distorted things in our society.)
Yes, in a minority of cases, medical intervention is necessary to prevent the risk of death. But these really are a minority of cases (it's less than 10%, although I'm afraid I can't remember which book I got that figure from) and the vast majority of births - if left alone and conducted in a relaxed manner and a private environment such as the home - will go without incident.
Part of creating this relaxed attitude to birth is to shine the light of truth on the misinformation which drums into women from an early age how dreadful and painful birth is. I mean, have you ever seen a non-dramatic birth on TV or in a film? How many women have you met who wax lyrical about what an amazing, enjoyable and painless birth experience they had, versus those who revel in the heroics of recalling how awful and painful it was?
I have met many women who completely enjoyed their birth experience, but they only tend to talk about it in a supportive, non-judgmental environment such as among other women who they know have also had good birth experiences. Culturally, it just isn't the "done" thing to admit that the birth was more-or-less easy, and incredible in every way.
Non-dramatic, easy births just aren't "interesting" enough to register in the cultural zeitgeist - hence the continuing atmosphere of fear and worry surrounding birth.
That's not to say I entirely disagree with what you're saying about coal - I have also maintained for a while now that we do need to use coal at the moment, and that it's far too precious a resource to just burn it. However, it doesn't do you any favours to tug at the emotional heartstrings, conjuring up largely misinformed images of women and children dying in birth, even though this does sometimes happen.
Quite a lot of people also die from heart attacks and strokes while sitting on the bog having a crap, yet we don't panic about that too much do we? (Probably because there are very few options there for highly-paid consultants to intervene and "prevent" something.)
To recap again, just in case my point has got lost: Yes, a lot of women and children did die during childbirth in the past, and many still do to this day in the majority world. However, this is mainly down to poor maternal nutrition, and inadequate hygiene. Fix those, and address the lack of confidence surrounding birth, and the vast majority of births will happen naturally, without intervention, and without incident.
Man Of The Woods