SWOOPER TROOPERS

POWER TO THE PEOPLE AS DEVELOPMENTS FEEL CLIMATE PROTEST PRESSURE

Phew, what a scorcher of a summer it’s been for climate change campaigners in Britain - with three climate camps, protest camps and direct action targeting both open-cast coal mining and coal-fired power stations. And it’s not over yet as next weekend (October 17th-18th) sees The Great Climate Swoop at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station near Nottingham.

This mass action is a follow up to the Climate Camp Swoop on the City of London back in August (See SchNEWS 689), and is buoyed by recent news that the development of the Kingsnorth coal plant – the site of the 2008 Camp For Climate Action (see SchNEWS 642) has been shelved (Who said direct action was ineffective?).

The Great Climate Swoop will descend upon Ratcliffe power station, the third biggest polluting plant in the country. Ratcliffe is represented as one the bastions of the new ‘clean coal’ industry by its corporate owners and government investors, by virtue of their promise that technology to ‘capture’ and ‘store’ carbon might be possible sometime in the future.

The technology to trap and store carbon is unproven (unless of course you just leave it in the ground where it is already of course trapped and stored) - and the government and power stations themselves admit that ‘clean coal’ power plants are unlikely to be available for decades, if at all.

Coal is now the biggest growing source of carbon emissions, rising some 20,000 times faster than at any point in the Earth’s billion year history. And the UK is the world’s biggest per capita emitter of fossil fuel carbon dioxide, followed closely by the US and Germany. There are currently plans for eight new coal-power stations to be built in the UK, all on the promise of ‘clean coal’.

The Swoop is going to involve a convergence on the main gates of Ratcliffe at 12 noon, where a camp will be held for 24 hours. Bring warm clothes, tents and enough food for a day. There will be four blocks, including a mass demo at the main gates and others who will take direct action within the plant. Affinity groups from all around the country are set to arrive, but if you are coming independently the website gives all details including a map – see www.thegreatclimateswoop.org

* Transport: The Big Lemon Bus is taking people from Brighton to The Swoop on Friday Oct 16th , 6pm, from Old Steine, returning Sunday. Bus tickets are £35 (£25 concession), to cover costs, and are available at the Brighton Peace and Environment Centre or through Big Lemon Bus website. For other transport see http://climatecamp.org.uk/actions/climate-swoop-2009/transport

** Over the last few months there has been a bombardment of action confronting the fossil fuel industry – particularly the mining and burning of coal – including: the Camps For Climate Action (www.climatecamp.org.uk) in Scotland, Wales and London as well as continued protests at Mainshill Protest Camp in Scotland (See SchNEWS 692), plus actions at Ffos-y-Fran opencast coal mine in Wales (See SchNEWS 692). Elsewhere, there’s been a 1,500-strong mass action at a coal-fired power plant in Copenhagen (See SchNEWS 693) as well as a demo at Hazlewood coal-fired power station near Melbourne, which is the dirtiest coal plant in the world (See SchNEWS 691, www.switchoffhazelwood.org).

In Germany a couple of weeks ago the courts revoked permission for a new coal fired power station in Datteln on environmental grounds. The E.ON plant was half way to completion and would have become Europe’s largest coal-fired power station. Despite the German energy corporation being busy building power stations all over Europe – including Kingsnorth and Ratcliffe-on-Soar – it goes to show E.ON can be stopped, even on their home ground.

And it was more bad news for E.ON as this week their plans for a new coal power station at Kingsnorth were scrapped. On Wednesday (7th Oct) E.ON threw in the towel and stopped the development of the first new coal-fired station to be built in the UK for 30 years. This is a massive victory for environmental campaigners who have been taking continuous action against the plans.

With Kingsnorth on the back burner, next stop Ratcliffe-on-Soar… and then on to Copenhagen for the COP15 Climate Conference, December 7th-18th see www.climate-justice-action.org