PLANE STUPID

SERMON ON THE RUNWAY

Sunday 24th September 2006 ~ Baptist Minister leads airport shutdown protest against climate change

Environmental protestors (1) have this morning breached security at Nottingham East Midlands Airport and established a second camp for climate action - this time on an airport taxiway. Their aim is to stop carbon emissions from what they are describing as a “climate change factory.” (2) A

Baptist Minister whose former parish is in Nottingham is leading a remembrance service on the taxiway, in memory of the victims of climate change, reminding his congregation of the Bishop of London’s

By Ted Glick

What do Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium,
Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic,
Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland,
Italy, Kenya, South Korea, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, New
Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal,
Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, Taiwan,
Turkey, United Kingdom, Northern Ireland and the USA have in
common?

These are all countries where organizing is taking place
toward actions on November 4th or, in Africa, on the 11th as
part of worldwide International Days of Climate Action. This

In the shadow of Drax power station, hundreds of activists have gathered at the Camp for Climate Action. The camp, which started officially on Saturday, August 26th, is based on squatted land and will have over 160 workshops over the course of the week.

Climate Action News: Tues 29th August:
From 8am a group of nine climate change campaigners blockaded the front and back gates of Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station, sending out the message that nuclear power is not the solution to climate change. The blockade was in place for ten hours until the last person was cut out of the arm tubes they had locked themselves into to form the blockade. Police arrested a total of twenty people including non-blockading supporters and a freelance journalist.

August 25th marks the day Katrina reached hurricane strength and slammed into the coast of Florida. It's also the last Friday of the month, widely observed by Critical Mass rides around the country.

A strong scientific consensus agrees that the 2005 hurricane season was hyper charged by global warming -- and the crimes of the oil industry in the Gulf go beyond global warming.

The goal of this ride is to take to the streets with a reminder that the racist tragedy in the Gulf continues, a demand that it never be repeated, and to raise awareness about the role of the oil industry and global warming in environmental injustice. We'll also be fundraising at rides around the continent for advocacy and relief groups in New Orleans.

Gatherings and festivals have been sites of resistance for as long as people have yearned to take back the power that is lorded over them. The anti-nuclear campaign had its peace camps, road campaigners had road camps…this summer, the ever-growing movement against climate change will have the Camp for Climate Action!

The Camp for Climate Action will bring thousands of people together for ten days of action, education and living the alternative world we hope to build. It will be a hub for everything from solar energy workshops and campaign updates to direct action against some of the worst offenders of the fossil fuel economy. (By this we mean refineries, power stations, airports etc., not the people who work in them, with whom we have no quarrel, and for whom we would support a ‘just transition’ into more sustainable jobs, not to mention with far

On July 15th, the "Group of 8" (G8) richest industrialized countries will convene in St. Petersburg, Russia to plot their continued domination and commodification of the planet, this time under the euphemistic banner of "Energy Security." A leaked G8 "Communique on Energy Security" calls for trillions of dollars in new investments in oil, gas and coal production worldwide, plus wide-scale global expansion of nuclear energy. With runaway climate change* looming just over the horizon, such neoliberal business-as-usual poses a direct threat to the continuation of life on Earth as we know it.

July 15th will be an International Day of Action Against Climate Change. As G8 energy ministers promise trillions in new subsidies to the industries destroying our planet and our future, we will take action to shut them down! This is a call for autonomous, decentralized actions appropriate for your town, city, or bioregion. Use this international day of action to support local struggles against oil refineries, gas pipelines, road expansions, strip mines and coal-fired power plants. Disrupt the financial backers of the fossil fuel industry. Host teach-ins to spread sustainable post-petroleum living skills. Find a weak point in the infrastructure of resource exploitation and throw a literal or symbolic wrench in the works. Visit your local polluters and give 'em hell!

The newly-formed U.S. Climate Emergency Council, together with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and the Climate Crisis Coalition, is organizing an action next Wednesday and Thursday, May 31st and June 1st, at the Washington, D.C. area headquarters of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA is the parent agency for the National Hurricane Center. They are located at 1305 East West Highway in Silver Spring, Md., very close to the Silver Spring stop on the Metro.

Two days ago, NOAA and NHC had a press conference with their predictions for this year's hurricane season, which begins next Thursday. During the press conference, according to one of the members of the press who attended, the head of NOAA, Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., "brushed off global warming as a factor," as far as the increased destructiveness of major storms.

The Earth First! Climate Caucus
A New Birth in the
No Compromise Movement
BY EARTH FIRST! CLIMATE CAUCUS

This year's Earth First! Organizers' Conference gave birth to an exciting new network within the radical environmental movement. In response to the serious lack of a radical approach to fighting climate change in the US, a number of folks put their heads together to form the EF! Climate Caucus (don't worry, we're working on a better name) with the aim of launching a full-frontal assault on the fossil fuel industry and other climate criminals.

We have some serious catching up to do. As a matter of survival, we must bring climate change to the front and center of the nation's attention. We cannot do this by watering down our message; rather, we need an uncompromising, radical approach to kicking our culture's fossil fuel addiction.

Checkout the website for info and a clip on the just released film "An Inconvenient Truth" here: http://www.climatecrisis.net/

Recently released, this important film on climate change is already being attacked by far-right flat-Earth types.

The Sundance Film Festival schedule says this about the film:

"Extreme poverty, intractable wars, virulent disease, hatred of all stripes–these are a few of the scourges we live with today. And yet global climate change trumps them all; for if it's not addressed, all life on the planet will be devastated, regardless of geography, class, race, or creed. The Inconvenient Truth is the gripping story of former Vice President Al Gore, who became interested in this startling issue while at college 30 years ago, and now devotes his life to reversing global warming. Traveling the world, he has built a visually mesmerizing presentation designed to disabuse doubters of the notion that climate change is debatable. The heart of Davis Guggenheim's film is this elegant multimedia lecture itself, where Gore indisputably correlates CO2 emissions with exponentially rising temperatures, already responsible for dramatic climactic shifts like ice-cap melting, drought, and rising sea levels. Interwoven with this riveting public address are intimate moments revealing the poetic, searching side of Gore as he struggles to define his purpose in the aftermath of the 2000 election. This is activist cinema at its very best, for it serves to popularize and demythologize a problem long obscured by those most threatened by the solution. With humor and searing intelligence, Gore outlines crucial steps we must take to avert impending disaster and proves that inaction is no longer an option–in fact, it's immoral." — Caroline Libresco

Save Happy Valley coalition began an ongoing occupation near the proposed Cypress open cast coal mine, currently Department of Conservation land. The site proposed by State-owned Solid Energy is in the Upper Waimangaroa Valley in the Ngakawau Ecological District, near Westport on the South Island's west coast. The current occupation follows on from two previous protest camps. Solid Energy told RadioNZ news that they had no problem with the sit-in although they still sent in security guards to film occupiers who responded by blocking with a banner and photographing the guards.

The SHV coalition has groups in Christchurch, Dunedin, Palmerston North, Wellington and on the west coast, as well as support from members of coast-based conservation groups including Buller Conservation Group, Forest and Bird, Ngakawau Riverwatch and Te Runanga o Ngati Waewae. The Greens and Greenpeace have also expressed support for the occupation and Gregor Sieboeck is taking a detour from his planned route down the South Island to walk from Greymouth to Happy Valley as part of his around the world walk for sustainability.

Stuff reports that the occupiers plan to stay until Solid Energy and the Government find sustainable ways to develop the west coast economy without the Cypress mine. SHV spokesperson John Oosterman has described Happy Valley as "...a unique and precious ecosystem, home threaten species such as the Great Spotted Kiwi and giant land snail. Furthermore the mining of this beautiful valley will only add to the problem of climate change. Coal is a totally unsustainable fuel source that only pollutes our local and global environment."

Teall Crossen, a lawyer from Forest and Bird, described Happy Valley as a unique alpine wetand at a public meeting in Christchurch last week and pointed out that only 10% of the original wetland ecosystems in Aotearoa remain, a sentiment echoed by SHV spokesperson Frances Mountier in the Herald. At that meeting Jeanette Fitzsimons said that in her opinion the future of Solid Energy was in sustainable forestry, not coal. Save Happy Valley have also supported the campaign to save the last habitat of another land snail 'Powelliphanta Augustus' from Solid Energy's planned mining on nearby Mt Augustus.

Solid Energy have attempted to paint the issue as one of "passionate but misguided" young people versus coasters who need jobs but Daniella Blake writing in the Critic characterises the conflict as one of "Big business, little people".

Link: Happy Valley Occupation Blog