Since I was in India 18 months ago, a burgeoning youth climate movement has arrived on the scene.
Posts Tagged ‘Coal’
Rep. Nick Rahall Jumps Out Of A Plane For The Coal Lobby
July 20th, 2009 |
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In an eye-opening story on the influence of special interests on our elected officials, The Washington Independent has the dirt on West Virginia Congressman Nick Rahall’s antics with the coal lobby. HuffPost’s Jason Linkins breaks it down for …
Dave Cooper: West Virginia Tourists Beware: Violence Escalates in Coalfields
July 20th, 2009 |
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Violence against environmental activists seems almost inevitable in the coalfields this summer as West Virginia politicians ignore the tense situation.
Steve Kirsch: How Does Obama Expect to Solve the Climate Crisis Without a Plan?
July 17th, 2009 |
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Nuclear is the elephant in the room. 70% of the carbon free power in America is still generated by nuclear, even though we haven’t built a new nuclear plant in this country in the last 30 years.
Bruce Nilles: Stopping Blackstone Coal
July 16th, 2009 |
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Last week when we hit the 100th coal-fired plant abandoned or prevented in the U.S., someone asked me, “What’s next?” My answer came quickly:…
Technology alone can’t fix climate
July 15th, 2009 |
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The environmental and social crisis that threatens us requires deeper solutions than new technology alone can provide
Technology is part of the solution to climate change. But only part. Techno-fixes like some of those in the Guardian’s Manchester Report simply cannot deliver the carbon cuts science demands of us without being accompanied by drastic reductions in our consumption. That means radical economic and social transformation. Merely swapping technologies fails to address the root causes of climate change.
We need to choose the solutions that are the cheapest, the swiftest, the most effective and least likely to incur dire side effects. On all counts, there’s a simple answer – stop burning the stuff in the first place. Consume less.
There is a certain level of resources we need to survive, and beyond that there is a level we need in order to have lives that are comfortable and meaningful. It is far below what we presently consume. Americans consume twice as much oil as Europeans. Are they twice as happy? Are Europeans half as free?
Economic growth itself is not a measure of human well-being, it only measures things with an assessed monetary value. It values wants at the same level as needs and, while it purports to bring prosperity to the masses, its tendency to concentrate profit in fewer and fewer hands leaves billions without the necessities of a decent life.
Techno-fixation masks the incompatibility of solving climate change with unlimited economic growth. Even if energy consumption can be reduced for an activity, ongoing economic growth eats up the improvement and overall energy consumption still rises. We continue destructive consumption in the expectation that new miracle technologies will come and save us.
The hope of a future techno-fix feeds into the pass-it-forward, do-nothing-now culture typified by targets for 2050. Tough targets for 2050 are not tough at all, they are a decoy. Where are the techno-fix plans for the peak in global emissions by 2015 that the IPCC says we need?
Even within the limited sphere of technology, we have to separate the solutions from the primacy of profit. We need to choose what’s the most effective, not the most lucrative. Investors will want the maximum return for their money, and so the benefits of any climate technologies will, in all likelihood, be sold as carbon credits to the polluter industries and nations. It would not be done in tandem with emissions cuts but instead of them, making it not a tool of mitigation but of exacerbation.
Climate change is not the only crisis currently facing humanity. Peak oil is likely to become a major issue within the coming decade. Competition for land and water, soil fertility depletion and collapse of fisheries are already posing increasing problems for food supply and survival in many parts of the world.
Technological solutions to climate change fail to address most of these issues. Yet even without climate change, this systemic environmental and social crisis threatens society, and requires deeper solutions than new technology alone can provide. Around a fifth of emissions come from deforestation, more than for all transport emissions combined. There is no technological fix for that. We simply need to consume less of the forest, that is to say, less meat, less agrofuel and less wood.
Our level of consumption is inequitable. Making it universal is simply impossible. The scientist Jared Diamond calculates that if the whole world were to have our level of consumption, it would be the equivalent of having 72 billion people on earth.
With ravenous economic growth still prized as the main objective of society by all political leaders the world over, that 72 billion would be just the beginning. At 3% annual growth, 25 years later it would be the equivalent of 150 billion people. A century later it would be over a trillion. Something’s got to give. And indeed, it already is. It’s time for us to call it a crisis and respond with the proportionate radical action that is needed.
We need profound change – not only government measures and targets but financial systems, the operation of corporations, and people’s own expectations of progress and success. Building a new economic democracy based on meeting human needs equitably and sustainably is at least as big a challenge as climate change itself, but if human society is to succeed the two are inseparable.
Instead of asking how to continue to grow the economy while attempting to cut carbon, we should be asking why economic growth is seen as more important than survival.
• Merrick Godhaven is an environmental writer and activist. He co-authored the Corporate Watch report Technofixes: A Critical Guide to Climate Change Technologies.
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Jerry Cope: The Failure of Democracy in West Virginia: Redefining “Alternative” Energy
July 14th, 2009 |
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Alternative energy is a standard reference to energy sources that are not carbon based. But in West Virginia, many of the designated “alternative” energy sources contribute not only significantly more GHG emissions than the dirtiest conventional coal fired plants, they emit toxic pollutants as well.
Gene scientist to create algae biofuel
July 14th, 2009 |
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• New biofuel requires no car or plane engine modification
• Carbon Trust says production will take ‘many years’
Gene scientist Craig Venter has announced plans to develop next-generation biofuels from algae in a $600m (£370m) partnership with oil giant Exxon Mobil.
His company, Synthetic Genomics Incorporated (SGI), will develop fuels that can be used by cars or aeroplanes without the need for any modification of their engines. Exxon Mobil will provide $600m over five years with half going to SGI.
“Meeting the world’s growing energy demands will require a multitude of technologies and energy sources,” said Emil Jacobs, vice president of research and development at ExxonMobil. “We believe that biofuel produced by algae could be a meaningful part of the solution in the future if our efforts result in an economically viable, low-net carbon emission transportation fuel.”
Transport accounts for one-quarter of the UK’s carbon emissions and is the fastest growing sector. Finding carbon-neutral fuels will be crucial to the government meeting its target to reduce overall emissions by 80% by 2050.
Algae are an attractive way to harvest solar energy because they reproduce themselves, they can live in areas not useful for producing food and they do not need clean or even fresh water. In addition, they use far less space to grow than traditional biofuel crops such as corn or palm oil.
“Algae consumes carbon dioxide and sunlight in the presence of water, to make a kind of oil that has similar molecular structures to petroleum products we produce today,” said Jacobs. “That means it could be possible to convert it into gasoline and diesel in existing refineries, transport it through existing pipelines, and sell it to consumers from existing service stations.”
The Carbon Trust, a government-backed agency that promotes low-carbon technologies, has forecast that algae-based biofuels could replace more than 70bn litres of fossil fuels used every year around the world in road transport and aviation by 2030, equivalent to 12% of annual global jet fuel consumption or 6% of road transport diesel. In carbon terms, this equates to an annual saving of more than 160m tonnes of CO2 globally with a market value of more than £15bn.
Ben Graziano, research and development manager at the Carbon Trust, said that alge-based biofuels offered the potential for “major carbon savings”. “Exxon Mobil is estimating that algae could yield just over 20,000
litres of fuel per hectare each year, which is in line with our own forecasts. However, producing biofuel from algae on such a massive commercial scale is a major challenge, which will require many years of research and development.”
Venter, who is best known for his role in sequencing the human genome, said the new partnership was the largest single investment in trying to produce biofuels from algae but said the challenge to creating a viable next-generation fuel was the ability to produce it in large volumes. “This would not happen without the oil industry stepping up and taking part,” he said. “The challenges are not minor for any of us but we have the combined teams and scientific and engineering talents to give this the best chance of success.”
The research programme will begin with the construction of a new test facility in San Diego, where Venter says different techniques to grow and optimise algae will be tested. These will include open ponds as well as bioreactors, where the algae are grown in sealed tubes. “We will be trying out these different approaches … using newly-discovered natural algae to test the best approaches we can come up with to go into a scale-up mode.”
Venter has spent several years trawling the world’s oceans in search of environmentally-friendly microbes that could be used, in one way or another, to bring down the world’s carbon emissions. The organisms he has found include those that can turn CO2 into methane, which could be used to make fuels from the exhaust gases of power stations, and another that turns coal into natural gas, speeding up a natural process and reducing both the energy needed to extract the fossil fuel and the amount of pollution caused when it is burned.
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Coal battle
July 13th, 2009 |
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Opinion is divided in West Virginia’s coal belt over a controversial mining technique, reports Jean Snedegar for the BBC’s Americana programme.
For years, a battle has been raging in the Appalachian Mountains over a coal-mining practice known as "mountaintop removal mining".
In the last three decades this kind of mining has flattened some 2,500 square miles, and buried more than 1,200 miles of mountain streams.
With a new administration in Washington, the battle over mountaintop removal mining is heating up, most notably in southern West Virginia – and grassroots activists are at the forefront.
Blasting and dumping
Maria Gunnoe, 41, lives with her husband and two children in a tiny community called Bob White, in Boone County, which produces more coal than any other county in the state.
Her family has lived in the area for more than 200 years, and coal mining has been in her family for generations. Two of her brothers are underground miners.
But over the last 10 years, coal has started to threaten her land, and her life. Three different mountaintop removal operations surround Ms Gunnoe’s home, which sits in a steep, narrow hollow. The first mine started in 2001.
"To begin with I heard chainsaws," she tells me.
"When I went back, I seen massive clear-cutting on the mountain behind where I live at. All of the trees and timber that weren’t of value went into the valley behind me."
"I had the opportunity to sit and watch the sun set on this mountain for the last time last year… It’ll never happen again – the mountain has been blasted down now"
Maria Gunnoe
Anti-mountaintop removal activist
Shortly afterwards, the mining company began blasting the top off the mountain, and dumping the rock and debris – called "overburden" – that it had removed from above the coal seam into the valley as well.
When she walked up the stream that flows by her house – also her main water source – she noticed it was plugged.
"This is known as a valley fill," Ms Gunnoe explains.
The valley fill contained two ponds full of waste water from the mine.
In 2003, some of that waste water broke through and flooded the narrow valley where Ms Gunnoe lives.
"The flooding devastated our property. In places it was 20ft deep and 60ft wide – almost like a mini-tsunami. It literally washed live standing trees by myself and my family. We were trapped in. We had no way out."
And emergency services had no way in.
In the flood’s wake, Ms Gunnoe and her husband lost five acres of land, the access road to their property and the stream which served as their water supply. Today it contains toxic levels of selenium.
Disappearing communities
Regular blasting continues above her property.
"I have coal dust inside of my computers, my TVs, my refrigerator – everything in my home is inundated by coal dust. My kids shouldn’t have to be breathing this. Our community members shouldn’t have to be breathing this."
Ms Gunnoe’s experiences turned her into an activist and community organiser against mountaintop mining.
Since 2004, she has testified at hearings for mountaintop removal permits and in lawsuits against coal companies.
As a result, she faces regular intimidation from angry miners who feel she is taking away their jobs.
But Ms Gunnoe is eager to show anyone who will listen what the mining has done to the community where she grew up – to the homes, air and water.
From her house, we drive about 10 miles along a narrow, twisty road that used to be populated with small mining communities.
"For every mining job that’s out here, there’s approximately four or five other jobs that are generated by that one miner working"
Roger Horton
Citizens for Coal
But with mountaintop mines on either side of the road, many of the mountaintops have disappeared.
Pointing to one flattened summit, Ms Gunnoe says: "I had the opportunity to sit and watch the sun set on this mountain for the last time last year – for the last time ever. It’ll never happen again – the mountain has been blasted down now."
Most of the small communities have disappeared too. Residents have been bought out, or driven out by the noise of blasting and large mining machines.
Despite the obvious environmental impact on land and water, many people in West Virginia support mountaintop mining.
Coal brings 20,000 mining-related jobs and earns $8bn (£5bn) a year.
Of that, the state gets more than $400m in taxes – a major source of income in the state.
Job generation
About 25 miles from Maria Gunnoe’s home, Roger Horton drives a lorry at Guyan Mine, owned by St Louis-based Patriot Coal and the sixth largest mountaintop mine in West Virginia.
In January, he started a pro-mountaintop mining group called Citizens for Coal.
"I decided that we should be pro-active," Mr Horton says.
"We should come forward and tell the entire world what it is that we do here and how it benefits America. Over half of the electrical energy that we use in this country is derived from coal."
Mr Horton points out the clear economic benefits: that miners earn two to three times the average wage of the area, and how some former mining sites have been reclaimed.
On one site near his home is a new regional jail. On another, an industrial park, and on a third, a new NASCAR racetrack is being built.
"On top of that, for every mining job that’s out here, there’s approximately four or five other jobs that are generated by that one miner working," Mr Horton says. "And we buy cars, we buy homes, we buy clothing, food – it’s just in the best interest of everybody for us to continue working. It really is."
In late June, Maria Gunnoe and Roger Horton took their battle to Washington – to a Senate sub-committee hearing on "The Impacts of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining on Water Quality in Appalachia".
At the hearing, Maria Gunnoe told her story, and Roger Horton and 200 other miners and their families were there to show their support for mountaintop mining.
Two senators – Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Lamar Alexander of Tennessee – are planning to introduce legislation that could effectively ban mountaintop removal mining.
This is music to the ears of those like Ms Gunnoe who believe passionately that it should be stopped, and anathema to those who support mountaintop removal mining.
Though Maria Gunnoe’s work recently brought her the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize for North America – sometimes referred to as the "Green Nobel" – Roger Horton remains confident that mountaintop removal mining will not be stopped any time soon.
"I believe that in the end that we will be victorious, and continue to mine coal," he said.
This article is an adaptation of a feature that was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4′s Americana programme.Americana is broadcast at 1915 BST every Sunday on BBC Radio 4 FM.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Chinese miners freed after 25 days
July 13th, 2009 |
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Rescuers reach three men who survived in flooded mine by chewing coal
Three miners survived 25 days in a flooded mine in southern China by drinking dirty water and chewing coal before rescuers burrowed through a collapsed tunnel to reach them, a local official and state media said today.
The men and 13 others were trapped when the Xinqiao coal mine flooded on 17 June. Yesterday rescue workers digging into the mountainside cleared a path to the miners and saw their lights, which still gave off a dim glow, said Wang Guangneng, a Communist party spokesman in Qinglong county, Guizhou province.
The miners stayed alive by drinking water that seeped through the earth and were in a stable condition, Wang said.
The Guiyang Evening News said the miners chewed coal to stave off their hunger pangs.
It was not clear whether the men had any information about the miners who were still missing. Rescuers found the body of one miner a week after the flooding, Xinhua said.
A Xinhua photo showed one of the rescued miners, Wang Kuangwei, his bones prominent through his skin, getting medical attention yesterday, with his eyes covered to protect them from the light.
During an interview with Shenzhen Media Group television, 36-year-old Zhao Weixing, who was lying down with his eyes and face covered, said: “I feel OK.”
The miners’ rescue after 604 hours underground was a rare tale of survival in China’s coal mines, the world’s deadliest, where an average of 13 workers are killed every day. Most accidents are blamed on failures to follow safety rules, including a lack of ventilation or fire control equipment.
In August 2007, two brothers survived nearly six days in a mine tunnel by chewing coal and sipping urine from discarded water bottles. They even managed to crack jokes about their wives remarrying after they were declared dead.
The miners rescued yesterday – all from central Henan province – were found 500-600 metres from the entrance to the mineshaft, on a level intersection that protected them from the flood, the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper reported. The ceiling had collapsed, blocking a path to the tunnel opening.
The county’s head of work safety, Li Xingwei, was digging a channel into the mountain and found an unblocked pathway, then noticed the miners’ lights. “We crept along the tunnel in excitement,” Xinhua quoted him as saying.
Rescuers shouted to the men to remain calm, the Beijing Youth Daily report said. Once rescued, it said, the miners did nothing but ask for water.
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Your chance to quiz Eon on energy
July 9th, 2009 |
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Put your questions on coal, fossil fuels and renewables to the chief executive of the German energy firm Eon
Under the You Ask, They Answer microscope this week is the German energy giant Eon and its chief executive, Paul Golby. The company runs fossil fuel power stations, windfarms and biomass plants across the UK. Most controversially it has been attacked by environmental campaigners for its plan to open the first new coal-fired power station in the UK for 20 years at Kingsnorth, in Kent. It also has plans to build two new nuclear power stations and is a major investor in the £2.2bn London Array offshore wind farm. Golby has described anti-coal protesters as “a little naive”.
This is your chance to put your questions direct to Paul Golby and to Eon. How do you feel about expanding coal generation in the UK and new nuclear power stations? Are coal protesters “naive”? Should the company be doing more to invest in renewables? Or should it be paying more attention to keeping customer bills low?
Golby will be live online between 11am and noon on Monday. For the rest of the week until Friday afternoon a team of Eon staff will tackle other questions and comments on the blog. They are:
Emily Highmore – Senior media and communications officer
Tim Pyke – Climate manager
Sara Vaughan – director of regulation & energy policy
Jonathan Smith – PR and media relations manager
Please post your questions below.
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Your chance to quiz Eon on energy
July 9th, 2009 |
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Put your questions on coal, fossil fuels and renewables to the chief executive of the German energy firm Eon
Under the You Ask, They Answer microscope this week is the German energy giant Eon and its chief executive, Paul Golby. The company runs fossil fuel power stations, windfarms and biomass plants across the UK. Most controversially it has been attacked by environmental campaigners for its plan to open the first new coal-fired power station in the UK for 20 years at Kingsnorth, in Kent. It also has plans to build two new nuclear power stations and is a major investor in the £2.2bn London Array offshore wind farm. Golby has described anti-coal protesters as “a little naive”.
This is your chance to put your questions direct to Paul Golby and to Eon. How do you feel about expanding coal generation in the UK and new nuclear power stations? Are coal protesters “naive”? Should the company be doing more to invest in renewables? Or should it be paying more attention to keeping customer bills low?
Golby will be live online between 11am and noon on Monday. For the rest of the week until Friday afternoon a team of Eon staff will tackle other questions and comments on the blog. They are:
Emily Highmore – Senior media and communications officer
Tim Pyke – Climate manager
Sara Vaughan – director of regulation & energy policy
Jonathan Smith – PR and media relations manager
Please post your questions below.
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A trial held in a climate of injustice
July 3rd, 2009 |
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The outcome of the trial of the Drax protesters was determined the minute the judge banned the consideration of climate change
I would say that if the law considers it acceptable to kill 180 people a year, then the law has some catching up to do.
When Beth Stratford addressed the jury on Wednesday at the trial of the Drax 29 she was speaking in the knowledge that the judge in her trial had already secured a guilty verdict by his earlier decision to ban consideration of climate change from the proceedings. It was a bizarre, deeply flawed decision by Justice Spencer that determined the path of the trial from the outset. In his ruling he wrote,
I rule as a matter of law that … evidence concerning the burning of fossil fuels and global warming is inadmissible. To rule otherwise would allow these defendants to hijack the trial process just as surely as they hijacked the coal train.
We can’t know for sure what was in his mind when he concluded that anthropogenic global warming was so “irrelevant” as to deserve banishment from his courtroom. But I can’t help wondering if the judge – and the wider judicial system – had one eye on the outcome of our recent trial in Maidstone, where six of us were found not guilty of criminal damage despite admitting we climbed and painted on the chimney at Kingsnorth.
Our acquittal in the Kingsnorth case caused great disquiet in Whitehall. The attorney general, Lady Scotland, a member of the government, took active steps towards appealing the decision allowing us to run a climate change defence, before dropping the appeal for reasons unknown (our legal advisers suggested the government may have lost, in the process setting a precedent allowing climate protesters to run the kind of defence banned in the Drax trial).
Now it is evident that instead of appealing our case, the judiciary decided to adopt an alternative strategy – relying on judges to eject the basic laws of physics, biology and chemistry from their courtrooms and declare climate change inadmissible. Indeed, Justice Spencer addressed the question of a scientific consensus on climate change in his summing up to the jury by saying: “There may well be people who would argue against it, certainly against the urgency [of acting], I don’t know, but it’s irrelevant.”
Our earlier acquittal had a small but nevertheless very real influence on the energy and climate change debate in this country, but I am certain that an acquittal of the Drax 29 would have had an immeasurably greater impact. They defended themselves in the most eloquent and articulate fashion, shaming into silence the prosecutors and the men from the police’s National Extremism Unit who sat at the back of court, arms folded, as they were forced to listen to Amy Clancy telling the court how she’d never been arrested before but that the train occupation was the “most reasonable and responsible thing I have done in my life”.
The Drax defendants are heroes of our time. They knew they were almost certain to be convicted from the moment the judge ruled out consideration of climate change. But the protesters pleaded not guilty anyway, they went ahead without legal representation and for two days they forced Justice Spencer’s court to hear evidence of the greatest threat faced by humanity. Their defence ended with Jonathan Stevenson’s address to the jury, in which he said:
The law will eventually have to change and acknowledge the harm that carbon emissions do to all of us, by making them illegal. The only question is whether the law will catch up in time for there to be anything left to protect.
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Activists who stopped train convicted
July 3rd, 2009 |
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Climate change protesters face community service after judge rejects justification defence
Climate change protesters who ambushed and hijacked a power station coal train failed to convince a jury today that their actions were justified by the “imminent threat” of devastation from global warming.
The 22 men and women, including a senior university lecturer, teachers and film-makers, were convicted – after less than two hours of deliberation – of obstructing the service carrying 42,000 tonnes of coal to Drax in North Yorkshire last June.
Their hopes of repeating the “Kingsnorth Six” judgment last September, when activists who defaced a power station chimney were acquitted by a Kent jury, were dashed by a judge, who refused to admit arguments that the hijack was “necessary and proportionate to prevent the greater crime of carbon pollution“.
Although he eventually allowed an unexpectedly large amount of evidence about climate change to be heard, Judge James Spencer refused to let expert witnesses such as Nasa scientist, Prof James Hansen, address the seven women and five men on the jury at Leeds crown court. In a pre-trial ruling he said that to do so would allow the protesters “to hijack the trial process as surely as they hijacked the coal train“.
He did however compliment the group, who conducted their own defence, on making an “eloquent, sincere, moving and engaging” case to the court. After the verdicts, he said that sentencing in early September would definitely not include jail terms, but was likely to be community service.
The 22, plus a further five protesters who earlier pleaded guilty and two who are ill but expected to submit guilty pleas in due course, will however face hefty financial penalties. The crown is applying for both its costs and £36,000 compensation for cleaning up coal shovelled on to the tracks during a 16-hour standoff with police.
After the verdict, one of the 22, Dr Louise Hemmerman, 31, said: “The judge declared from day one that climate change was irrelevant to the trial, despite the fact that it was the sole reason for doing what we did.”
Another of the group, Jonathan Stevenson, 27, who works for a development charity, said: “This won’t be the last case where climate protesters are in court for taking peaceful direct action, and while some judges may think climate change is irrelevant, they won’t be able to hold back the tide forever.”
Stevenson asked the judge after the verdicts if an order banning the defendants from power stations would apply more widely, to include roads. Judge Spencer replied with a smile: “I would steer clear of demonstrations, all of you, until this case is completely over. Try to find some other activities to do on your holidays.”
Hansen, head of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whom the defendants had intended to call to the stand to speak about the science of climate change, said: “Civil resistance is not an easy path, but given abdication of responsibility by the government, it is an essential path.”
Hansen was arrested last week for his part in a protest over mountaintop coalmining in West Virginia. He has previously said that direct action is necessary because the democratic process is not bringing about policy change fast enough.
The chief crown prosecutor for North Yorkshire, Rob Turnbull, said: “While the CPS [crown prosecution service] respects the rights of individuals to lawfully protest, it takes a serious view of criminal activity which targets those carrying out lawful activities.” He defended Judge Spencer’s pre-trial ruling on the grounds that no one was in such immediate danger from global warning that hijacking a coal train was “proportionate”.
“The judge said that if the power station contributed to global warming, and all that entailed, it was for the government to attend to and not the protesters. He also said that no reasonable jury could conclude that the crime these defendants allegedly committed was either reasonable or proportionate when there were democratic processes available in this country for political change.”
The 22 were acquitted of actually stopping the train, after evidence that no one knew which of them had donned fake railwaymen’s uniforms and used red flags to bring it to a halt. The ambush stopped the train right on a bridge over the river Aire, whose girders gave protesters the means to clamber up and use 15 shovels to start unloading coal.
Passenger and freight services in the area were disrupted for two days, but Drax generated power normally throughout.
Those convicted were: Theo Bard, 24, Amy Clancy, 24, Brian Farelly, 32, Grainne Gannon, 26, Bryn Hoskins, 24, Jasmin Karalis, 25, Ellen Potts, 33, Bertie Russell, 24, Alison Stratford,26, Jonathan Stevenson, 27 and Felix Wight, all of London, Melanie Evans,25, Matthew Fawcette, 34, Robin Gillett, 23, Kristina Jones 22, Oliver Rodker, 40 and Thomas Spencer,23, all of Manchester, Paul Chatterton, 36, and Louise Hemmerman, 31, of Leeds, Melanie Evans, 25, of Stockport, Paul Morozzo, 42, of Hebden Bridge, Christopher Ward, 38, of Newport Pagnell and Elizabeth Whelan of Glasgow.
The five who pleaded guilty earlier were: Theo Brown, 22 and Clemmie James, 24, of London, Malcolm Carroll, 53, of Stafford, Thomas Johnstone, 25, of Liverpool and Paul Mellett, 29, of Colerne, Wiltshire. The two have indicated they will plead guilty when well are Caroline Williams, 25, of London and Sam Martingell, 24, of Leeds.
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Jury retires in Drax protest trial
July 2nd, 2009 |
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Final statement from the 22 defendants asked jury to ‘look beyond the confines of this court’ and ‘make a judgment based not just on law, but on justice’
The jury considering the case of the hijacking of a coal train by climate campaigners retired today after a final statement from the 22 defendants which the judge – who has repeatedly ruled political evidence inadmissible – described as “eloquent and sincere”.
In their statement, the group appealed to the jury to “to look beyond the confines of this court to the wider world, and to make a judgment based not just on law, but on justice.”
They were contradicted immediately afterwards by Judge James Spencer, who directed the jury at Leeds crown court that they should ignore climate change issues. He instructed them to consider only the facts of who took part in the stopping of a train carrying 42,000 tonnes of coal in June last year to Drax in North Yorkshire, the biggest coal-fired power station in Europe.
The defendants, aged between 43 and 21, plead not guilty to obstructing a railway engine contrary to the Malicious Damage Act of 1861. They have admitted that the train was flagged down by fake signalmen and occupied for 16 hours while coal was shovelled out of its hoppers, but argue that the action was “necessary and proportionate to prevent the crime of carbon emissions” and the deaths that result from them.
The judge had ruled the “necessity defence” inadmissible at a previous hearing, and he told the jury that accepting the argument would breach the principle that the law applied to all. But he emphasised that all 22 were “sincere in their views and of good character” and he included summaries of their climate change evidence in his summing up.
He described an account of a lesson on climate change, given by primary school teacher Grainne Gannon, 26, as “moving and engagingly told.” He also told the jury: “We heard evidence from the train driver and he was the first to say how polite, orderly and responsible the protesters were.”
The trial was originally set to last two weeks but sped up rapidly after the defence barristers withdrew because they could not professionally argue the “necessity” case against the explicit instructions of the judge. The 22 took over themselves, and cut their planned evidence by half as Judge Spencer became increasingly relaxed about allowing them to describe their motivations.
His earlier ruling, however, prevented the attendance of a string of expert witnesses from the UN, Nasa, and countries affected by possible consequences of global warming such as the Arctic and New Orleans. The defendants managed to refer to these in court, but were warned by the judge against summarising their views because they would be hearsay evidence.
On the third and final day of evidence, Gannon who boarded the train dressed as a coalminer’s warning canary, reinforced points made by a university lecturer, a film-maker, a charity worker and others about why they had felt compelled to act. She concluded: “burning coal means carbon pollution which means death.”
The final statement was given by charity worker Jonathan Stevenson, 26, from London, who cited Lord Denning’s admiration of a jury in 1670 which refused to convict William Penn and other Quakers for “disorderly preaching” even though they were themselves imprisoned by a judge, “without so much as a chamber pot”. Stevenson told the jury that Judge Spencer was not going to do that and also referred to a law lords decision in 2005 that no judge could direct a jury to return a guilty verdict.
He said: “The freedom that you have, that the legal system allows juries, is what enables the law, where necessary, to move forward. Times change, and what was acceptable in one era may not be acceptable in another.
“The law will eventually have to change and acknowledge the harm that carbon emissions do to all of us, by making them illegal.”
The defendents are: Theo Bard, 24, Amy Clancy, 24, Brian Farelly, 32, Grainne Gannon, 26, Bryn Hoskins, 24, Jasmin Karalis, 25, Ellen Potts, 33, Bertie Russell, 24, Alison Stratford, 26, Jonathan Stevenson, 27 and Felix Wight, all of London, Melanie Evans, 25, Matthew Fawcette, 34, Robin Gillett, 23, Kristina Jones, 22, Oliver Rodker, 40, and Thomas Spencer,23, all of Manchester, Paul Chatterton, 36, and Louise Hemmerman, 31, of Leeds, Melanie Evans, 25, of Stockport, Paul Morozzo, 42, of Hebden Bridge, Christopher Ward, 38, of Newport Pagnell and Elizabeth Whelan of Glasgow.
A verdict is expected tomorrow.
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Drax protesters plead climate cause
July 1st, 2009 |
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Climate change protesters accused of hijacking a power station coal train managed to mount a vigorous political defence of their actions in court yesterday during hours of cat-and-mouse negotiations with a judge.
In spite of repeated adjournments and warnings to stick to the facts of the ambush in June last year, the group of university lecturers, film-makers and others addressed a jury in Leeds on global warming, Arctic melt and the history of reforming Britain’s laws.
Initially, the trial of 22 activists at Leeds crown court seemed doomed to a stalemate, with Judge Spencer insisting that he would cut short any attempt to justify the hijack by what he acknowledged were “genuine and deeply felt motives”. He told the trial more than 20 times that the jury’s only task was to decide whether the train, taking coal to Drax power station in North Yorkshire, had been illegally stopped.
Three times he interrupted Dr Paul Chatterton, lead speaker of the defendants, who are conducting their own case, to ask him politely “to come back to what happened on the train”. But equally politely, Chatterton, a senior lecturer in geography at Leeds University, returned to the “deadly and urgent threat” posed to the planet by carbon emissions from Drax, the largest coal-fired power station in Europe.
The pattern continued all day, as the defendants succeeded in getting a wealth of evidence across to the seven women and five men on the jury. Judge Spencer allowed film-maker Beth Stratford, 26, to show the court pictures of her flooded home town, which had spurred her to join climate change campaigners. She revealed that the defence had lined up expert witnesses from the UN, Nasa and several universities, but these had been stood down because of a previous ruling that wider motive issues would not be admitted in evidence.
The defendants, aged between 21 and 43, have pleaded not guilty to obstructing a railway engine contrary to the Malicious Damage Act of 1861. The trial has heard that the train was stopped in a “well-planned and executed operation, which was also polite and orderly” by protesters dressed as railway staff waving red flags.
The ambush took place at a river bridge and allowed the group to clamber on board some of the 21 huge hoppers and shovel coal on to the track. The action disrupted local passenger and freight services for two days and cost £30,000 to clean up.
Richard Mansell QC, prosecuting, gave the court details yesterday of a wedding code used by the group in which the train was the bride, at whose approach the campaigners, nicknamed “priests” and “in-laws”, moved into action.
The six defendants who gave evidence yesterday all agreed that they had taken part, and Chatterton, described in character references from his colleagues as “an outstanding scholar, citizen and role model for students”, told the judge plainly: “I was on the train and I intended to stay on it for as long as possible.”
Turning to the jury, he said: “I need to tell you the reasons for my involvement and what was going through my mind. In my studies at university, I had come to see the impact that pollution from Drax was having, both globally and locally.
“UN statistics show that the amount of carbon produced by Drax was responsible for 180 deaths a year. Every minute we were on that train, we were stopping carbon emissions.”
In fact, Drax functioned uninterrupted during the 16-hour stand-off before police cut climbing bolts and locks attaching protesters to the train and bridge. But the hijack led to renewed interest in the climate change debate.
The case continues.
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Drax judge relaxes ban on climate change talk
July 1st, 2009 |
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Lecturer tells jury Drax power station threat is ‘deadly and urgent’
Climate change protesters accused of hijacking a power station coal train managed to address a jury on political issues today after a judge relaxed repeated warnings to give them some leeway.
Judge Spencer had earlier repeatedly told Leeds University lecturer Paul Chatterton, who is leading the defence of 22 activists, that the jury was only concerned with whether they had stopped and boarded the train and not with their reasons for doing so.
But after almost an hour’s adjournment he allowed Chatterton and a second protester, 26-year-old film-maker Alison Stratford, wider scope before finally intervening to cut them short.
Chatterton, who has lectured on geography for 11 years, said that he had acted because of “passion and terror at the implications of coal-burning power stations for global warning”.
He told the jury that he did not consider the train hijack to be an illegal act, because United Nations statistics suggested that the amount of carbon produced by Drax was responsible for 180 deaths a year. He said: “The threat is deadly and it is urgent …” The judge then interrupted him again, saying: “I’ve let you go on – please remember the legal restraints.”
Stratford was allowed to show the jury photographs of houses under water in her home town of Louth, Lincolnshire, which she said had roused her fears about climate change. She choked and had to recover in the witness box as she described how her four-year-old nephew had told her: “Don’t worry, we can fix it.”
“I was on the train to show him that I had done everything I could,” she said. But when she got on to Arctic ice melt and polar bears, the judge again asked: “Could you talk about the train?”
The court heard that the protesters had lined up academic witnesses and a scientist from Nasa to address the jury, but this had been ruled inadmissible. Adjourning for lunch, the judge warned that he would show less patience if defendants insisted on talking about their “genuine and deeply held feelings about climate change” rather than the nuts and bolts of the train hijack.
The defendants, aged between 43 and 21, have pleaded not guilty to obstructing a railway engine contrary to the Malicious Damage Act of 1861. But Chatterton admitted as soon as he began his defence that he had been on the train and had “intended to stay on it as long as possible”.
Earlier he told the jury that the prosecution case, which began and ended yesterday, had been “incredibly partial” about the incident on 13 June last year. Addressing the seven women and five men directly across the crowded courtroom at Leeds crown court, he said: “They said what went on there but did not deal with why.”
Yesterday, Richard Mansell QC, prosecuting, told the jury that the defendants “preparing a misuse of the court process to continue the protest action which they started when they boarded that train just over a year ago”.
The accused are Theo Bard, 24; Amy Clancy, 24; Brian Farelly, 32; Grainne Gannon, 26; Bryn Hoskins, 24; Jasmin Karalis, 25; Ellen Potts, 33; Bertie Russell, 24; Alison Stratford, 26; Jonathan Stevenson, 27 and Felix Wight, all of London; Melanie Evans, 25; Matthew Fawcette, 34; Robin Gillett, 23; Kristina Jones, 22; Oliver Rodker, 40 and Thomas Spencer, 23, all of Manchester; Paul Chatterton, 36, and Louise Hemmerman, 31, of Leeds; Melanie Evans, 25, of Stockport; Paul Morozzo, 42, of Hebden Bridge; Christopher Ward, 38, of Newport Pagnell, and Elizabeth Whelan, of Glasgow.
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Drax hijack trial ‘like second protest’
June 30th, 2009 |
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Prosecutors accuse 22 activists who took control of a coal train last year of ‘misusing the court process to continue the action’
Climate change campaigners who hijacked a power station coal train were accused today of planning to turn their trial into a second public protest on energy policy and global warming.
Prosecution lawyers claimed that 22 men and women who clambered aboard a 21-wagon supply service to Drax in north Yorkshire last year were bent on “misusing the court process to continue the action.”
The dock at Leeds crown court overflowed into the well as the group, aged between 21 and 48, pleaded not guilty to obstructing a railway engine contrary to the Malicious Damage Act of 1861.
The court heard that they had carried out “a well-planned and orchestrated action,” halting the train with red flags and fake railwaymen’s uniforms precisely by a river bridge which they could use to climb on to the huge coal hoppers.
“They effectively took control of the train,” said Richard Mansell QC, prosecuting, “and then started shovelling its coal on to the track below.” Makeshift tents were erected on two of the wagons while other protesters manacled themselves to the train and bridge girders, using locks that police specialists did not cut through for 16 hours.
The protest was aimed at greenhouse gas pollution from coal-burning at Drax, the largest power station of its kind in Europe, and fuel trains were disrupted for two days. Mansell told the jury of six men and six women that passenger and freight services had been disrupted, causing financial loss to several companies, and the clearing of the coal and ballast cleaning had cost £30,000.
The court heard that there was a good-humoured atmosphere on all sides during the confrontation, which ended at midnight when a specialist police team unlocked the last protester. One of the group, who are from London, Manchester, Leeds, Wales, the south-east and Scotland, had dressed as a canary. She carried a placard with the words “How many warnings do we need? The Canary”. She also joined in a request – which was not met – that the chief executive of Drax come the two miles down the rail line to talk to them.
The jury heard that the group had come thoroughly prepared, with 15 shovels, advice on what to do if arrested and scarves to avoid inhaling coal dust. The two who stopped the train initially told its driver Nicholas Wilson that they were stopping him because there was “a load of protesters on the line ahead”. They then revealed that they were part of the group, but assured him that he would come to no harm.
Wilson, who worked for the EWS company that ran the train, had no option but to stop because of the health and safety risk of people on the tracks.
Mansell told the trial, which is expected to last for a fortnight, that the 22 would be representing themselves and were likely to seek political sympathy rather than challenge the facts. He said that there was no question that the train had been illegally stopped and boarded, and the defendants would not seek to deny their actions.
“You may wonder therefore what possible issue it is that you are here to try,” he said. “We must wait and see, but the Crown suspects that what is happening here is that the defendants may seek to play on your emotions, and your sympathies with their cause, if you have them, so as to find them all not guilty.
“If you were to do this, by effectively ignoring the evidence, that would not be true to your oath or affirmation. If they are guilty in law of the offence, then the only true verdict is one of guilty.”
“The Crown says that they are preparing a misuse of the court process to continue the protest action which they started when they boarded that train just over a year ago.”
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Energy bills must rise to be green
June 29th, 2009 |
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Royal Society report says current government policy is not enough to pay for green technology
Consumers will need to pay more for energy if the UK is to have any chance of developing the technologies needed to tackle climate change, according to a group of leading scientists and engineers.
In a Royal Society study to be published today, the experts said that the government must put research into alternatives to fossil fuel much higher among its priorities, and argued that current policy in the area was “half-hearted”.
“We have adapted to an energy price which is unrealistically low if we’re going to try and preserve the environment,” John Shepherd, a climate scientist at Southampton University and co-author of the report said. “We have to allow the economy to adapt to higher energy prices through carbon prices and that will then make things like renewables and nuclear more economic, as carbon-based alternatives become more expensive.”
Shepherd admitted higher energy costs would be a hard sell to the public, but said it was not unthinkable. Part of the revenue could be generated by a carbon tax that took the place of VAT, so that the cost of an item took into account the energy and carbon footprint of a product. This would allow people to make appropriate decisions on their spending, and also raise cash for research into alternatives.
“Our research expenditure on non-fossil energy sources is 0.2% of what we spend on energy itself,” said Shepherd. “Multiplying that by 10 would be a very sensible thing to do. We’re spending less than 1% on probably the biggest problem we’ve faced in many decades.”
He said that the priority should be to decarbonise the UK’s electricity supply. Measures such as the government’s recent support for electric cars, he said, would be of no use unless the electricity they used came from carbon-free sources.
Though the creation of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) was a good move, Shepherd said: “We’ve had a lot of good talk but we still have remarkably little in the way of action.”
He cited the recent DECC proposals on carbon capture and storage (CCS) as an example. The department plans to legislate that any new coal-fired power station must demonstrate CCS on a proportion of its output. Once the technology is proven, a judgment made by the EnvironmentAgency around 2020, power plants would have five years to scale up to full CCS.
Shepherd said the proposals were not bold enough. “Really, it needs to be ‘no new coal unless you have 90% emissions reductions by 2020′. That is achievable and, if that were a clear signal, industry would get on and do it. It’s taken a long time for that signal to come through and now that it has, it’s a half-hearted message.”
A spokesperson for DECC argued that its proposed regulatory measures were “the most environmentally ambitious in the world, and would see any new coal power stations capturing at least 20-25% of their carbon emissions from day one”.
Ed Miliband, energy and climate change secretary, said that a white paper due next month will lay out how Britain will source its energy for the coming decades.
“This white paper will be the first time we’ve set out our vision of an energy mix in the context of carbon budgets and climate change targets. We have identified ways to tackle the challenges – we will need a mix of renewables, clean fossil fuels and nuclear and we’re already making world-leading progress in those areas. It’s a transition plan, a once in a generation statement of how the UK will make the historic and permanent move to a low-carbon economy with emissions cut by at least 80% in the middle of the century.”
The Royal Society report will argue that energy policy has been too fragmented and short-term in its outlook, with a tendency to hunt for silver-bullet solutions to climate change. “That really isn’t the case. What we need is a portfolio of solutions, horses for courses,” said Shepherd.
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Great ideas aren’t enough
Clean technology entrepreneurs need help to make their low-carbon brainwaves succeed commercially
The UK has a great track record in innovation. A quick look through the history books reveals an illustrious history of invention, from the telephone and the jet engine through to genetic fingerprinting and the internet.
When it comes to tackling climate change, the diversity of the ideas in this week’s Manchester Report shows there is certainly no lack of British ambition or creative thinking. With suggestions such as cheap biomass cooking stoves to harvesting the oceans for energy, many readers might have been wondering why these ideas aren’t already widely deployed. Particularly given their potential to deliver such great rewards for the planet, entrepreneurs, investors and the economy as a whole.
Sadly, the truth is that great ideas alone are not enough to transform the way we generate energy or the carbon-intensive industries that underpin modern living. Serious blood, sweat and tears are needed to ensure that ideas become commercial reality. Investors speak of the journey from “lab to listing”, and finding the right path on this journey is essential if low-carbon entrepreneurs want to see their ideas succeed.
The bottom line, of course, is that the technology needs to work. And this means both in the lab and in the world outside. Having tested the initial concept, the much bigger challenge is then to prove that the technology can be scaled up and replicated on a much larger, commercial scale.
Solar energy from photovoltaic cells is a case in point. The technical potential of generating electricity from the sun’s rays is well-recognised. Making the technology cost-effective when deployed at scale, however, is an issue that must be overcome. To make this a reality, it is vital that we develop advanced photovoltaic technology that can be manufactured at large scale and low cost. That is why the Carbon Trust is currently running a major R & D project to make this vision a commercial reality.
And this gets to the crux of the matter, because development of the technology is only half the battle when it comes to its success. The clean tech sector, like any other, is governed by the basic market principles of supply and demand. There needs to be an appetite for the product and it must be possible to deliver it on the scale required, at the quality required and at an acceptable price.
For this reason, the innovators behind any great low-carbon idea must build a thorough understanding of the market from the outset. Understanding who the key players are and establishing relationships with them is essential – both to build credibility and to understand the needs and wants of the organisations that may well be the customers of the future. Innovators also have to show they understand their final customers, and what they want. This requires a focus on moving them from a state of indifference (we know you exist, but… ) through curiosity, and on to where they have a genuine desire to purchase your product.
We have seen this sort of transition with fuel cells. Over the past five years, UK fuel cell companies have moved from small research-focused organisations to companies with listings on the Alternative Investment Market, partnering with household-name utilities and maintaining order books worth tens of millions of pounds.
Finally, the ability to build a capable and financially stable company as the organisation grows is a key factor in determining whether a technology lives or dies in the real world. The reality is that the best inventors aren’t always the best business leaders, so pulling in the right skills from a commercial and production perspective and attracting significant, private, external funds to fuel growth, is key.
Not all clean tech brainwaves will see the light of day but, with the UK on the cusp of a clean tech revolution which could generate fantastic economic opportunity, it is imperative that we speed up the process of commercialising new ideas. As the Manchester Report demonstrates, there is a wealth of innovative thinking ripe for the picking. The key will be to provide flexible but targeted support for these companies, to help them navigate the innovation journey. They can then emerge from the lab and grow into successful commercial businesses that will sit at the heart of the low-carbon economy.
• Garry Staunton is Technology Director at The Carbon Trust