Martin’s Rants» Climate Camp 2008

August 2nd, 2008

Climate Camp 2008

Posted in Permaculture, Rants, Videos by Martin

Climate Camp 2008

Sunday August 3rd is the official start of Climate Camp 2008 at Kingsnorth in Kent. I wish I was able to go but work and other commitments means I can’t, which is a shame ;-(

On Wednesday afternoon, a hundred climate campers secretly converged and occupied the site for this year’s Camp for Climate Action, a kilometer away Kingnorth power station.

Dozens of marquees were slowly put up, neighbourhoods arrived from all over the country, solar panels popped up, a central kitchen dished out three delicious meals a day and compost toilets were being built. A vision of a sustainable self- managed world is being put together piece by piece in a field in Kent, less than 45 minutes from London. All are welcome to come down as soon as they can to join in with the creation of Climate Camp 2008, in preparation for the opening on Sunday, 3rd August, when hundreds more will come and begin the week of workshops and action preparations.

The video below gives a taste of the 2007 Climate Camp;

Attending the Camp For Climate Action 2008 from Alined Gif on Vimeo.

The organisation is amazing – considering that police refuse to let people bring vehicles in – almost everything is moved by bike and by wheelbarrow and a complete community is there with food and waste handling – at the end of the camp, the field will be returned to the same if not better condition than when it was occupied. One of the people interviewed on the video said the planning and organisation was so good, those people should be running the country – I wish!

The section below is copied from the Cimate Camp website (http://www.climatecamp.org.uk) - please visit and explore the site and ideally, get along to Climate Camp 2008 and join in!

Why Kingsnorth?

Given how much CO2 you get when you burn coal, building a coal fired power station in the middle of a climate crisis would be really stupid. Really, really, stupid. But incredibly, down at Kingsnorth that’s exactly what power company E.ON and the Government plan to do.

Here’s our top 10 reasons for not building Kingsnorth, or burning coal or digging it up or well, doing pretty much anything with it other than leaving it in the ground. You don’t have to read them all. Any one will give you reason enough to join us this summer. A new power station at Kingsnorth really is that daft.

1. Let’s build a coal-fired power station!

If built, Kingsnorth will emit between 6 and 8 million tons of CO2 every year. That’s a hell of a lot of CO2, more even than the proposed third runway at Heathrow would produce. Scientists are usually a fairly reserved bunch but even they are starting to sound frantic about what’s happening with the climate. That’s not surprising given that, if we carry on treating the planet like a cheap boil in the bag dinner, we risk causing catastrophic climate change. That’s probably a bad idea. To avoid it we need to rapidly reduce emissions. So, in a world where we respect the ecology of the planet and the lives of those whose home it is, no Kingsnorth.

2. Kingsnorth is just the beginning. Six other similar power stations are planned.

How do you multiply stupid? We’re not sure, but that’s what the power utilities want to do. Unless there’s a big fight over Kingsnorth these companies, with the backing of Government, want to build six more atmosphere-crunching coal fired power stations in the next few years. Collectively these power stations would emit around 50 million tons of CO2 a year. It’s hard to understand such a callous disregard for your fellow humans but if you want to, start by following the money. Power stations make lots of it and, given the amount of coal around, they’re a ‘safe’ long term investment. It’s an age-old story but the ending isn’t written yet.

What happens at Kingsnorth is vitally important. When people get together determined to make the world a better place there is history-making potential. Look at the Suffragettes, the struggle for workers rights, the anti-roads movement. Kingsnorth can and will be stopped if enough of us get together to make it happen.

3. Because coal is the most polluting fossil fuel.

Coal was a really cool idea for the convenient long term storage of a load rotting prehistoric forests but burning it to make electricity is a monumentally bad one. It might have made sense at the beginning of the industrial revolution but then so did child labour, slavery and woollen swimming trunks. Now we know burning coal is wrecking the climate. Of CO2 in the atmosphere from human activity around 50% has come from the burning of coal. Mainly this is from Western nations who industrialized first.

Today burning coal is responsible for around one quarter of our global CO2 emissions. One of the great challenges for this generation is to find ways of living on this planet whilst leaving fossil fuels (especially coal) in the ground. We are quite literally the Power Generation. We have to change the ways we generate power and we need to find the power to make these changes happen.

4. Because coal is about as clean as an anthrax sandwich.

Proudly brandishing the phrase ‘clean coal’, the coal industry is confidently striding forth into our warming world. It’s a brilliant piece of PR greenwash. However, like ‘friendly’ fire or the ‘great’ war, it sounds kind of good but actually, when you get down to it, it really isn’t. Modern coal fired power stations are slightly more ‘efficient’ than old ones but the bottom line is: coal burning is responsible for one quarter of global emissions and those emissions are causing serious problems.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is an important part of the ‘clean’ coal myth. It’s basically a method of capturing and compressing the waste CO2 from a power station and then pumping it into salt aquifiers and old oil wells for long term storage. There’s a few problems with CCS. The biggest one is that it doesn’t exist, it’s science fiction. Sure there’s the odd experimental trial but at the scale of large coal fired power stations even the industry themselves say it’s 10 years away at best.

E.ON are saying that the power station they plan to build will be CCS ready. But ready for what exactly. We might be ready for the second coming but that isn’t going to help solve climate change that’s happening in reality in the here and now. Given that the next few years are crucial and that other ready-to-go alternatives exist, CCS is just a distraction. E.ON want to talk about CCS because they don’t want to talk about CO2 emissions. They want to obscure the truth: Kingsnorth power station will emit at least 6 million tons of CO2 every year and damn the lot of you.

5. Oh dear we’re running out of oil. Wahey there’s loads of coal!

No need to worry about the coming oil crunch, there’s loads of tar sands and coal – we’ll burn that instead. If you’ve got big investments in fossil fuels or you’ve just bought a villa in Greenland then maybe this ‘solution’ to the oil crunch makes sense. To the rest of us it makes about as much sense as a petrol-filled fire extinguisher.

Most of the geological evidence suggests that there is a lot of coal left, up to 200 years at current rates of consumption. But burning it really isn’t an option if we want a planet to live on (forget Greenland, those villas have sold out and the neighbours would be horrible).

6. But if we don’t burn coal the Chinese will.

Blimey. Where do you start? Yes the Chinese are building coal fired power stations but…

1. Climate change is a global problem and nearly every country is going to have to reduce emissions – the British, the Chinese, the Americans – we all have to get our shit together and change the way our societies make and use energy. If we’re going to do it fairly (which in our view is essential), that means countries like the UK will have to cut a lot more than the Chinese. If you’re burning coal you’re making the problem worse. We’re burning it here in the UK so that’s where we’ve got to stop it.

2. Not only are average emissions for each person significantly lower in China than in Britain, a large percentage of Chinese coal is burnt so that Chinese factories can make the throwaway consumer items that fill the shopping centres and refuse dumps of the west.

3. We’ve got to start somewhere. The very ecological systems we rely on for life are in jeopardy. If someone doesn’t wake up and try to turn off the gas we’ll probably fry sleeping. Arguing about who should set the alarm is as pathetic as it is suicidal.

7. Without these power stations there will be an energy gap.

The old ones are the best ones. Problem: a load of companies want to make big bucks but can only achieve it by doing the rest of us over. Answer: come up with something scary so people are distracted and don’t notice what you’re up to. O’oo the energy gap. A frightener isn’t it. It’s meant to be what happens if we don’t build new coal and nuclear power stations to replace the ones that are being decommissioned. We run out of energy, the Christmas lights go out , rubbish blows in the streets and we’re all transported back into the 70s and forced to listen to crackly Val Doonican records on pedal powered stereos.

But the energy gap is a nonsense.

Check out the Government’s own projections:

• The amount electricity generating capacity reduction by 2027 from closing old coal and nuclear power stations: 35%
• The amount of energy Gordon Brown has said we will generate from renewable sources by 2020: 40%

On these figures there is no energy gap. In fact we’re up five percent seven years early. There are other gaps. A commitment cap, a vision gap, a take the bull by the horns and do something useful for a change gap. But no energy gap.

8. Because there is a growing movement against coal.

It’s not just about Kingsnorth. In Wales and Derbyshire people are trying to stop new open cast mines. And from Bangladesh and the Appalachians to Columbia and Ecuador people are fighting against coal and fossil fuel extraction. This summer there are five other climate camps in other countries all focused on the issue of coal.

This is an essential way of facing the energy and climate change crisis. It’s a call to get together and work for something better in solidarity with people across the globe. It might sound like an old fashioned idea but then these days so does a stable climate and hell, if flares can make a come back anything has to be possible.

9. Because we need to talk about work.

Here’s a crazy idea. Instead of employing people to burn coal how about we build install and run an energy system based on renewables. They’ve started doing it in Germany and the industry already employs 250,000 people which is a lot more than work in our entire power sector. Here’s another one. We know that we need to make a transition from one energy system to another so what about building that transition around the workers in those industries, what about making it a just transition. And one final one. How about instead of working more and being exploited more so we can compete more just to produce more and more stuff, we work less to produce what we need and want, compete less and share more so we have more time and live better. Phew.

10. They don’t have to build Kingsnorth.

There are a load of brilliant alternatives that would solve the energy issue without messing with the planet. If we’re serious about these other options then it’s crucial we stop the building of Kingsnorth and the other five power stations.

We’ve probably already said it so sorry to go on, but if enough of us get together and say no, then Kingsnorth will never get built. Last year a new runway at Heathrow was seen as a done deal. The Climate Camp helped galvanise almost universal opposition to that stupid plan. With enough of us, we can do the same with building new coal-fired power stations. See you at Kingsnorth on August 9th.

http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

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