Eviction of Borras and Holt Community Protection Camp. Photo: Dave Ellison
In January 2014, Westminster prime minister David Cameron announced that his government was ‘going all out for fracking’. (Fracking is the high-pressure hydraulic fracturing of shale rock deep underground to extract natural gas or other fossil fuels.) As an inducement to local authorities, councils were allowed to keep 100% of business rates from shale gas sites.
Defying public opinion, the government also…
The Alberta tar sands in Canada may be the largest hydrocarbon resource in the world, as well as the largest single potential source of climate-warming carbon dioxide. If the tar sands are completely exploited for fuel, 240 billion tons of carbon will be added to the atmosphere and global temperatures will rise 0.4°C from this source alone. At the same time, mining, pipelines, and ocean shipping threaten devastation in places stretching from one end of North America to the other.
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Coming, as it does, in the wake of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent warning that global warming is on course to inflict ‘severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts’ on the planet, this book couldn’t be more timely or important.
To make the necessary reduction in carbon emissions, Klein explains, the world needs to institute immediate, transformational change on the scale of the American New Deal of the 1930s or the national mobilisations during the Second…
It’s been a symbol of resistance to the third runway at Heathrow for four-and-a-half years, but after a July court ruling, the campaigners behind a community space in Sipson are under threat of eviction.
The ‘Grow Heathrow’ campaign began in 2010, when activists took over a neglected property on the site of the proposed new runway for Heathrow airport. Since then, the group has been fighting a battle in court to remain on the land.
In mid-July, the high court ruled in…
On 17 October, 30 Pacific Climate Warriors from 12 different Pacific islands are arriving in Australia to paddle traditional canoes they have built themselves into the harbour of the world’s largest coal port – Newcastle – to stop coal exports for a day.
Newcastle port shipped 150m tonnes of coal in 2013, and is set to expand its capacity by another 70m tonnes a year. The Pacific Climate Warriors, supported by 350.org, describe the carbon emissions of the coal and gas industries…
Co-ordinated by Friends of the Earth Cymru, 5 July was a ‘Wales Against Fracking’ day of action.
Across Wales, groups mounted events to gather signatures on a petition to the Welsh government for a moratorium on extreme energy. Many communities in Wales are threatened by fracking, underground coal-gasification or coal-bed methane extraction.
Extreme energy keeps us hooked on the fossil fuels that drive climate change, risks contaminating water, and diverts investment…
‘We have little mini-successes and we celebrate them because we need to; otherwise we’ll go stark raving mad,’ New York activist Maura Stephens said during a Peace News round-table discussion via video chat on 17 April.
During the conversation, two US and two British anti-fracking activists compared how their movements have organised, and brainstormed tactics for fighting ‘hydraulic fracturing’ for oil and gas in the future.
Stephens thinks organisers need to reflect on what is…
‘I think fracking is entirely the wrong direction for UK energy policy, and I feel that if we act now we can prevent the establishment of a fracking industry in this country,’ Laura Bannister said.
Bannister is a European election candidate from Manchester and Salford, an area currently being exploratory drilled for natural gas. She has been a member of the…
A demonstration in Oxford in February by COIN (Climate Outreach and Information Network), who are fundraising to deliver community climate training sessions in the wake of the recent flooding in England and Wales. www.climateoutreach.org.uk PHOTO: COIN
Rose Bridger has written a book on aviation quite unlike any other. In its scope, it is unique.
It ranges from the technical details of aircraft to the impact of new greenfield airports on poor farmers in India, from biofuels to aerotropolises.
Plane Truth is a book for activists. Bridger doesn’t hide where she is coming from. It is written from the perspective of an environmentalist: somebody who is concerned about the trafficking of arms across the world,…
On 9 January, a three-day trial in Brighton resulted in acquittals for 10 people arrested for blockading the drilling site near Balcombe on 26 July. This was the first of over 20 trials arising out of protests against energy giant Cuadrilla’s attempts to drill for oil and gas near the West Sussex village.
All 10 were acquitted of ‘obstruction of the highway’. Defence lawyers argued that as the B2036 London Road at Balcombe was closed to…
Although it’s only a small booklet accompanying a very short DVD, produced on a low budget, and it would be easy to overlook it, this new resource from the Movement for the Abolition of War (MAW) is more important than it at first looks. After all, it deals with possibly the biggest global concern for nonviolent revolutionaries today: how war and climate change are inextricably linked and why we need to work on them as one issue.
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On 17 October, five ‘No Dash for Gas’ protesters successfully appealed against their sentences of 150 hours of community service. Nottingham crown court reduced their sentences to conditional discharges.
A year earlier, ‘No Dash for Gas’ members had occupied the chimneys of West Burton gas-fired power station in Nottinghamshire to protest against government plans to build up to 20 new gas-fired power stations (see PN 2552-3).
When the 21 climate activists came to trial…
The peaceful anti-fracking protests at Balcombe in West Sussex this summer helped to reverse steadily-growing public acceptance of shale gas extraction, according to a Nottingham University report published in October:
www.tinyurl.com/peacenews963
