Climate Disobedience is a new term spreading across our globe as more and more of us intimately feel the immediacy and fear of climate change. Now is the right and only time for more resolute action to address the climate crisis.
The community of Climate Disobedient citizens are increasing:
The Kingsnorth 6 climbed the interior of a hulking smokestack that towers more than 600 feet above the Kingsnorth coal-fired power plant, England October 8, 2007. Making it to the top they repelled down the exterior of the chimney and began painting ”Gordon Brown” until they faced police helicopters, a high court injunction and arrest. In court they presented to the jury a “necessity” defense. This defense applies to situations in which a person violates a law to prevent a greater, imminent harm from occurring: for example, when someone breaks down a door to put out a fire in a burning building. World-renowned climate scientist James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies presented evidence that the Kingsnorth plant alone could be expected to cause sufficient global warming to prompt “the extinction of 400 species over its lifetime.” Citing a British government study showing that each ton of released carbon dioxide incurs $85 in future climate-change costs, the activists contended that shutting the plant down for the day had prevented $1.6 million in damages — a far greater harm to society than any rendered by their paint — and that their transgressions should therefore be excused. The jury, 12 ordinary Britons agreed. In April, British energy and climate change minister Ed Miliband announced a reversal in governmental policy on power stations, declaring, “The era of new unabated coal has come to an end.”
The Dominion 11, arrested after forming a human blockade to stop the construction of a coal plant in Wise County, Virginia, in November 2008,
The Drax 29, who went on trial this summer for boarding and stopping a train delivering coal to a power plant in North Yorkshire, England, last year.
Of the 214 new coal plants proposed in the United States since the year 2000, more than half have been cancelled, abandoned, or put on hold due to public pressure.
Coal is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions both in the United States and worldwide, and because there is enough coal left in the ground to heat the planet to catastrophic levels, that fossil fuel has been the focus of climate disobedience. As long as Canadian, U.S. and European power plants continue spewing coal smoke, their governments will have absolutely no credibility in Copenhagen in trying to influence the policies of rising economies such as China and India.
What you can DO:
The “Fossil-of-the-Day Award” is a way to take efficient, effective and safe action -and- to honor those risking their lives for us. Keep posted for “Fossil Award packages” you can present to the mis-behaving country’s Embassy during the United Nations Climate Negotiations in Barcelona next week. Embassies are required to report daily on events that happen; proving that this is a well strategized global action that will have a real impact.
