A Greenpeace activist pushes a button to stop the conveyor belt. It's time to push the emergency switch on coal.
Other activists hung a huge banner reading "Climate change
starts here", and a third team climbed on the roof of the main
building to paint the message "Coal Kills".
Energy campaigner John Hepburn, who was on the climb team, talks
about why he took action:
The Munmorah coal-fired power station, 110km northeast of
Sydney, is the oldest in New South Wales and one of the most
inefficient in the country.
"We need to cut carbon emissions right now. It's not
complicated," said Hepburn. "If we installed solar hot water
heaters in half of NSW's households we could switch off Munmorah
and cut 1.5 million tonnes of CO2."
The protest was timed just one week before Australian federal
elections, to highlight that both political parties back policies
which would see greenhouse emissions increase.
Read - more about the coal plant.
See - more photos from the action.
Act -
to put the heat on Australian politicians.
Meanwhile scientists meet in Spain
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is meeting
to finalise the 'Synthesis Report' that brings together the current
scientific understanding on climate change and will guide climate
change policymaking over the next few years.
"In less than three weeks time, negotiators from governments
around the world will meet in Bali to decide the next steps they
need to take to protect the climate," said Stephanie Tunmore, one
of our policy experts. "The urgency of the science must be front
and foremost in their minds and must drive their decision-making.
The report being finalised this week is central to that."
The Bali talks were postponed specifically so that this IPCC
report could be finished. In the meantime, the IPCC has been
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which it will receive at a ceremony
in Oslo on 10 December (the 10th anniversary of the Kyoto
Protocol).
Earlier this year, the IPCC concluded that:
- Most of the observed warming over the past half-century is
caused by human activities (greater than 90 per cent
certainty).
- Over the next decades the number of people at risk of water
scarcity is likely to rise from tens of millions to billions.
- Sea level rise, storm surges and river flooding threaten huge
numbers of people in the Asian Megadeltas such as the
Ganges-Brahmaputra (Bangladesh) and the Zhujiang (Pearl River).
- Projected reductions in food production capacity in the
poorest parts of the world would bring more hunger and misery and
undermine achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
- Renewable energy generally has a positive effect on energy
security, employment and on air quality.
The scientists and economists of the IPCC already know how
precarious the situation is. But policymakers still aren't acting.
To show them how it's done, our activists blockaded the unloading
of a 145,000 tonne coal shipment at the port of Tarragona, just
south of Barcelona.
Some activists locked onto the unloading equipment while others
painted, "El carbon destruye el clima" on the ship and more
occupied the coal pile with a giant banner.
Video of the action (in Spanish):
More updates from the action on
Greenpeace Spain's website (in Spanish).
In the last two days, dozens of people have been arrested at
these actions, but it's only a start. The debate is over, time for
the energy revolution to begin.
Demand action
Your government will attend a UN meeting about climate change in December. Our policy experts say it's crunch time for officials, but there are still many politicians just talking and talking. We have less than three weeks to let them know we want action.
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