What UK jury verdict means for anti-coal, climate activists
Photo credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8068270@N04/2414246369/
From the article:
The Maidstone verdict has changed all that and could prove a turning point both for the protest movement and industrial policy. It gave the clear political message that 12 people with - one must assume - no great scientific knowledge, had listened to the evidence of one of the best scientists in the world and concluded that climate change is now so serious and so urgent an issue that it is legally justifiable for people to invade a power station and do £30,000 worth of damage.
Out of the blue, the environmentalists say, the legitimacy of the government to pursue an expanding coal policy has been undermined and it may have become impossible for E.ON, the German owners of Kingsnorth, to go ahead with a new plant without fitting a £500m carbon capture and storage plant to collect and dispose of the greenhouse gases.
What is particularly galling for the backers of coal-fired power stations is that, because of the amount of damage alleged to have been done at Kingsnorth, the case went to a jury rather than a magistrate. The crown prosecution service and many corporations know that campaigners who challenge the law by non-violent action are being regularly acquitted by juries. In the past decade, prosecutions of protesters against GM crops, incinerators, new roads and nuclear, chemical and arms trade companies have all collapsed after defendants argued that they had acted according to their consciences and that they were trying to prevent a greater crime. Greenpeace itself has a four-nil record against the crown using the same defence and was widely known to be seeking a jury trial to present complex arguments about coal and climate change.
"They were pretty confident that a jury would listen to them more than the government," said one lawyer yesterday. "It gives them a platform. I doubt that we will see another climate change jury trial for many years."
"We are seeing a pattern emerging. The public is increasingly speaking through the courts," says Martyn Day, a partner with Leigh Day solicitors, which specialises in environmental cases. "These cases are a good guide to public mood and politicians should take close heed of them. It shows that society is greatly concerned about what is happening with the environment and that it is suspicious of government and business when they say they are acting responsibly.
"We're looking at a society which is far more in tune with the environment than in the past. Politicians and companies have not understood that most people now understand the issues. There's a feeling that government and the authorities have not been paying sufficient heed, and that the courts are righting the balance," he said.
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- JanforGore
- added this
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- recommended by:
- goldenways
- added September 13, 2008
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Al Gore, James Hansen, and Civil Disobedience
In his recent global warming op-ed in the New York Times ("The Big Melt," August 16, 2007) , Nicholas Kristof reported on a conversation with Al Gore in which the former Vice-President said: "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers, and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants." His comment was a reaction to the ever-quickening pace of polar ice meltoff, with all its catastrophic implications, and the huge role played by coal-fired power plants in advancing our demise through global warming.
Gore's comment was also strikingly similar to a recent quote from Dr. James Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA: "It seems to me that young people, especially, should be doing whatever is necessary to block construction of dirty (no CCS) coal-fired power plants."
What does it mean when one of the top scientific leaders ringing the alarm on global warming, along with a top political leader, both suggest, in so many words, nonviolent direct action (or civil disobedience) to confront the challenge of climate change?
Clearly both men must realize the importance of nonviolent resistance in social change efforts of this magnitude and agree, if only subconsciously, with historian Howard Zinn's observation that "Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy. It is absolutely essential to it." (Dr. Hansen, for his part, goes on to quote the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution at some length.)
Gore and Hansen must both know that nonviolent direct action has been a significant catalyst in nearly every major social change movement in U.S. (and world) history, starting in this country with the Boston Tea Party and extending through the anti-slavery, woman's suffrage, labor rights, civil rights, environmental and anti-war movements. Nonviolent direct action can dramatize an injustice or danger to the general public as few other actions can. It both provokes other people to act and speak - often people who had previously been silent - and it opens up political space for them to do so. Nonviolent actions are acts of courage that inspire others to follow. They are acts of leadership.
The twin quotes also reflect the extraordinary urgency of our predicament. As Jay Gulledge, senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, notes in Kristof's column, "Over and over again, we're finding that models correctly predict the patterns of change but understate their magnitude."
Or their speed. According to the May 2007 report from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, polar ice is melting significantly faster than computer models of climate calculate, and the Arctic Sea could be free of summer ice by 2020 - 30 years earlier than the recent prediction by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Clearly, we are running out of time.
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Are you ready for the environmental rights movement? Would you stand up in a non violent way to conduct civil disobedience to save your species and your planet? To speak out for your civil rights as so many before us did? What more noble cause could there be for it? -
I understand if you're against something and want to protest about it. But, violence is no excuse to show your disagreement about something. I understand civil disobedience. But Gandhi and King would not have supported this.
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Who mentioned violence here?
From my second entry here:
Would you stand up in a non violent way to conduct civil disobedience to save your species and your planet?
And how do you know what they would have supported regarding this? Standing in a ring around a coal plant site with arms interlocked to not allow bulldozers through, or even scaling a building to write a warning to others about the dangers of climate change is not violent. And if you truly understand the magnitude of the effects of climate change bearing down upon us, you will understand why this must happen in the wake of the apathy shown by this and other governments in dealing with it.
Oh, and if you want to see violence, watch what a coal company does when it blows the top of a mountain off. Does that outrage you?
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Yea for the environmentalists in England. I'm glad to see them winning.
It appears much of the world is passing the US in terms of environmental awareness. Of course look at what is in office and what wants to be in office.There are 2 coal fired plants in construction inthe state of Nevada.
I wrote everyone and got the same tired rhetoric back.
Perhaps it is time to take back our country. -
Here's your violence. If you're against violence then you should be standing up against this human and environmental rights abuse.
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'A little revolution now and then is a good thing; the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.' Thomas Jefferson
And from this we have come to the point where any type of protest is considered 'wrong' in this country even as these same people who condemn even acts of civil disobedience continue to rail against this government and corporations saying that something needs to be done. So, what then is to be done when your government turns a deaf ear to your many grievances and a blind eye to the facts before them regarding the deterioration of this planet and the environmental devastation and human rights abuses they continue to allow for their own benefit? What then is to be done?
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Civil disobedience is an important factor in creating change. I will not sit on the sidelines and complain. I will support any action that is non violent and something I believe in.
Folks are awakening everywhere and even Republicans are afraid of global warming. The storms and hurricanes will just keep coming.
I am not going to give up with out being out there peacefully protesting.
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I am ready for protest
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Should we watch ourselves? Is Homeland Security reading this thinking we are all enviro terrorists? The voting on this would indicate someone doesn't like freedom of speech. The Congress also actually wanted to pass a bill that would have included environmental/animal rights protests as terrorist acts against the government. For all I know it may well have passed. Can you believe that? Our own Congress on both sides! They now act as King George III did when he sent a dispatch to the Continental Congress telling the delegates that if they persisted with their attempts to gain liberty from his tyranny that they would be hanged as traitors to the crown. SO SAD to see this country actually back to what so many gave their lives, blood and fortunes to free us from. That to stand up for what is morally right in the face of a catastrophe that seeks to change life ON EARTH as we know it brands you as a criminal in your own country.
You simply must sit down and be quiet here because Big Brother knows what's best for you. Well, you know what, the Founders of this country didn't stand for that and neither should we. It may well then not be climate change that is our undoing, but the fear in not standing up to stop it and the political partisanship that precludes some from holding Democrats' feet to the fire on this as vigorously as we would hold Republicans. I will tell you this, it matters not to me who makes it to the "White House" by corporate decree. If they do not put forth a 100% renewable energy act within theiri first 100 days, I will protest them regardless of their party and their "charisma." Some things are more important than hero worship and petty political nit picking.This sure as hell is one of them.
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Here is one bill from Pennsylvania that would have likened peaceful environmental protesting to terrorism.
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- JanforGore
- 4 months ago
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Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama says that he will support The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (S. 1959). According to the automatic email responses constituents are receiving from his office, Obama appears to be straddling the fence between preserving civil liberties and being tough on terrorism.
"The American people understand that new threats require flexible responses to keep them safe. They also insist that our responses to threats respect the constitution and do not violate the basic tenets of our democracy," Obama's email said. Several people who have written to Obama have posted his response on various blogs, including "Justin" who's personal blog was picked up on diggs.com.
"I wrote Senator Obama (my senator from Illinois) about this act, which is now in a committee of his (the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs). I asked that he read the bill (not to insult his intelligence, but after the Patriot Act it appears this is a necessary request for most senators), and that he recognize the dire consequences that could result from its vague language," Justin wrote Dec. 6 below the post of Obama's email. "He's quite eloquent, you've got to give him that. This act 'includes provisions prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security's efforts from violating civil rights and civil liberties of U.S. citizens.' Didn't we used to have something like that? What was it called? Oh right... The Constitution."
The House version of the bill, H.R. 1955, passed Oct. 23 by a vote of 404-6 under the "suspension of the rules," a provision that is available to quickly pass bills considered "non-controversial."
Obama is on the 17-member Senate Committee for Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, where S. 1959 was introduced by Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) Aug. 2. "I will keep your important comments in mind as I work with my colleagues on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. I will work to ensure that this legislation helps to achieve our domestic security objectives while protecting civil liberties and constitutional rights," Obama stated in his email to Justin.
Many scholars, historians and civil liberties experts say they fear that the proposed bill will set the stage for future criminal legislation that be used against U.S.-based groups engaged in legal but unpopular political activism, ranging from political Islamists to animal-rights and environmental campaigners to radical right-wing organizations.
"This bill fits the pattern we are seeing coming out of Congress - both Republican and Democratic - of a continued campaign of fear, which gets into heads of Americans that we now need to start criminalizing ideology," said Alejandro Queral, executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center. H said he is very concerned about the bill's vague definitions of "violent radicalization," "homegrown terrorism," and the terms within the definitions including "extremist belief system," "violence" and "force."
"What is an extremist belief system? Who defines this?" Queral questioned. "Planes flying into the World Trade Center is an extremist belief, but are anti-abortion activists extremists? Are individuals who liberate mink extremists? These are broad definitions that encompass so much, which need to rather be very narrowly tailored. It is criminalizing thought and ideology, rather than criminal activity."
more at the link
^^^^^^^^^^
I could imagine that McCain supports this as well, though I will look it up. Shame on Obama for supporting this affront to our civil liberties. -
More on this bill: HR 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act.
Read it and see how it aims to take away your right to freedom of speech and expression. And Obama would support a bill like this? And his supporters would condone it? This bill is so broad and so vague that any protest in this country could be considered 'extremist' if it goes against THEIR established parameters and status quo.This goes against EVERYTHING in our constitution. What absolutely astounds me but probably shouldn't have, is that it passed the House overwhelmingly with a suspension of the rules to LIMIT DEBATE. What a telltale sign that is of the intention of this bill. And it's main sponsor is a DEMOCRAT!
This is a clear attempt to keep protests like the one in Britain from happening here. They are standing up for corporations over the free speech and will of the American people and our health, and the sustainability of this planet. I truly do not understand how anyone can read the text of this bill and not be absolutely wary and fearful of where we are heading.
Any type of activist who deems to protest for social change regarding the environment and climate change could be considered a terrorist if this bill passes. Any outrage about this? Of course not, because the American people on the whole don't even know about it!
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- JanforGore
- 4 months ago
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Evil does not reside on one side of the isle, both parties have been complicent in the fascist takeover of our once great democracy.
Those who are willing to give up their freedom to obtain security , deserve neither.
The majority of Americans support catch phrases, not politicians. ie conservative values,
Most of the individuals in my area are sheep, and fall for this christian conservative B.S. I sincerely believe that if you get your news from Fox, christian broadcast network, Pat Robertson, or the 700 club, you are a real threat to democracy.
The fact that Sarah Palin can get on national TV and repeatedly lie and get away with it, only shows that these people will get what they deserve. Sad thing is we will ALL suffer from the ignorance of a few. -
Obama is not our friend. That seems clear. And yet the idea of McCain and Palin is far worse.
Obama is the lesser of two great evils. They represent the ruling class on this planet. Obama is no savior. He is just a band aid being offered by the ruling elite to placate the masses with a historical black president, but he seems to be in their pockets as much as The Bush's and the Clintons are and were.
I don't think that anyone can make to the upper echelons of this government without being in the pockets of the ruling elite.
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jubal: I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly. You don't get that far without gaining their favor.
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- JanforGore
- 4 months ago
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