tagged w/ G8
-
Six Greenpeace activists scale the Federico II coal power plant in Brindisi, Italy, demanding strong leadership from the G8 on climate. Photograph: Greenpeace
Four coal-fired power stations in several parts of Italy were today occupied by Greenpeace activists as G8 leaders met in L'Aquila to discuss issues including action on climate change. More than 100 Greenpeace activists from 18 countries took part in the protests, which hope to draw attention to the group's campaign for action by world leaders on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
One of the targets was Italy's biggest coal-burning power station at Brindisi in south-eastern Italy where protestors climbed the chimney and occupied the conveyor belt carrying coal into the plant.
A local news agency quoted one of the demonstrators as saying the power station's management had started the belt while the Greenpeace activists were still on it. "At first, they didn't know we were on the conveyor belt", said Serena Bianchi. "Then we went to tell them, but even then we had some difficulty in persuading them to stop everything."
The organisation also occupied working plants near Venice and Genoa and staged a protest at an old oil-fired power station at Porto Tolle in northern Italy that is being converted to coal. The UK activist Ben Stewart, who previously climbed the Kingsnorth coal power station in 2007 and today climbed a 160ft chimney at a site near Venice, said: "Politicians talk but leaders act. The G8 leaders must stop putting the interests of big coal and other climate polluting industries ahead of the planet and take strong, decisive leadership on climate change."
Greenpeace is campaigning for carbon dioxide emissions to be cut by 40% by 2020 from their 1990 levels, and the group is also seeking a pledge from the G8 nations to provide developing countries with more than $100bn a year for action on climate change.
There have been several other protests in Italy ahead of the G8 meeting. Ten people were arrested on Tuesday, and five were detained yesterday near L'Aquila where the conference is being held.Six Greenpeace activists scale the Federico II coal power plant in Brindisi, Italy,... more
-
-
Agreeing to allow temperature to increase 3.6 degrees rather than pledging bold reductions now is dooming the world to climate catastrophe. We are already at 1 degree, heading for 2. Going to 3.6 fahrenheit would mean this planet would then be unrecognizable to our children and theirs. This is a cowardly action from the elitists who think that they can get away with deciding the fate of this planet and our children. If they think the world is in unrest now, wait. But of course, that may be exactly what they want. What a travesty.
Excerpt:
'U.S. President Barack Obama was to chair Thursday's meeting of the 17-nation Major Economies Forum, whose members account for about 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
MEF ministers holding last-minute preparatory talks failed to close the gap between U.S. and Europe on the one hand and emerging powers like China and India on the other hand on the goal of halving global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
A draft MEF document dropped any reference to this and aimed instead for agreement on the need to limit the average increase in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.
G8 leaders also endorsed the 2 degree Celsius cap.
Cindy Baxter of Greenpeace said the G8 was "watering down climate ambitions," a bad omen for December's U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen seeking a successor to the Kyoto pact, since emission cuts are necessary for limiting temperature rises.
Developing nations, present in large numbers at the expanded G8 summit with more than 30 world leaders invited, argue that they have to consume more energy to end poverty and that rich nations must make deep emission cuts of their own by 2020.'Agreeing to allow temperature to increase 3.6 degrees rather than pledging bold... more
-
-
China's president cut short a G8 summit trip to rush home Wednesday after ethnic tensions soared in Xinjiang territory, and the government flooded the area with security forces in a bid to quell emotions in the wake of a massive riot that left 156 dead.
Two helicopters dropped leaflets appealing for calm among the Xinjiang capital's 2.3 million residents a day after running battles in the streets involving Han Chinese and minority Muslim Uighurs waving bricks, steel pipes and cleavers.
A Foreign Ministry statement said "given the current situation in Xinjiang," President Hu Jintao cut short a trip to Italy for a Group of Eight meeting later Wednesday to return home. It was not known if he would travel to Urumqi, about four hours by air west of Beijing.
After an overnight curfew, streets were calmer Wednesday, but residents showed cell phone and video camera footage of the earlier chaos, reporting neighbor-on-neighbor violence and pointing out bloodstains.
Uighurs say the riots that started Sunday — put down by volleys of tear gas and a massive show of force — were triggered by the June 25 deaths of Uighur factory workers killed in a brawl in the southern Chinese city of Shaoguan. State-run media have said two workers died, but many Uighurs believe more were killed and said the incident was an example of how little the government cared about them.
Many of the Turkic-speaking group believe the Han Chinese, who have flooded into the rugged, rapidly developing western region in recent years, are trying to crowd them out. The Han Chinese say the Uighurs are backward and ungrateful for all the economic development and modernization.
They also complain that the Uighurs' religion — a moderate form of Sunni Islam — keeps them from blending into Chinese society, which is officially communist and largely secular.
In one of the biggest Uighur neighborhoods Wednesday, residents crowded around reporters to complain about how mobs of Han Chinese men stormed into their neighborhoods and assaulted them.China's president cut short a G8 summit trip to rush home Wednesday after ethnic... more
-
-
Entitled Caritas In Veritate (Love in Truth) , parts of the encyclical appeared bound to upset conservatives because of its underlying rejection of unbridled capitalism and unregulated market forces, which he said had led to "thoroughly destructive" abuse of the system.
The Pope said every economic decision has a moral consequence and called for "forms of redistribution" of wealth overseen by governments to help those most affected by crises.Entitled Caritas In Veritate (Love in Truth) , parts of the encyclical appeared bound... more
-
-
blanch
-
added this
-
2 years ago
- |
-
Under trial in Genoa, in close hearing and plea bargaining, some of the people who were then at the top of the police for the bloody raid in the Diaz school during the G8 summit of 2001. The police entered the school, granted by the municipality at the Genoa Social Forum, beat ferociously everyone who was inside and then arrested them.Under trial in Genoa, in close hearing and plea bargaining, some of the people who... more
-
