Civil Disobedience is Necessary to Kill Coal

Civil rights activists didn’t sit around waiting for politicians to ‘see the light’ and take action – and neither should we. If we want to shut down coal plants and prevent catastrophic global warming, we’ve got to put our necks on the line: that’s the message that Salon is sending out in an article entitled “How to kill a coal plant”.

Civil disobedience works. The case of the Kingsnorth Six, Greenpeace activists who were acquitted by a grand jury on vandalism charges after scaling a coal plant and beginning to paint it with a message to Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is a great example.

From Salon:

In the Kingsnorth case, world-renowned climate scientist James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, flew to England to testify. According to the Guardian, he 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.

What surprised both Greenpeace and the prosecution was that 12 ordinary Britons agreed. The jury returned with an acquittal, and the freed defendants made the front pages of newspapers throughout the country.

The tumult also produced political results. 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 success of the Kingsnorth protest has inspired similar protests around the world, from West Virginia to Australia.

Americans are notorious for being reluctant to face unpleasant facts. The desire to conserve the status quo has lulled most people into a sense of apathy, compounded by the scurrilous efforts of the energy industry to prevent action that could harm their profits. But, simply waiting until catastrophic global warming consequences begin to occur will change their lives negatively more than anything else could.

Salon is urging environmentalists and anyone concerned about global warming to engage in nonviolent protests during this year’s U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. While as many as 100,000 are expected to take to the streets in Copenhagen itself, many more will participate in events in the U.S. at the same time. Learn more and pledge to join in at BeyondTalk.net.

Link [Salon]
Photo credit: Greenpeace

Related Posts:

Al Gore Urges Civil Disobedience to Fight Coal Plants
Bill McKibben: I’ll Get Arrested to Stop the Burning of Coal
UK Court Decides Threat of Global Warming Justifies Breaking the Law
Greenpeace Takes Over Four Italian Coal-Fired Power Stations
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