Independent Media Centre Ireland     http://www.indymedia.ie

Climate Camp: Camp for Social Justice

category offaly | environment | feature author Friday October 09, 2009 13:20author by Dave Donnellan

The Climate Camp held recently in Shannonbridge, Co. Offaly highlighted the urgent need to address the issue of peat bogs in Ireland and the dangerous effect their exploitation by Bord na Mona and the ESB has on Climate Change.


Part 1

Part 2

Related Link: http://www.vimeo.com/6246058


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author by vid sidpublication date Sat Oct 03, 2009 18:00author address author phone

Like the way it covers the the organising of event, gets the views of local people. Very good educational resource

author by Madam kpublication date Sun Oct 04, 2009 22:53author address author phone

30 second point of veiw video of Garda violence at climate camp parade.

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Embedded video Youtube Video


author by dunkpublication date Fri Oct 09, 2009 19:00author address author phone

Firstly thanks Dave for putting this documentary together. When in Shannonbridge, we discussed showing the premiere of the doc when it got made in lukers bar, have ye any plans of a screening down there???

By the way, the next big town, ballinasloe has its own money in circulation, which is one of the themes of transition; local economy resiliance, theirs is LETS (Local Exchange Trading System- http://www.ballinasloecreditunion.ie/LETS.html ), that might be something to talk about, along with all the rest.

Post camp indymedia feature - 'Give Peat a Chance'- Climate Camp Shannonbridge 2009
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/93749

related articles to climate camp:

For Peat's sake: Ireland joins the CLIMATE CAMP movement, expect NVDA and much craic
http://www.politics.ie/environment/94431-peats-sake-ire....html

Irish Times - Destroying bogs to produce uneconomical energy (Thursday, August 13, 2009)
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0813/1....html

If Martin Luther King were alive today, he might well be rolling up his groundsheet and leading the march to Shannonbridge, Co Offaly, which this Saturday hosts Ireland’s first climate camp, located in the shadow of the local peat-fired plant. The overriding aim of the camp, which involves a week of education and awareness, is to promote climate justice, according to spokeswoman, Molly Walsh. “There has been a great history of struggle against injustice by direct action, be it the land league, the anti-Apartheid movement or the suffragettes.”

Highlight of the camp is a day of direct action on Saturday 22nd. The aim of organisers is “peaceful civil disobedience”. Close liaison with gardaí should help avoid the confrontations that have marred some similar events in the UK.

Whether or not this is understood, the climate campers are not just fighting for their future, they’re fighting for ours too – and our children’s.


related to climate change etc

S21-S22 : A world awakening out of its "age of stupid"
http://www.politics.ie/environment/106415-s21-s22-world....html

- The Global Wake-Up Call 210909
On 21 September 2009, at more than 2600 events in 135 countries across the globe, we joined together to issue a deafening wake-up call to world leaders on climate change. The breadth and creativity of events is breathtaking, and our message broke through to leaders and international media.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWrstBidAXg
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/sept21_hub/?cl=335865944&v=4114

- AGE OF STUPID 220909
The Age of Stupid is a 2009 film by Franny Armstrong, director of McLibel & founder of 10:10, and John Battsek, producer of One Day in September. The film is a drama-documentary-animation hybrid which stars Pete Postlethwaite as the last person alive in the devastated world of 2055, watching archive footage from 2008 and asking: why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?

The film was released internationally on 21 September and 22 September at the "Global Premiere". A green carpet, solar-powered cinema tent in New York was linked by satellite to 442 cinemas across the USA and to more than 200 cinemas in more than 45 other countries. Special guests included Kofi Annan, Pete Postlethwaite and Gillian Anderson. Popular musicians Moby and Thom Yorke performed live.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho4ItfrIuYE
http://www.ageofstupid.net/

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The Global Wake-Up Call


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AGE OF STUPID


author by Dunkpublication date Sat Oct 10, 2009 17:20author address author phone

E.ON shelves plan to build Kingsnorth power plant as activists plan to take control of second power station

Wednesday, 7 October 2009: Climate activists celebrated victory against carbon intensive coal power last night, as energy company E.ON announced they were indefinitely delaying building a new power station in Kent. The Camp for Climate Action targeted the Kingsnorth site in August 2008 1 as coal is one of the most environmentally destructive ways of generating electricity.2

E.ON’s anouncement comes as hundreds of activists prepare for the Great Climate Swoop on 17th October, when they plan to take control of Ratcliffe-on-Soar3, another coal-fired power plant operated by E.ON 4. Activists will be co-ordinating the protests through text messages and twitter, which were also used to plan the G20 protests.

Activist Dennis Stevens said: “This is an amazing victory which shows how ordinary people can take back the power from corporations and government which do not value people and the environment. We need a social movement to develop community control of our energy supply and our society; not our current system which ignores the needs of people and the climate.”..

read all at

Victory for Climate Camp: E.ON Shelves Kingsnorth
http://www.climate-justice-action.org/news/2009/10/08/v...orth/

Further commentry on old imc.ie feature from 2008 climate camp at kingsnorth
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/88625&comment_limit=0&c...60680

author by Dunkpublication date Sat Oct 10, 2009 19:32author address author phone

Just sticking in a still from the film to act as a temp image for the doc, Dave, have are you working on 1 for posters etc and links on blogs, facebook etc...

I posted a feature on p.IE re the win against kingsnorth, found here

Direct Action gets results; E.ON Shelves Kingsnorth
If indeed this is an eco war, then this surely is another great win in the battle for (y)our future


http://www.politics.ie/environment/111536-direct-action....html

an interesting piece from the ecologist magazine about the rise of cliamate camps globally points out its origins, many readers here will remember those days in scotland...

Climate Camp: saviour of the environmental movement? (the ecologist mag)

Climte Camp - Early inspiration

The Stirling Eco Village at the G8 summit in 2005 was the first in this wave of climate camp protests. Although much more of a formal arrangement than later ones, with the site chosen in agreement with Stirling Council, the camp and related direct action efforts provided the model for future protests.

‘[after Stirling] We had a sense that we were capable of doing much more than just reacting to the calendar of events,’ remembers Climate Camp protester Kevin Smith. ‘We could set our own agenda now.’

It was the following August of 2006 when the camp-and-protest model met its first big test. By all accounts the police were caught by surprise as protestors attempted to break into the UK’s biggest carbon polluter, the Drax coal-fired power station in West Yorkshire.

The decision in 2007 to set up camp next to Heathrow airport in protest at plans to build a third runway was seen as an inspired move. More than 2,000 people joined the week-long protest, and were duly followed by a large contingent of broadcast, online and print media that ensured round-the-clock coverage of the action.


http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/296747/c....html

Climate Camp Ireland - documentary image
Climate Camp Ireland - documentary image

author by paul o tooolepublication date Mon Oct 12, 2009 11:44author address author phone

Excellent work Dave (again)....Keep it up man....'Age of stupid' is an understatement...

author by shoegirlpublication date Mon Oct 12, 2009 16:15author address author phone

Cool. So when can we have nuclear energy in Ireland, as Jim Lovelock suggests?

This is worth reading - http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/lovelock-online_chat-00.htm
(Note that Lovelock suggests small scale nuclear development, and not the supernukes we've seen blighting the UK in the past).

author by Davepublication date Mon Oct 12, 2009 18:44author address author phone

Thanks for the kind words Paul. It was very much a team effort.

author by Vaughn G.publication date Thu Oct 15, 2009 06:52author address author phone

Well, this year was no exception – there were talks about how this recession was coming to an end, and how to promote a more stable world economic system. Returning to a global gold standard instead of credit based (fiat) currency wasn't discussed. (This would have something to do with the problem.) Instead, the G8 decided to talk up doling out financial aid through the U.S. Treasury and personal loans out of the International Monetary Fund – and treating symptoms instead of the disease. The G8 had another summit this summer, and just like usual, they haven't accomplished much. The G8, or the 8 wealthiest nations of the world, have a summit every year to talk about how great they are.

more about it here: http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2009/10/07/pers...very/

author by xpublication date Wed Oct 21, 2009 11:28author address author phone

350 international Day of action

Dear World—

This is an invitation to build a movement—to take one day and use it to stop the climate crisis.

We are a group of people from around the planet—young and old, scientists and writers and activists—who have one thing in common. We know the most important number on earth: 350. And we know how to use that number to finally get global action on the worst crisis humans have ever faced. But we can only do it if you help.

A year ago, our greatest climatologist—NASA’s James Hansen—and his team produced a landmark series of studies. They showed that if we let the amount of carbon in the atmosphere top 350 parts per million, we can’t have a planet “similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.”

The bad news is we’re already past that number—we’re at 390 parts per million, which is why the Arctic is melting, why drought is spreading across the planet, why people are already dying from diseases like dengue fever and malaria occurring in places where they’ve never been seen before.

The good news: that number gives us a target to aim for. When the world’s leaders meet in Copenhagen in December to reach agreement on a new climate treaty, we need them to go farther than they’ve planned to go: we need to make sure they’ll pay attention to the latest science and put forward a plan that gets us back to safety.

So here’s the plan. On October 24, we need you to organize an action in the place where you live, something that will make that most important number visible to everyone. ...

...Onwards,

Bill McKibben – Author and Activist- USA
Vandana Shiva – Physicist, Activist, Author – India
David Suzuki – Scientist, Author, Activist – Canada
Bianca Jagger – Chair of the World Future Council – UK
Tim Flannery – Scientist, Author, Explorer -Australia
Bittu Sahgal - Editor of Sanctuary magazine – India
Andrew Simmons – Environmental Advocate, St. Vincent & The Grenadines
Christine Loh – Environmental Advocate and Legislator – Hong Kong


read all at http://www.climate-justice-action.org/news/2009/08/14/o...24th/
CJA Is umbrella group, under which climate camp organise and take action...

related infos

350 the most important number in the world?
For more information go to http://www.350.org/

This saturday - 4227 actions in 170 countries. – that’s how many actions are happening around this planet this Saturday, as the movement for climate justice kicks into action

vids

350.org - In every corner of the globe...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqof641pWys
2 mins

350 PPM CO2: Earth's Tipping Point? - Bill McKibben
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Citd9RH7kbU&NR=1
3 mins

Thom w/ Bill McKibben - Why is 350 the most important number in the world?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToK-73-KT7w
11+ min

Caption: Video Id: dqof641pWys Type: Youtube Video
350.org - In every corner of the globe...


Caption: Video Id: ToK-73-KT7w Type: Youtube Video
Bill McKibben - Why is 350 the most important number in the world?


author by dunkpublication date Mon Nov 30, 2009 10:31author address author phone

November 24 at 6:29pm report that the climate camp vid was broadcast on dublin community tv.
report from facebook

if so, wwwwwwwwaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy hhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy,
well done dave, campers, all involved

be the media

http://www.dctv.ie/main/


http://www.indymedia.ie/article/94308

Indymedia Ireland is a media collective. We are independent volunteer citizen journalists producing and distributing the authentic voices of the people. Indymedia Ireland is an open news project where anyone can post their own news, comment, videos or photos about Ireland or related matters.