Bristol Rising Tide actions during Co-Mutiny week
Rising Tide was one of many groups taking part in the Bristol Co-Mutiny week of action. While we are group of activists focussing on tackling the root causes of climate chaos we wanted to make the links with other issues and campaigns. In particular we wanted to show that the exploitation of fossil fuels by big corporate interests is resulting in mass migration, resource wars, and widespread social injustice. Like all the groups involved in Co-Mutiny, we want to confront the forces of capitalism. This is the root cause of climate chaos. Key targets in the week of action were Bristol International Airport, BT Pensions who are investing in opencast coal mining in South Wales and the big banks which finance the oil, gas, and coal industries.
On Thursday 17th September, a dozen homeless penguins invaded Bristol International Airport and handed out leaflets highlighting the impact of airport expansion, and therefore increased CO2 emissions, on climate change. Due to the current pace of climate change and resulting melting of the ice sheet some Emperor penguin colonies have halved in numbers.
The planned increase in commercial flights at Bristol from 6.2m in 2008 to 10m by 2016 will also contribute in the increased suffering for millions of humans. From flood plains in Bangladesh, to islanders in the Maldives being forced to leave due to sea level rises, and Africans faced with drought – large areas of the world are becoming uninhabitable as a result of climate change. The poorest people are the worst affected – people who will never fly anywhere.
Locally the BIA expansion will mean a flight every 210 seconds over 16 hours of normal opening hours and thus more noise pollution for local residents. Increased passenger numbers mean increased road traffic with a projected extra 2 million car journeys per year, and an estimated cost to the local council of £50m in order to extend the Bus Rapid Transport system from central Bristol
The aviation sector currently amounts to 13% of the UK’s total climate impact and this will grow to 30% with BIA and other UK airport expansion plans. This is at a time when the UK Government has committed the UK to an 80% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050. In order to achieve this with the current plans for airport expansion across the country such as that at BIA, we would need to reduce emissions from all other sectors by an additional 10% to 90%. In order to make up this additional 10% ordinary people are expected to work even harder just to compensate for companies like BIA, Easyjet and Ryanair expanding their profits. Once again the government is clearly putting big business’s interests first – this has been a constant theme of the Co-Mutiny week of action.
On Friday 18th September during the Co-Mutiny Repossess the Banks protest, Rising Tide took action against BT offices in Bristol to highlight the link between the BT Pensions Scheme and the giant Ffos y Fran opencast coal mine at Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. Fake coal was strewn on the floor of one office and walking lumps of coal attempted to enter another. A number of activists were arrested.
We wanted to show the lie to the claims made by BT Pensions Scheme that their investments are made with any regard to social, ethical, and environmental criteria. BTPS own Hermes, an outfit that administers the pension scheme who in turn own Argent – a partner in Miller Argent the developer of Ffos y Fran, one of Europe’s largest new opencast coal mines. This opencast mine is a massive scheme that will blight the lives of people in Merthyr Tydfil for at least 17 years. It is only 37 Metres from the nearest housing estate and is on the edge of a large community. The coal from Ffos y Fran is going to Aberthaw power station which is the biggest polluter in Wales. In 2006 the power station pumped out more than 7.4million tonnes of CO2 and is in the top 5 largest polluters in Britain.
The first Climate Camp Cymru was held at Merthyr Tydfil in August partly to support the local campaign against Ffos y Fran and to highlight the massive development of new coal projects throughout the UK .