Climate activist group Klimax in Sweden are tired of unnecessary short haul and national flights. Especially between the major cities of Gothenburg, Stockholm and Malmo/Copenhagen, all directly coupled by the nearest thing Sweden has to a high speed train. That’s why that on Friday the 15th of February strange things started happening at airports around Sweden.
Time might be money but how much climate change is ten minutes worth? If you don’t have any luggage and check in on-line that’s about how much time you can save by flying between Sweden’s major cities. Considering that the Swedish trains run on renewable electric energy, that’s a hell of a lot of climate change for ten minutes. Ok, it’s not that simple. Why would any sane person without a climate conscience or a fat wallet take the train when it’s cheaper to fly? A railway system that makes the UK’s look modern could also help weigh the balance when it comes to choosing how to get there.
Here’s a round up of the different actions around the country:
Malmo http://svt.se/svt/play/video.jsp?a=1057410
At the time of writing seven activists are being held in custody. It seems that the crime of running about the countryside dressed as a polar bear is frowned upon in the south of Sweden. The seven were arrested running towards the perimeter fence of Sturup airport outside of Malmo by the large police presence. It seems that the boys in blue were out on a mass training exercise at the time. The police should be happy to get a bit of real life training. Attempting to get onto runways whilst dressed as a polar bear is definitely one of the fastest going crimes of our time. An interesting high publicity court case seems to be in the pipe line. At least one solidarity demonstration (Gothenburg 2pm Gustaf Adolfs Torg) is planned on Saturday in Sweden to demand the release of the Malmo seven.
Stockholm
The polar bears of Stockholm were treated to ice cream by the airport authorities at Bromma. A pleasant gesture but hardly making up for helping to destroy the bears northerly habitat. Sorry you family drowned but here’s a raspberry ripple to make up for it,sort of thing. A die in was staged as other peaceful protesters with banners and flyers roamed the terminal raising awareness of the environmental harm caused by air travel. There are presently plans to enlarge Bromma airport in Stockholm. The question is what are the politicians and planners thinking. In a time and a country where every nine year old knows about global warming and its causes, the authorities get the idea of expanding airports. It might be time to let the kids take over the power. They could hardly do a worse job than the climate criminals doing the job now. But then the kids are selfishly more worried about their future than in the honest business of making short term financial gains.
Gothenburg
A die in was staged in front of the security gate at Landvetter airport outside of Gothenburg. Twenty activists arrived at the airport to stage the protest on Friday evening. The die in was for the benefit of passengers on their way to emit the largest possible amount of greenhouse gases whilst covering the 300 or so miles to Stockholm. After miraculously reviving themselves the activists formed a banner wall to welcome three plane loads of arrivals from the capital. The whole thing went down peacefully with the massive police presence (at least three coppers for every climate crusader) standing around looking bored.
Uppsala
The university town of Uppsala north of Stockholm doesn’t have a nice warm passenger airport to stage an action in. The company Uppsala Air is doing its best to change this. They want to provide a pleasant passenger terminal so that local climate activists would have somewhere warm to stage protests. In the best “make do with what you’ve got spirit“, the Uppsala activist created their own runway in the city center to illustrate how pleasantly an airport can convert a boring piece of countryside into noisy polluting climate challenging strip of asfalt.
This is just the start of the Swedish resistance against climate criminality. Watch this space for the next move. We think cars are also plane stupid. Honest!