1/27/2009

Civil Disobedience in Climate Change Fight

In Climate Fight, a Time For Civil Disobedience?
By Patty Henetz, Salt Lake Tribune, January 23, 2009.

"Al Gore... in September called for moral lawbreaking.

'If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration,' Gore told the Clinton Global Initiative gathering to loud applause, according to Reuters news service.

Since then, author and environmentalist Bill McKibben and poet Wendell Berry have chimed in. Last month, they wrote an open letter, which has circulated widely on the Web, urging mass civil disobedience against coal in March...

Heeding such calls, organizers are mobilizing for a mass act of nonviolent civil disobedience March 2 to protest coal-fired power plants and the damage industrial pollution has caused to the planet's climate.

'We're hoping and preparing for thousands,' said Matt Leonard, the Greenpeace coordinator for the event. 'It will certainly be the largest such action on climate change in U.S. history. We hope it will be the first of many.'

Protesters will gather at the [coal-fired] Capital Power Plant in Washington -- source of heat and refrigeration for the entire Capitol complex -- walk on to the property, sit down and thereby break the law." For more info go to CapitolClimateAction.com.
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"Let’s all of us make sure that when we look back, in decades to come, we can say:
We saw the threat.
We responded to the challenge.
We did our bit."
Ed Milliband

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