Saturday 20 October 2012

GET FRACTIOUS


On 1st December!
12 noon Assemble at Grosvenor Square 
(or  Parliament if Romney wins the US election - see below)
1.00-1.30: Building pipeline, speakers on tar sands and the US
1.30-3.30: March to parliament
3.30-4.30: Building fracking rig, speeches
After-party from 5.00 pm venue tba
Saturday 1st December - midway through the Qatar Climate Talks - COP 18
This year has seen the passing of an awesome milestone in the accellerating escalation of the climate crisis. It has now reached the stage where it is altering the planet's basic geography with the all too plainly visible vanishing of summertime arctic sea ice. The  "tipping points" we have heard so much about are no longer just a talking point for the distant future - we have every appearance of being in the process of hitting one right now.
Yet even as the world is poised on the brink of a tragedy of unimaginable scale, none of our leaders seems to be so much as blinking an eyelid in response. Worse than that humanity is engaged in a madcap suicidal dash to unearth  yet more of what caused the problem in the first place - fossil fuels. Even as some fossil fuels are becoming more expensive to extract new types - of often more carbon intensive - fossil fuel are being discovered and exploited.
We believe it's time to "get fracktious" about the criminal insanity of the way we are responding to probably the biggest threat humanity has ever faced.
Please join us on 1st December to bear witness to the gravity of the crisis that's unfolding..... see more about the imminent disappearance of summertime arctic ice here and here. Download our leaflet about it here.  See how the disproportionately rapid warming of the arctic is effecting the jet stream and causing extreme  weather events that are already disrupting agriculture and  forcing up food prices, hitting the world's most vulnerable hardest  - here.
We will also be targeting the insanity of the drive towards exploiting more - and new types of - fossil fuel. We will be acting in solidarity with the many local campaigns around the country resisting the expansion into this country of the risky and destructive pratcice of 'hydraulic fracturing' or "fracking" for previously un-tappable "shale gas". This is a major prop for George Osborne's new "dash for gas" which threatens to expand the exploitation of this fossil fuel in a way that would effectively blow the (inadequate but hard fought for) Climate Act out of the water (see here).
To this end we will be building our own "fracking rig" outside Parliament to secure a definitive photo-op and to signal to government that fracking will not go ahead without massive resistance. See our tongue-in-cheek portrayal of this here.
Meanwhile we will also be building a "Grosvenor Square Keystone pipeline" (see here) between the Canadian High Commission and the US embassy to signal our outrage at the continued exploitation of high-carbon tar sands. We may also have an extra reason to protest outside the US embassy because if Mitt Romney and the now extremist and denialist-dominated Republican Party wins the US election on 6th November it will be a massive setback for any kind of global progress on climate and it will be important to register our alarm and disgust. Even if Obama wins it will be important to demand more action on climate from his second term, than we have seen in his first.
So we will have two focuses: at Parliament and at Grosvenor Square (US embassy) and we will march between them.  If Romney wins the US election we will have more emphasis on the US embassy protest and will finish there - but otherwise we will start at Grosvenor Square to finish at Parliament. In either case we will assemble at 12.00 noon.
If you want to help us with props-making and/or stewarding, please email us atinfo@campaigncc.org.

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