Vox Civitatis the New Colonist weblog
09/10/2008: "A New Precedent"
A verdict in a British court today acquitted Greenpeace activists who had been accused of causing "criminal damage" by scaling the smokestack of a coal-fired powerplant in Kent and painting the name of the current PM along the stack, in protest of the immense volume of GHG emitted by the facility.According to the Guardian:
The jury of nine men and three women at Maidstone crown court cleared the six, five of whom had scaled a 200m tall chimney at Kingsnorth power station at Hoo, Kent, in October 2007.After testimony by global warming experts, Inuit leaders, and others, the jury accepted the activists' justification as an acceptable "lawful excuse," given the severity of global warming effects at present.
The activists admitted trying to shut down the station by occupying the smokestack and painting the world 'Gordon' down the chimney, but argued that they were legally justified because they were trying to prevent climate change causing greater damage to property around the world.
The article further notes that the "Kingsnorth [plant] emits the same amount of CO2 as the 30 least polluting countries in the world combined--and that there are advanced plans to build a new coal-fired power station next to the existing site on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent."
Though the decision has no power in the US, it will certainly inspire similar defenses in cases brought to court there, where specious charges of "terrorism" are often leveled against activists--while the real terrorists continue destroying the atmosphere.
To read the entire article, go to the Guardian web site.
With plans afoot to direct huge subsidies to the coal industry in the US, while naturally starving climate-friendly sectors such as public transportation, one can hope that Americans will begin to act more vigorously against the real threats to their country, the greatest of which is global climate change, which respects no borders.
