Communities Opposed to New Coal at HunterstonJoin us for a beer and a bletherThursday 8th July 7.30pmat The George, 17-19 Main Street, LargsFollowing Monday night's very successful public meeting, it's important that we keep the momentum up and mobilise as many objections as possible. We have printed both A5 leaflets explaining how people can object and model letters of objection. We need people to organise a range of stalls and/or give out leaflets in their local areas, workplaces etc sothat we can reach out to those folks who still haven't cottoned on to the devastating impact that Ayrshire Power's plans would have. Join members of CONCH at an informal plotting and planning session, where you can pick up more leaflets and letters. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
Report on Public Meeting on Monday 28th JuneWest Kilbride Village Hall Our public meeting was very successful with about 150 local residents and some other campaigners attending, including Ross Harper, LIb/Dem MSP and Patrick Harvie, Green Party MSP. Cllr Elizabeth Marshall confirmed that the Conservative group on North Ayrshire Council were now opposing the coal-fired power station. Our panel of experts were: |
 |
Maggie Kelly, co-chair of CONCH |
| Aedán Smith (Head of Planning and Development, RSPB Scotland) Aedán is a chartered town planner and has worked for RSPB Scotland for 3 years. He has previously worked in development control and in planning policy for a local planning authority and in consultancy, specialising in environmental planning. Aedán leads the planning team for RSPB Scotland. |
 |
| The role of the team involves providing support to RSPB staff across Scotland on planning and related regulatory processes, and leading on the development and advocacy of planning and energy policy for the RSPB in Scotland. RSPB Scotland is involved in around 400 planning and related cases each year in Scotland - far more than any other conservation NGO in Scotland. RSPB Scotland gets involved in these cases to make sure development does not harm our most important places for wildlife and will vigorously oppose the most damaging proposals. |
|
 |
Ben Murray (author of Power of Scotland Renewed report) explained why the much vaunted 'energy gap' isn't likely to be a reality. Ben was trained as an engineer in the Royal Navy and served in Polaris submarines before taking voluntary redundancy in 1993. The next few years were spent working for Greenpeace (as a ship’s engineer and activist) on a range of environmental campaigns including whaling, toxic waste exports, fisheries, climate change and nuclear proliferation. He attended Heriot-Watt University between 1996 and 2000, leaving with a First Class Honours degree in Environmental Management. |
| Since then he’s worked in the private sector as an environmental engineer, in the Scottish Parliament as a policy advisor, and in the voluntary sector as a senior policy officer.Ben now runs his own consultancy (www.blackwoodenvironmental.co.uk) and works with a range of community projects mainly on climate and energy issues. | |
Sophie, representing Coal Action Scotland, talking on health impacts of coal based on a recent health study carried out in Douglas, Lanarkshire. |
 |
| Dr Mandy Meikle, a member of Depletion Scotland, Mandy has given some 50 talks on peak oil since 2004. She has spoken to groups from Scouts & students to community & green groups and gave a keynote speech at Scientists for Global Responsibility's 2007 AGM in London. While she focuses on peak oil & energy, she has also spoken on CCS, biofuels and other energy issues all with a view to why we need to reduce energy demand, not just carbon emissions. Mandy has just started a blog (http://mandymeikle.wordpress.com/) and is writing a book - Net Energy in a Nutshell. She works as a student support assistant at Edinburgh University. |
 |
We invited Ayrshire Power to join our panel and have an information stall, but they declined the invitation, saying, “we do not believe that large public gatherings offer a suitable forum for a balanced discussion, nor do we believe they will enable true engagement with members of CONCH or of the wider community. We therefore thank you for the offer but politely decline your invitation.” CONCH, RSPB, Friends of the Earth, World Development Movement, Heal the Earth Ayrshire, and the Scottish Wildlife Trust were all represented with information stalls at the meeting. More photos from the June 26th Open Meeting. |
Report on Open Meeting on 28th April 2010Message from Clare who spoke about the effects of coal mining in Colombia at the special meeting on 28th April:Thank you for inviting me to your meeting last week. I found the conversations really great. “Just last year it was revealed that Colombian state-sponsored death squads has used ovens to burn traces of people they had killed in the Catatumbo region. The death squads were sent in to terrorise the people into submission allowing the Colombian state and Multinationals access to the natural resources , primarily coal, palm oil and oil. Arriving into West Kilbride on the train and seeing the coal infrastructure already there I was struck with the horrific irony that Catatumbo coal, got out of the ground by literally burning bodies, could potentially be burnt at the proposed coal fired power station. Later that evening at the CONCH meeting, I was struck again, this time positively, by the humanity of you who were present as you saw the connections between the violence in Colombia, the determination of Colombians there to keep fighting to protect their communities and futures, and the need to connect these dots and many more to oppose the destructive fossil fuel energy economy. So thank you CONCH for strengthening my, and many Colombians', faith in humanity.” Impacts of coal mining in ColombiaThe meeting focussed on the impacts of coal mining in Colombia and featured a guest speaker from Expacio Bristol-Colombia, who told us about the terrible impact that coal-mining has on communities in Colombia Colombia is the fourth largest coal exporter in the world, mainly exporting to Europe and the USA from its ports on the Atlantic coast. Cerrejón is the largest opencast coal mine in Colombia and is owned by three British based multinationals. In 2008 it exported 31.2 million tonnes of coal to Europe (including Clydeport) and the USA. Our guest speaker told us about her experiences visiting communities near the Cerrejón mine, her work with social organisations opposing another huge opencast coal mine in Catatumbo and the importance of international solidarity. Expacio's paper on Catering for the Coal Industry (pdf) in the Drummond opencast coal mine in La Loma, Cesar in the north of Colombia. Since the Cerrejón Mine opened in 1983, its operations and constant expansion have forcibly displaced many indigenous people and Afro-Colombian communities. Their situation is desperate. After the village of Tabaco was bulldozed in 2001 to make way for the mine, people are scared the same will happen to them. Many have been forced to sell their land for next to nothing while others continue to fight for a just and dignified collective resettlement. Entwined Communities explores the shared history of UK pit mining communities and and rural Colombian agricultural communities as coal mining is dragged from one place and imposed on another, as part of 'free market' neoliberal changes. Our speaker works with young people in Catatumbo, a peasant farmer mountainous region of Colombia. Paramilitary violence forced 40,000 people to flee their farms and now nine mining companies have been granted mining rights to extract the huge coal reserves. Yet people are returning and reorganising: we found out about the strategies of the social organisations to resist the opening of the coal mine and their vision to build themselves a Catatumbo that meets the needs of the people who live there and not the needs of transnational capital. To find out more about human rights issues in regards to coal mining in Colombia, visit the Colombia Solidarity Campaign's page: Coal mining and forced displacement in Colombia: the British connection. See also the Human Rights page. |
