Earth First! Blockades Power Plant Construction Site, 27 Arrested

[villager]

Subject:


Photos available at www.risingtidenorthamerica.org


Earth First! Blockades Power Plant Construction Site, 27 Arrested



Palm Beach County - Early Monday morning dozens of concerned community members from Palm Beach County and all over the nation put their bodies on the line to halt construction of FPL's West County Energy Center (WCEC), demanding energy efficiency, truly clean, renewable energy and a moratorium on development in south Florida . Everglades Earth First! blocked the main entrance to the WCEC site, a proposed massive 3800 MW gas-fired power plant that would emit 12 million tons of CO2, a leading greenhouse gas, every year. The plant is currently under construction despite ongoing legal challenges to the plant's needed permits and certification, which have been spearheaded by the local Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition.

A dozen activists locked themselves together through metal pipes as 200 supporters rallied around them. The blockade stopped work on the construction site for six hours before a total of 27 people were arrested.

This confrontational action was taken to protect the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge which sits 1000 ft from the power plant site and to protect the larger Everglades system. Restoration would be undermined by new development that the power plant is expected to encourage in the area. The civil disobedience action also aims to protect the entire planet from the destructive effects of climate change caused by power plant emissions.

"We just don't need this plant," said Lynne Purvis, an activist with Everglades Earth First! who was born and raised in the Loxahatchee area. "I'm not willing to threaten the integrity of the Loxahatchee, one of the last large, intact pieces of northern Everglades , so that people can fuel their greedy energy desires." Purvis says that the Everglades Earth First! group intends to continue a sustained campaign of direct action against this power plant and its adjacent gas pipeline.

The protest was also attended by grassroots activists and group across the United States who have been participating in the annual Earth First! Winter Rendezvous. One such group, Rising Tide North America, is part of an international movement for climate justice, which connects the social and environmental issues related to the growing climate crisis and calls for urgent and bold responses to the global human-caused dilemma.

Brian Sloan, an organizer with Rising Tide North America and participant in Monday morning's protest, said "FPL is doing what we call 'green-washing' . Gas-fired power is not a clean or sustainable energy. It is a dirty and dwindling fossil fuel." Sloan also states that Rising Tide does not trust energy companies to solve the climate crisis. "The solutions to climate change will never come from the people who created the problem."

Earth First! and the Rising Tide movements recognize that the fight against fossil fuel power is being used by the energy industry to push a new wave of nuclear energy. These grassroots groups are committed to extending their fight against the dangers of nuclear power with an eye on other FPL proposals, such as Turkey Point and St. Lucie.

[losthills]

1. Right on, Brothers!

And Sisters!

Nothing will change until ordinary people decide to make it change.

[villager]

2. Nice Utah Phillips quote, there, too... ;-)

[losthills]

8. Hayduke Lives!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B_UuDeYdlU&feature=related

[shenmue]

3. They protested development by immediately dismantling their own houses.

:eyes:

Oh, and they only read by candlelight. And they don't post stuff on the computer. And they live in trees.

:dunce:

[GliderGuider]

4. Most of the Deep Ecology types have indeed reduced their footprint.

While we may not live in trees, we take walking the walk very seriously indeed.

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Actions.html

Your mockery tells my you are more likely part of the precipitate than part of the solution.

[One_Life_To_Give]

5. Is it sufficient to just be Against?

In the long run is it effective to only be against new power plants/developments, etc. Or is something more required?

When the two oncoming trains of South Florida expansion/population growth and static levels of electricity collide who will be blamed?

IMHO It's not nearly sufficient to just be against something. One must offer not only alternatives. But the alternatives must look sufficiently compelling that people actually want to go there rather than continuing buisiness as usual.

[GliderGuider]

7. That's the problem, isn't it?

Nobody has come up with a story that's sufficiently compelling, believable and attractive to make most people want to take the risk of change. They know the problems associated with what they're doing right now, and those problems just don't seem bad enough to risk trading the devil they know for the one they don't.

What might such a story story be? So far we've tried seducing people with tales of clean air and sparkling water, threatening them with Peak Oil jeremiads and warnings of rising sea levels, lecturing them on their moral duties to their children and other life on the planet, all to no avail. The reigning attitude is, "If you can offer me all the benefits of my current lifestyle, as well as the benefits of the new world you're proposing, I might make a move if it didn't cost me anything. If you can't guarantee me that, then get off my porch, I have a life to lead."

There is as yet no alternate story that will win their hearts and minds. And that's too damn bad, because the book we're reading right now is about to turn to a new chapter titled "Epilogue".

[One_Life_To_Give]

14. Since this is the Sunshine state

seems that solar thermal would be a good alternative. A 10,000MW plant should be able to replace the proposed gas plant. Not sure what the cost differential would be. But I bet you could get at least $10 per south florida resident in public funds to help defray the initial cost.

[NNadir]

6. Um, they're fighting nuclear energy?

Maybe someone should send them to a country with a per capita energy consumption that is the equivalent of international per capita renewable energy consumption.

Let's give a hint here, it ain't Florida.

These assholes could move out of a state where air conditioning runs half the year, or - better yet - live off grid like they're always pretending the "could" do, but never actually do do.

I personally oppose all fossil fuel plants but I'm hardly a luddite living in a fantasy world.

Assholes.

[villager]

9. Um, yes they are.

And it sounds like you're hardly doing much of anything at all. Other than complaining when someone else takes a risk on the community's behalf.

[NNadir]

10. Um, really?

I think I can make a case that I have been "doing something."

What I have been doing, while the assholes at Earth First play their little yuppie spoiled brat games, is introducing a sense of something called "reality." My work here and elsewhere speaks for itself. While little yuppie brats - who watch entirely too much television by the way - make stupid statements from their comfy little perches at their Mom's house, I have exhaustively examined energy technology, noting that there is NOT ONE fundamentalist anti-nuke on this website who has demonstrated familiarity with the scientific literature on energy, external costs, sustainability, climate, or any other related topic.

One hundred percent of the "renewables will save us" fundie anti-nukes here are hypocrites as well.

Now, if you really want to "do" something about the disaster befalling humanity, you can consume at the power level associated with the rich boy renewable toys about which the ignorant anti-nuke community so loves to prattle.

World energy production from these toys is given here.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table17.xls

Using the data provided, simple conversion factors, and a human population estimated at 6.6 billion people, it is easy to show by direct calculation that the average per capita power output from renewable energy (excluding hydroelectric - since hydroelectric actually works on scale) is about 6.4 watts.

One might have sympathy for this case in Nigeria, but not here.

The minute a yuppie brat turns on his fucking computer to write dumb ass statements with no meaning, he or she is far outstripping the power demand met by planetary renewable energy.

So if you're reading this post, kiddie, you are immediately a hypocrite.

In fact, the minute the dumb asses in this post got into their mom's cars to drive to their cutesy little protest to demonstrate their cutesy nobility, they were consuming thousands as times as much power.

Nuclear power is not perfect, nor does it need to be perfect to be vastly superior to all other forms of energy, including the solar and wind methods so hyped by ignoramuses who are interesting only for demonstrating their lack of education, lack of perception, and lack of reason. To be better than every thing else, nuclear power merely needs to be better than everything else, and it is.

Ignorance kills.

[villager]

12. um, glad we have a know it all here to put the knock on everyone s/he doesn't know

I've been arrested with some EF!ers in my day.

While you lounged in armchairs.

they are not "yuppies," even if, like most humans, they aren't flawless, either.

[Mik T]

13. I am about as left as they get and I agree with you-but I think

being a little nicer about it might help support your case.

I am also an earth first! sympathizer and maybe that particular power plant is not located in a sensible area.

However-I don't think people are going to put down the global oil crack pipe (Drew dellinger quote) unless they get a substitute. Take me for example- IT's 0 degrees outside here in upstate NY. I GOTTA heat my house with something or my family including my 1 1/2 year old will freeze to death. we turn the temp down to 58 at night and supplement with sustainably harvested wood and grow our own fruits veggies and recycle everything so we can reduce our carbon foot print-but it's clearly not enough.

Global warming is a CERTIANTY. Nuclear power can help to stop it. Maybe it's a stop gap solution. It definitly sucks, but in combination with other things it just might help to be enough of a stopgap solution for the developed countries to get their carbon footprint reduced to meet the deadlines specified by the UN comission on climate change and prevent the destruction of life on the planet.

And in the meantime maybe we will get that fusion power online. France is well on their way to producing the first fusion reactor. They need to make it somewhere more energy efficient but they are getting better with that everyday.

Or-Maybe scientists will come up with some other solution we havent even thought of yet. NEVER NEVER underestimate the power of human innovation. Look at the internet- when I was a kid noone would have thought that could ever happen and that was 30 years ago. When my father was a child he thought the idea of someone walking on the moon belonged to science fiction novels.

Lets support ALL the people who are working to make carbon fuels obsolete. Even the nuclear power industry. ...and in the meantime be a part of the solution in your own life.

And lets all do ourselves and everyone else a little favor and exercise a little HOPE. Being all doom and gloom is not the solution to the problem, it just depresses people and they end up thinking-Oh well-if the world is gonna end anyway I might as well keep driving my humvee.

[Truth2Tell]

11. KR nt