Rich seams or dark pools? UCL and BHP Billiton

Rich seams or dark pools? UCL and BHP Billiton

Last week we took part in an interesting afternoon of discussion at UCL called Rich Seams or Dark Pools? Fossil Fuel Funding and Research. The event was following in the wake of an internal controversy within UCL over Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton giving US $10 million to fund two new research bodies: the Institute...
The dream of America - a family history of mining and migration

The dream of America – a family history of mining and migration

Mika Minio-Paluello, Anna Galkina and James Marriott travelled in North America as part of a tour over September and October to promote The Oil Road – Journeys from the Caspian to the City of London. The ninth of a series of blogs on the journey comes from Pennsylvania… Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Long hours under rough blankets....
RBS and Climate Week - who dumped who?

RBS and Climate Week – who dumped who?

News has reached us that RBS isn’t sponsoring the 2012 Climate Week, due to take place in March. RBS was a controversial sponsor of last year’s event, which many saw as an opportunity for the bank to gain some ill-deserved environmental credentials in the face of public criticism over its appalling record of fossil fuel...

RBS, what are you waiting for?

Yesterday the Royal Bank of Scotland held their 2011 Annual General Meeting at their Gogarburn headquarters on the industrial edge of Edinburgh (see Press Association video with Clayton Thomas-Muller from Indigenous Environmental Network and myself). The conference centre was flanked by press jesting with shareholders about diminishing returns. Much of the press group made a dash for...

New report released today – RBS coal finance on launch day of RBS-sponsored Climate Week

Download the report – www.platformlondon.org/dm.pdf Watch the video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuWGg6a__gE Check out the online presentation summary – http://prezi.com/2zc3gxujogli/dirty-money/ All over the world, diverse groups from community activists to schoolchildren, small businesses to faith-based networks, are starting to take action on climate change. Big business is following suit, but often with tactics that bring their integrity into question. Climate...

The Great Climate Swoop comes to Nottingham

17-18 OCTOBER 2009, RATCLIFFE-ON-SOAR Climate Camp is back – next weekend, hundreds of people will descend on E.ON’s coal power station near Nottingham and occupy it for the weekend.   Fences 2.0 from the very co-operative on Vimeo. Great Climate Swoop: “Don’t be confused – 2009 is just another year of climate talks, in which governments and corporations will...

Battle over Kingsnorth coal plant won

Energy utility E.ON have announced they’re putting on hold plans for a new coal power station at Kingsnorth on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent, England. Seems they’re freezing construction plans for at least 3 years. This comes after intense direct action targetting E.ON’s headquarters & power plants, including the Camp for Climate Action in August 2008. Copyright Mike...

The Fight for the Mountains & the Forests

AlJazeera International (in English) recently broadcast several investigative programmes on popular movements opposing destructive fossil fuel projects, as part of its People & Power series. The shows cover local resistance to Barrick Gold in Argentina/Chile, Talisman’s oil operations in the Peruvian Amazon and mountain removal coal mining in the Appalachians. What the film-makers didn’t realise...

Industrialising the Cukurova

After a cushy night on the Ankara – Adana Mavi Cukurova night train, we jumped straight into a coach headed east to Antakya. Once the grand city of Antioch benefiting from trade routes running between Europe & South Asia, medium-sized Antakya is the last Turkish town before Syria, and the source of an ongoing border dispute...