"A train loaded with radioactive waste ended its controversial journey through Germany on Monday. Its path had been blocked by up to 50,000 protesters over the weekend, sparking violent clashes between police and anti-nuclear activists."

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to, despite very strong public opposition, extend the lifespan of Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors has helped highlight the issue of these nuclear waste trains. See my post from last year regarding this matter: Atomkraft? Nein danke! 50.000 people protest against nuclear energy in Germany. The anti-nuclear organizations in Germany have as a result of this seen the largest mobilization of protesters in recent years this past weekend. And the protests are expected to continue with severe long-term political consequences for Merkel and her political pro-nuclear friends in the coming elections. Apparently the current right-wing coalition in Germany never imagined that there would be this much and strong opposition against nuclear energy in Germany. An energy source that is expensive, dangerous, not cost-effective and will worsen climate change.

Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International, held a speech (see video) in front of around 50 000 protesters in Dannenberg, Germany, where he lashed out against the CASTOR nuclear waste transports which he called "an example of the nuclear madness" which must be stopped. Naidoo called on Merkel and Germany to end their investments in an "outdated" and "obsolete" energy source and instead focus on a "real energy revolution", a successful renewable energy sector which currently employs 380 000 people in Germany:

" The CASTOR nuclear waste transport is an example of the nuclear madness that must end. It is a train convoy carrying eleven 100-tonne containers of radioactive waste that is reprocessed in France and returns to Germany each year for storage. Measurements of these eleven containers done by ANDRA (National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management) show that the radioactivity in each container is higher than what was released at Chernobyl in 1986 – this makes the CASTOR transport effectively a Chernobyl on wheels.

The final destination for this dangerous convoy is Gorleben, Germany – where it is to be placed in a storage facility that is completely geologically unsuitable. Of course, there is no suitable storage site for nuclear waste – the nuclear industry has no permanent solution for the problem of radioactive waste."

Video of the “nuclear train clashes” in Germany:

From 20 to 40 young people in white masks attacked the camp of the defenders of the Khimki forest park [RUS], Igor Podgorny [RUS] and Novaya Gazeta [RUS] reported. The police intervention didn’t help – instead several environmentalists and journalists were detained.

Sounds nasty. By now a couple of main stream international media have picked up the story. Like AP: Police detain Moscow forest activists

Russian police on Friday detained two journalists and 15 protesters at a suburban Moscow forest where they have been living to try to protect the woods from destruction. [...] The forest in Khimki has been the focus of controversy for years over plans to chop down much of it for highway construction. Khimki lies on the increasingly jammed route from Moscow to Sheremetyevo International Airport and St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city. A local newspaper editor who reported extensively on the issue was severely beaten in 2008 and left wheelchair-bound and brain-damaged. [...] The activists called the police at the break of dawn on Friday when a group of some 100 young men who had covered their faces blocked the campsite, thus allowing the [tree chopping in an alledgedly illegal area] work to resume, Moscow Regional police said in a statement.

An associated protest was similarly cracked down upon reports The Moscow Times: 5 Detained in Bid to Give Khimki Timber to Putin

“The police swooped down on us and detained us, acting in a very rude and harsh fashion and turning a peaceful event into a brawl,” [head of the Left Front group, Sergei] Udaltsov said.

Also read: Environmental activists violently attacked by timber workers and Watch: Greenpeace activist violently attacked by bluefin tuna fishermen

“On the 16th of December, at the start of the high-level “ministerial” phase of the two-week summit, we, the movements for global justice, will take over the conference for one day and transform it into a Peoples Assembly.

Our goal is to disrupt the sessions and open a space inside the UN area to hold the Assembly. The assembly will give a voice to those who are not being heard, it will be an opportunity to change the agenda, to discuss the real solutions, to send a clear message to the world calling for climate justice.”

During her days in Copenhagen Naomi Klein has encouraged people to take part in this demonstration. Yesterday she spoke about tomorrow’s action at an event in Christiania: see video one and video two. In an interview with Katherine Goldstein, from the Huffington Post, Klein said that “its a possibility that there will be mass arrests” during the protest:

“I’m not concerned about people’s safety, but I do think its a possibility that there will be mass arrests. I think its a powerful message that people care enough to get arrested.”

And the organizers of the protest are expecting confrontation with the Danish police. In an interview with the Guardian Kevin Smith, an organiser for activist group Climate Camp, said:

“The Danish government knows just how embarrassing it will be when hundreds of delegates walk out tomorrow to join us in the protest tomorrow against the climate talks, and it is trampling over all manner of civil liberties to try and prevent that from happening.”

Earlier today Tadzio Mueller, a spokesman for Climate Justice Action, was arrested by plainclothes police as he left the Bella centre.

“It’s unbelievable that in a supposed democracy, undercover police are silencing spokespeople that are criticising the climate talks”, Smith said. “How far are the Danish authorities prepared to go to stop tomorrow’s protest from going ahead?”

Watch Naomi Klein talk about the Reclaim Power! demonstration tomorrow in this video from Grist:

“In Berlin an estimated 50,000 people have joined a demonstration against nuclear power in the run-up to the German general elections.

The rally was headed by a convoy of 350 tractors, which drove past the office of Chancellor Angela Merkel,” Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports.

Back in 2001 the former Social Democratic chancellor, backed up by the Greens, pushed through a new legislation in 2001 that would phase out nuclear energy from Germany within two decades. But the Social Democratic and Green government lost the election in 2005 to a right-wing coalition consisting of the current Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats and the liberal Free Democrats.

Angela Merkel, who successfully blocked a strong climate deal for the European Union last year, now wants to scrap the nuclear phase-out legislation that the SPD pushed through in 2001. This is similar to what is happening in Sweden after a coalition of right-wing parties won the recent election there. According to Merkel, Germany “cannot phase out nuclear energy as quickly as some imagine.”

“But in the long term, that’s to say in the second half of the century, we will experience a large amount of renewable energy sources. We are convinced that we will be able to stop using nuclear energy at some point”, Merkel said.

The Social Democratic chancellor candidate, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is accusing Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats and the liberal Free Democrats “of leading the country into an energy policy dead-end and endangering domestic security.”

On the same day as the anti-nuclear protest in Germany were taking place Greenpeace released a survey which found that 59% of Germans are against Merkel’s proposal to extend the deadline for the country’s already aging nuclear reactors.

“Our responsibility is to phase out power plants that endanger the health and livelihoods of future generations, said Greenpeace Finland’s nuclear campaigner, Lauri Myllyvirta at a speech the Brandenburg Gate.

“Each year nuclear power plants are kept running means more nuclear waste, more uranium mining, higher risk of accidents. There is no excuse: Climate change can be best tackled without nuclear plants. The nuclear phase-out in Germany is one of the reasons for the success of wind and solar energy all over the world. A relapse into nuclear power in Germany would send a very bad signal to other countries.”

Nils Diedrich, a political scientist at Berlin’s Free University, says that if Merkel and her right wing coalition manage to push through this pro-nuclear legislation “we’ll see a real battle”. He warns that “then there will be massive demonstrations.”

Although Germany is one of the leading countries in renewable wind energy it still has a dirty and toxic energy portfolio. 42% of the country’s energy comes from coal and 23% from nuclear energy. Only about 15% of the energy comes from clean renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.

Images from the Gruene.de

We will post the latest news on our Twitter channel. We will also display the Twitter updates on our front page as well as updating this blog post.

Will the G8 leaders agree on a strong climate plan and a roadmap to the Copenhagen climate talks? Or will they fail once again? Stay tuned to find out!

UPDATED WITH IMAGES AND VIDEOS FROM DAY 2!

Latest updates displayed first:

Day Two

Watch: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon criticises G8 climate efforts http://su.pr/6VoTAd

Conclusion: The internet is mainly negative on the subject of g8, according to Google. http://su.pr/1iHfFv

UN S-G : ‘Much more needs to be done if governments are to seal the deal on a new climate agreement’ http://su.pr/9VVJpz

Sign our petition to hold @BarackObama and other #G8 leaders accountable on #climatechange http://bit.ly/g9Ybh

VIDEO: climate campaigner Ben Stewart talks about why he’s living on a coal smokestack during the #G8 http://su.pr/2gSvz5

Greenpeace: Five coal plants occupied by climate activists during G8 Summit http://su.pr/2RYC36

“Progress on #climatechange [at the #G8] was not enough.” UN Sec General Ban Ki-moon

Russia says 80% emissions reduction target by 2050 “unacceptable” http://su.pr/2L2L25

Take 2 painting STUPID on chimney at Brindisi, Italy’s most greenhouse-polluting coal plant. http://twitpic.com/9s4f5

G8 leaders failing to stop climate change http://bit.ly/zjJqL

G8: World leaders fail to agree specific target for climate cuts http://su.pr/2y1Aiz

G8: World leaders fail to agree specific target for climate cuts http://bit.ly/4hTvfy

RT @Greenpeace 35 hours occupying Brindisi. The sly has cleared over the mediterranean sea. We can see Albania from here!

“Only the G8 can agree on absolutely nothing, ignore the most pressing subjects and then claim a major breakthrough” #G8 RT @V_R_

Greenpeace are occupying FIVE coal plants now during the #G8! http://su.pr/2ethbZ

Blogs from activists on coal plants are posted here http://bit.ly/AEoq

Take Action! Ask world leaders to personally attend climate conference: http://su.pr/1O0eWk

This morning 5 climbers scaled Italy’s newest coal power plant near Rome to paint “G8 STOP THIS”

30 hrs @ Brindisi pwr plant. Just chkd out massive greenhse pollution exhausts. http://twitpic.com/9rn0y #G8 #climateaction RT @Greenpeace

Day One

BBC: G8 set new global warming targets http://su.pr/1N41Wq

Mount Rushmore banner: “America honors leaders. Not politicians. Stop Global warming.” http://su.pr/4M5qQk

The #G8 summit negotiations to halve global carbon emissions by 2050 have failed! Instead agree on a max 2C degree limit for climate change.

More TreeHugger: Big Climate Change Fail: Major Nations Fail to Agree to 50% Emission Cuts by 2050 http://su.pr/AGRu33

TreeHugger reports: Greenpeace Drapes Poster Over Mount Rushmore to Call for Climate Action http://su.pr/1BIj59

100 Activists Climb Coal Chimneys To Demand G-8 Leaders Get Tough: http://su.pr/9akeBI

Pictures from the G8 Coal Plant Action in Italy today: http://su.pr/6aFTjt

Watch: G8 Coal Plant Action http://su.pr/1kLokl #G8

You-Turn the Earth, a global campaign to let leaders know that we want to stop runaway climate change http://su.pr/3ktrSx

GP have actions going on in Italy with over 100 activists occupying coal power plants + a banner hanging on Mt. #Rushmore #climateaction #G8

Greenpeace is hanging a banner with a message to Obama on Mt Rushmore right now! http://su.pr/2rzliz

The Guardian: Greenpeace activists hijack Italian power stations http://su.pr/1GYWQ4

“a new coal plant at kingsnorth would emit more than the one we’re occupying near venice” http://su.pr/3OMa5o RT @greenpeaceuk

Want to be part of a global community ready to take action to demand action? Become a climate activist: http://su.pr/1g2ld1

#Obama staff say #climate change not caused by fossil fuels. GP leaks doc to press http://su.pr/1NGool Obama then changed #G8 RT @Greenpeace

Want 2 know how the #G8 countries score on #climate? see how #WWF scores them http://su.pr/1DBmjt

“Its the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president.” http://su.pr/2wZSjP

G8 fails to get emerging powers to agree on climate change goals http://su.pr/2EVPMI

Half of emissions in the atmosphere are from coal. And every g8 country is planning new coal plants RT @greenpeaceuk

G8 emissions pledge is ‘scientifically illiterate’: http://su.pr/30qNfW

Oh my! G8 strip mob from Avaaz: http://su.pr/31wNOM

Watch: G8 Cooking Up the Planet and Spicing it with CO2 http://su.pr/1BLyO4

Greenpeace urges the G8 to ‘heal the world’ http://su.pr/A8rCHa

Greenpeace currently occupying power stations in Italy for L’Aquila summit http://su.pr/2Z1QUf

Greenpeace goes to the G8 http://su.pr/25r6zJ

Take Action! Ask world leaders to personally attend climate conference: http://su.pr/1O0eWk

Major nations have failed to agree to set a goal halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 http://su.pr/1NeVRY

Watch and read about G8 #climateaction as it happens in Italy today http://su.pr/2ethbZ

John Hocevar, from Greenpeace’s flagship the Rainbow Warrior, writes about the assault on the Greenpeace staff blog:

“We are in Valletta Harbor in Malta. We learned that there were two vessels here owned by Fuentes, the tuna tycoon who controls over half the bluefin catch in the Mediterranean. We decided to board the vessel to inspect the cargo and documentation. Three women, Emma, Rita, and Liz, were the first to volunteer.

After the vessels refused our polite request to allow us access, Emma stepped on board to press the point. She was immediately attacked – they punched her, pulled her hair, picked her up and threw her overboard. One person hurled a large wooden pallet which whistled by our heads, and another tossed a full bucket of paint into one of our boats. If either of those had hit their intended targets, someone could have been seriously injured, but fortunately no damage was done.”

This all reminds me about the video which shows peaceful environmental activists who were protecting an old-growth forest in Tasmania, Australia, being violently attacked by timber workers.

Sometimes researchers are blamed of being alarmists stirring up fears of a fictional dystopia by the business-as-usual crowd. But it seems a forewarning of conflict over oil in Peru is proceeding according to exactly such a warning. The news first…

40+ dead at protest

In extension of free trade agreements the Peruvian government has plans for ‘developing’ the Amazon homelands of many indigenous communities – opening it for oil, mineral, logging, and agricultural exploitation. Locals have been protesting some of these initiatives claiming they are unconstitutional and in violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. When police intervened fighting erupted. Body counts wary; one is as high as 81.

President Alan Garcia Perez is claimed to have been behind a massacre on suspects of being Maoist guerrillas in 1986. A former army colonel turned politician is siding with the protesters. An arrest warrant has been issued on protest leader Alberto Pizango who has gone into hiding.

Sources: Upside Down World / 50 Days of Protest and One Massacre in the Peruvian Amazon | Peruanista blog | The New York Times / 9 Hostage Officers Killed at Peruvian Oil Facility | AP / 9 more police killed in Amazon protests in Peru | AP / At least 31 killed in Peru Amazon clashes | Mongobay / Oil or Death in the Amazon

Peer reviewed prophesies

A 2008 paper on PLoS ONE discussed this ongoing and accelerating exploitation in “the most species-rich part of the Amazon”. From the paper:

Without improved policies, the increasing scope and magnitude of planned extraction means that environmental and social impacts are likely to intensify. [... We] consider the conflicts where the blocks overlap indigenous peoples’ territories.

Oil and gas development in the western Amazon has already caused major environmental and social impacts. Direct impacts include deforestation for access roads, drilling platforms, and pipelines, and contamination from oil spills and wastewater discharges.

In Peru, hydrocarbon blocks now overlap 20 protected areas. Thirteen of these protected areas preceded creation of the oil blocks and lack compatibility studies required by the Protected Areas Law.

the history of oil and gas extraction in the western Amazon is one of massive ecological and social disruption, the future need not repeat the past.

No, it need not. But it just did. Heed the warnings of those who reason with statistics and logic.

Finer, M., Jenkins, C., Pimm, S., Keane, B., & Ross, C. (2008). Oil and Gas Projects in the Western Amazon: Threats to Wilderness, Biodiversity, and Indigenous Peoples PLoS ONE, 3 (8) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002932

Photo credit: Independent Journalist via Amazon Watch

If the third runway in the UK is the proof of the country’s climate hypocrisy then Sweden’s would be the huge new highway projects in Stockholm and Gothenburg.

In Gothenburg, the second-largest city in Sweden, climate activists from Klimax and the Friends of the Earth “decorated” cranes with banners, planted trees and even had a breakfast on the construction site to highlight and protest against the climate highway madness being built in Sweden.

“It’s bad enough that large amounts of taxpayers’ money is being wasted on projects that won’t work, but these road projects will even lead to an increase of carbon dioxide emissions. It’s ironically that that we activists’ risks getting arrested while the real criminals, who on a consciously and cynically way make decisions that will lock us into a continued increase of carbon dioxide emissions will go free. We just can’t sit quiet while climate criminal politicians threaten future generations living condition; it’s every citizen’s obligation to put pressure on the decision makers so they make climate friendly choices”, said Lovisa Börjeson from Klimax in Gothenburg.

Watch:

Earlier this month Lib Dem MP David Howarth held a press conference in Westminster to present a “highly disturbing and potentially explosive report” about how the police in the UK turning into a police state by “criminalising legitimate protest”.

“The report, produced by the Climate Camp’s legal support team and entitled Policing of the Kingsnorth Climate Camp: Preventing Disorder or Preventing Protest?, is devastating for the police.

It documents a concerted campaign by police to deter, smear, intimidate, harass, and criminalise UK citizens who did nothing more than attempt to exercise their right to peaceful protest in the name of an important cause. The following film accompanies the report and fully conveys the extent of the scandal.”

The report came to the conclusion that the police had use “unlawful, repressive and disproportionate” force against the protestors and residents in Kingsnorth. For example was protestors and local resident’s property seized on a large scale:

“Property was seized on a scale previously unheard of and in a manner designed to obstruct and undermine the very existence of the Camp and intimidate attendees.”

In the video above a little kid is being interview. He said that the police confiscated his crayons because he could “commit a crime with crayons”:

“They took my crayons because apparently they said you can draw on banners and that you can, um, commit a crime with crayons.”

The report also notes that the police used “sleep deprivation and psychological operations” against the protestors:

“Sleep deprivation and psychological operations were used, involving frequent dawn raids, low flying helicopters at night, false alarm massing of police officers and vans, and early morning wake up calls with loud music playing ‘Flight of the Valkyries’, ‘Hi de Hi’, duck and dog noises, and ‘I fought the law and the law won’.”

Since the Climate Camp campaign started in 2006 not a single protestor has ever been convicted of any violent offence. Yet, the report notes, the legal and peaceful camp “continues to experience disproportionate and repressive policing”.

The report also cast light on a deliberate attempt to “deflect criticism through misinformation” from the UK Government and the police:

“Government justified the heavy-handed approach by revealing that 70 police officers had been injured policing the protest; but a freedom of information request revealed that these ‘injuries to police’ included such things as heatstroke, toothache and insect bites. Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister who had made the claim about police injuries, was later forced to apolgise to the House and admit that “there were no recorded injuries to police officers sustained as a result of direct contact with the protestors.”

The police operation at the Kingsnorth Climate Camp ended at a cost of £5.9 million and involved 1,500 officers from 26 forces.

Is the climate crisis turning democratic governments into police states who foolishly try to protect corporate and political interests, instead of trying to solve the real problems? What do you think? Unfortunately I think we will see more brutal police force, against protestors and climate change refugees, in a near future when the effects of climate change become more and more prominent in our societies.

Read more:
- Meet the new Britain: just like the old one where green protesters are spied on
- Why protesters are now stalkers

The timber workers attacked the car that the protestors were using to block the road using a sledgehammer and kicking in its windows. They later dragged out a 22-year-old protestor and kicked him repeatedly.

The brutal attack was caught on tape by one of the protestors:

Via Ecowar