In coal hell
I was standing at the bow of the Rainbow Warrior filming. I could hear my heart beating. The first daylight made its way through the clouds and the nose of a tug boat was only meters away from my lens. We will hit it, I thought.
Expecting the sound of crushing metal, the Rainbow Warrior swung its nose around elegantly in the last second and outmanoeuvred the tugboat that tried to block the coal berth of GLOW power station in Mapthaput, Thailand. A navy boat was coming along our side but instead of ramming us, the soldiers shouted "Peace! Peace!" in Thai and let us pass. The captain of the Rainbow Warrior managed to get the big ship right, smash on, next to the coal berth. I really didn't believe we could do it. Two anchors were dropped. Our "Quit Coal" banner rose between the masts. In the meantime our three inflatables played cat and mouse with the boat of the port authorities while the tugboats started shooting water canons at them. The wharf was packed with police and power plant personnel. But we got our message out.
We are surrounded by coal power plants: two existing ones and one under construction. Four smokestacks are rising into the sky. It feels like we are in coal hell. While I am writing, thousands of tonnes of CO2 are pumped into the atmosphere. And if this was not enough, GLOW, a Belgian owned company, even wants to add a new plant and make Mapthaput area one of the top CO2 emitters in Thailand. I just cannot understand that the whole world talks about Climate Change and then a European owned company comes to Thailand to make a profit from climate destroying technologies that they sell as being "clean". It makes me furious. Coal can never be clean! We will stay until the last person has understood this.
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Comments
hi coal may never be clean but do i prefer it to nuclear ? i guess so alldough i did hear a theory about clean coal not so long ago ,its expansive but hey its only money and we humans seem to forget that we invented money to start of with ,my solution ? starts with saving and keeping culture,s intact stus central heating i,ll live in a logcabin any old day,reards finn braaksma
Posted by: finn braaksma | July 16, 2008 7:37 AM