Dr Hansen is in England as a defense witness in the trial of six Greenpeace activists charged with damaging the Kingsnorth coal power plant in October last year. Energy giant E.on wants to build UK's first coal-fired plant for more than 30 years, and there has been major protest and direct action against Kingsnorth this summer. The trial's defense strategy seeks to establish the important and worthy precedent that direct action climate protests are justified to prevent 'much larger crimes' being committed against the Earth. Shall we all sit by peacefully as creation is destroyed, or will we do what we know is necessary to maintain being?
There is zero chance of achieving global ecological sustainability and avoiding calamitous global ecological collapse if global plans for new coal plants move forward, and existing coal plants are allowed to continue operating. Clean coal is an untested PR line, with no indication it will be available, dependable and scalable any time soon. To maintain a habitable Earth, global change scientists will need to follow Hansen's example and move past studying the issue to using their expertise within the policy-making environment to achieve sufficient measures necessary to maintain an atmosphere, biodiversity, water and oceans. Humanity simply must find a way to shake the ecocidal coal habit or we all die.
Fossil Fuel
