If coal is part of the problem…
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Sunday 28th March
10am onwards
Horseshoe Beach
Newcastle, Australia.
Join hundreds of other people in a fun, peaceful, and effective action against Australia’s single biggest contribution to climate change.
- Join in on the water or the shore
- BYO vessel, or use one of ours
- Or…make your own funky raft!
What’s happening
Hundreds of people will peacefully occupy Newcastle Harbour, and prevent the passage of coal ships. This will be the fifth action of its kind in Newcastle. No one has ever been arrested. At the last, in March 2009, we successfully stopped all ship movements in the harbour for the day.
There’ll be plenty happening on the shore too, so please come along and show your support even if you can’t get out on the water. Good food will be available by donation.
There’ll be a ceremony of home made rafts! Check out the funky floating masterpieces, and enter your own creation!
What about boats?
Bring your canoe, kayak, tinnie, surfboard, (yacht?), whatever pleasure craft you like. Don’t have your own boat? Don’t fancy yourself a raft-maker? That’s fine. Rising Tide is organising as many kayaks as we can, and making them available for general use. If you have access to a multitude of kayaks, please get in touch!
What about safety?
There will be fast rescue boats, generously provided and operated by Greenpeace. If you get into trouble, someone will save you. We will also have a first aid tent on shore.
Why should we blockade the coal port?
Now, more than ever, we need to be turning up the heat on the coal industry, and their friends in government. The export coal industry is Australia’s single biggest, and fastest growing contribution to the global climate crisis.
Newcastle, already the world’s biggest coal port, is set to open a massive new coal terminal this year, bringing the export capacity of the Hunter Valley coal chain to an incredible 178 million tonnes of coal per annum. That’s the climate change equivalent of 30 Bayswater Power Stations. Within ten years, the coal corporations plan on exporting more than 300 million tonnes of coal per annum – a tripling of current export capacity.
Tripling coal exports means tripling coal mining. As Newcastle coal exports boom, more precious bushland will be razed, more waterways polluted, more communities ripped apart as the transnational coal companies carve their way westwards into the Liverpool Plains. The profits will be exported, but the devastation will stay here in the Hunter. The catastrophic effects of climate change will hurt all around the world.
This madness has to stop. The climate crisis is deepening, and time is fast running out. Politicians are failing to take action against the rampant coal companies, so we have to do it ourselves.
Hundreds of people will be doing just that in Newcastle on 28th March, and we’d love you to join us. We’ll be taking to the harbour in a big way, occupying the world’s biggest coal port with a mass of people, and demanding:
- an immediate ban on the expansion of the coal industry in Australia,
- a swift phase out of coal, replacing all coal industry jobs with jobs in renewable energy and other sustainable industries.