Invading Power Plants

British protesters say that next month they're going to invade and occupy the first coal-fired power plant built in Britain in 33 years. The "day of mass action" is August 9 at the Kingsnorth power station in Kent (2,000 MW). Should be interesting, though I doubt the protesters will actually be able to get into the building with all the sure-to-be massive security.

But you have to salute them for trying. Climate change is clearly the most serious threat the future has ever faced, besides maybe worldwide nuclear war (and who worries about that anymore?), and it is now clear that the powers-that-be will take no action at all that would threaten the profits of the world's corporations -- or, if they do take any action, it will be so weak and timid as to hardly address the problem at all. It really is a sort of war, and what else can you do except sit back and take it? Protest. James Hansen has called for uprisings from the younger generation whose future is being threatened and perhaps ruined -- it will be interesting to see what he has to say about this.

Mario Savio said, during the Berkeley free speech protest in 1964:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

I do think people have given the world's governments enough time to have taken a significant chunk out of this problem -- 20 years now -- and hardly nothing has been done whatsoever.

UPDATE: Here's a video clip of Savio's speech.