CAMPAIGNERS have won permission to appeal against the building of Sizewell C nuclear power station in Suffolk because the government did not ensure there was a sufficient water supply to meet its demands.
The Court of Appeal overturned a refusal by the High Court to grant a judicial review into the decision by Kwasi Kwarteng, the then-business secretary, to give the station on the Suffolk coast the go-ahead.
The case was brought by the Together Against Sizewell C (Tasc) campaign group.
Tasc’s case included an argument that because of the power station’s need for huge quantities of water for its cooling system, the development should include a desalination plant to avoid endangering local domestic water supplies.
Court of Appeal judge Lord Justice Coulson said that given that Mr Kwarteng gave permission for the power station against the advice of the planning authority, and because of Tasc’s arguments about the need for a water supply, the appeal had “a real prospect of success.”
Up to 8 million people across the United Kingdom are either incorrectly registered to vote or missing completely, according to research published today by the Electoral Commission, with young people, private renters and those who have recently moved house most affected.
The sheer number of people denied a right to vote thanks to an ‘outdated registration system’, would be equivalent in number to more than 100 UK Parliament constituencies.
The Commission is calling for urgent reforms to electoral registration rules, including the passing of legislation ‘to create clear legal gateways for government departments and public bodies to share data on potentially eligible voters with electoral administrators’. The Commission says that this would enable electoral registration officers to register voters directly, or to send them invitations to register.
Media watchdog Ofcom has found that GB News broke impartiality rules after Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was interviewed by fellow Tory MPs Esther McVey and Philip Davies, with the channel ‘failing to represent and give due weight to an appropriately wide range of significant views on a matter of major political controversy’.
Hunt was interviewed by McVey and her husband Davies on Saturday 11 March for their weekly show, with the episode being aired before the spring budget.
Ofcom said in a statement: “Given this programme featured two sitting MP presenters from one political party interviewing the chancellor of the same political party about a matter of major political controversy and current public policy, we consider, in these circumstances, that GB News should have taken additional steps to ensure that due impartiality was preserved.
“Our investigation therefore concluded that GB News failed to represent and give due weight to an appropriately wide range of significant views on a matter of major political controversy and current public policy within this programme, in breach of [the] rules.”
A protester is led away by a New York City police officer during a September 18, 2023 climate protest in Lower Manhattan. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The activist group Climate Defiance asked: “Why are we getting handcuffed while people who literally torch the planet get celebrated for their ‘civility’ and their ‘moderation’?”
A day after tens of thousands of climate activists marched through Manhattan’s Upper East Side demanding an end to oil, gas, and coal production, thousands more demonstrators hit the streets of Lower Manhattan Monday, where more than 100 people were arrested while surrounding the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to protest fossil fuel financing.
Protesters chanted slogans like “No oil, no gas, fossil fuels can kiss my ass” and “We need clean air, not another billionaire” as they marched from Zuccotti Park—ground zero of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement—to pre-selected sites in the Financial District. Witnesses said many of the activists attempted to reach the New York Stock Exchange but were blocked by police.
“We’re here to wake up the regulators who are asleep at the wheel as they continue to let Wall Street lead us into ANOTHER financial crash with their fossil fuel financing,” the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition explained on social media.
“No oil, no gas! Fossil fuels can kiss my a**!”
Blocking the entrances to the @federalreserve as arrests happen.
The Fed is SHUT DOWN.
We need policies to protect the climate and communities, stop fossil fuels, not subsidies and bailouts for fossil fuels! pic.twitter.com/5RPRUpuCBb
Local and national media reported New York Police Department (NYPD) officers arrested 114 protesters and charged them with civil disobedience Monday after they blocked entrances to the Fed building. Most of those arrested were expected to be booked and released.
“I’m being arrested for exercising my First Amendment right to protest because Joe Manchin is putting a 300-mile-long pipeline through my home state of West Virginia and President [Joe] Biden allowed him to do it for nothing in return,” explained Climate Defiance organizer Rylee Haught on social media, referring to the right-wing Democratic senator and the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
As she was led away by an NYPD officer, a tearful Haught said Biden “sold us out.”
“He promised to end drilling on federal lands, and he’s selling out Appalachia’s future for profit,” she added.
Stop scrolling. Stop scrolling. Our organizer Rylee just got arrested at the New York Fed. It is morally outrageous that Rylee is being taken away in handcuffs while climate criminals get honorary Harvard degrees and Davos keynotes. It is morally outrageous. pic.twitter.com/vIjNcbeFr3
Responding to the “block-long” line of arrestees, Climate Defiance asked: “Why are we getting handcuffed while people who literally torch the planet get celebrated for their ‘civility’ and their ‘moderation’?”
Alicé Nascimento of New York Communities for Change toldWABC that the protests—which are part of Climate Week and are timed to coincide with this week’s United Nations Climate Ambition Summit—are “our last resort.”
“We’re bringing the crisis to their doorstep and this is what it looks like,” said Nascimento.
At least a thousand End Fossil Fuels protesters have surrounded the Federal Reserve on NYC Wall Street protesting the financing of fossil fuels. Several dozen arrests thus far. pic.twitter.com/25mbZidLna
As they have at similar demonstrations, protesters called on Biden to stop approving new fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency. Some had a message for the president and his administration.
“We hold the power of the people, the power you need to win this election,” 17-year-old Brooklynite Emma Buretta of the youth-led protest group Fridays for Future told WABC. “If you want to win in 2024, if you do not want the blood of my generation to be on your hands, end fossil fuels.”
Gas companies “cynically used… the Russian invasion of Ukraine to frighten governments into massive, unneeded investment into and expansion of fossil gas imports and infrastructure,” one campaigner said.
As part of the Global Fight to End Fossil Fuels, activists from Greenpeace France attempted to block a new TotalEnergies liquefied natural gas terminal [tanker] from entering the port of Le Havre Monday morning.
Kayakers paddled between the port entrance and the tanker carrying the terminal—the Cape Ann—and wrote “Gas kills” in white paint along its side, Reuters reported.
“This LNG terminal is yet another blatant example of ‘shock doctrine,’ where gas operators shifted their public messaging and lobbying from ‘energy transition’ to ‘energy security’ and cynically used the opportunity after the energy supply concerns triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine to frighten governments into massive, unneeded investment into and expansion of fossil gas imports and infrastructure,” Greenpeace France oil, transport, and ocean campaigner Hélène Bourges said in a statement.
ation unit did arrive at the port in Western France Monday morning, TotalEnergies told Reuters.
But the Greenpeace activists argue its arrival contradicts French President Emmanuel Macron’s 2022 promise to make France the first major nation to abandon the fossil fuels driving the climate emergency. What’s more, the gas is mostly U.S. shale gas, obtained by fracking—a method banned in France because of the harm it does to the global climate and the health and environment of local communities.
The activists in kayaks carried banners reading “Total: shale dealer,” “Macron: shale dealer,” and “End Fossil Crimes.”
Members of Scientists in Rebellion also came to Le Havre to support the action.
“This LNG terminal is a sham that responds neither to the crisis nor to energy sovereignty and pushes us into a scenario of climate chaos,” the group wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Nous étions ce matin au Havre avec pour dire 📢📢📢 STOP 📢📢📢 aux projets suicidaires du Gvt et de @TotalEnergies
Ce terminal méthanier est une imposture qui ne répond ni à la crise, ni à la souveraineté énergétique et nous enfonce dans un scénario de chaos climatique pic.twitter.com/19uYvwaQed
Greenpeace challenged the narrative that increased LNG is necessary to help France and the rest of Europe meet their energy needs in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In a report copublished in June with Disclose, Greenpeace France pointed out that the country’s existing LNG terminals did not use their maximum capacity in 2022 and were underutilized during the first half of 2023.
“If France really suffered from a gas supply crisis in 2022 that was severe enough to justify the new floating terminal in Le Havre, it’s surprising that the capacities of existing terminals, particularly the ones at Dunkerque and Fos Tonkin, were underutilized,” the report authors wrote.
“This summer’s extreme weather events have highlighted the urgency of moving away from fossil fuels.”
Instead, they argued that the LNG increase was the result of lobbying from the oil and gas industry.
“The only beneficiaries of the LNG gas infrastructure in Le Havre are TotalEnergies, the operator of the floating terminal, and its shareholders, whose private interests and gains prevail over climate action and people’s health, with the complicit support of the French government that granted an unprecedented legal preferential regime to set up this operation,” Bourges said in a statement.
Greenpeace’s action followed a summer of deadly heatwaves, fires, and floods and a global mobilization to end fossil fuels from September 15-17.
“This summer’s extreme weather events have highlighted the urgency of moving away from fossil fuels,” Greenpeace France wrote on social media.
The group said it had two demands for Macron: to prevent the new terminal from being used and to kill any other fossil fuel projects under consideration.
