IndyMedia - Vrij Media Centrum Nederland

Waar: North-bohemian mining region (by the town of Most), Czech Republic
Wanneer: 21/06/2017 - 00:00 t/m 25/06/2017 - 00:00

1st International Climate Camp 2017 - Czech Republic

Climate camp 2017

Come to the first international Climate camp in the Czech Republic.

The last year has been the hottest ever recorded, just as the one before it, and the one before that, and so on… Science tells us that our planet is warming fast – and human actions are the cause. If we’re supposed to cech that warming below the relatively safe threshold of 2 degrees celsius, we need to leave more than 80% of all known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. But the fossil fuel industry is planning to dig them out – and burn them.

That’s why, all over the world, a mass movement for climate justice is stepping up, resisting the current state of affairs, where the big polluters are making immense profits on resource-extraction, while the millions of those, who are have not substantially contributed to the climate crisis are suffering its consequences. Thousands of people are joining actions of civil disobedience, physically disrupting the operation of opencast mines, coal export-terminals or pipelines under construction, using every non-violent method to demand the fastest possible end to the burning of fossil fuels.

It is about time we started to resist this in the Czech Republic, too. Two years ago, our government has breached the so-called environmental limits to mining on the Bílina mine and allowed the state-owned energy utility, ČEZ, to dig for millions of tons of lignite more. The coal companies, whether state-owned or private, are threatening people’s homes, wrecking the climate and the health of the people and ravaging the beautiful landscapes of Northern Bohemia. And despite their sweet talk in Paris, the politicians are doing nothing.

We will not stand for this. Inspired by other brave acts of civil disobedience during the Break Free mobilisation last year, we have decided to act and to stand up to the coal industry.
Join us in this endeavour during the first climate camp in the Czech republic, which will take place in the North-bohemian mining region (by the town of Most) from 21st to 25th of june 2017. It will be an opportunity to learn from each other, share our experience, have fun protesting and nonetheless, to non-violently disrupt the operation of one of the nearby mines or power-plants.

We are the investment risk. See you in the pit.
Who are we?

We are an open grassroots civic movement against coal mining and coal burning. We bring together individuals from both activist and non-activist groups around the Czech republic. We were created in 2015 in the wake of a governmental proposal to break the brown coal mining limits in Northern Bohemia, which would mean, in its worst form, demolition of towns of Horní Jiřetín and Černice. During the 2015 campaign for keeping the mining limits, we organized together with thousands of people around the country and stood against breaking the coal mining limits in the Bílina mine and ČSA in Northern Bohemia.

The continuing mining and coal burning is not only a threat to people’s homes and health in Northern Bohemia at the moment. They are also one of the imminent causes of the global climate change. The urgency of the climate change is serious to such extent where it’s impossible to be satisfied with the limits leading to end the coal mining in the Czech republic as far as 2055. This is why the movement Limity jsme my joins the global struggle to a responsible solution for climate change and the future without the unclean fossil fuels. It will employ pressure for an immediate end of the coal mining in the Czech republic and a transformation to renewable energy sources.
Campaign for keeping the coal mining limits

We stood against breaking the coal mining limits in the Bílina mine and Northern Bohemia, along with thousands of people from all around the country.

The first public event, dedicated to memory of the Northern Bohemia towns demolished for the coal mining, was held in February in 2015. There were memorials held in fourteen different places in the country and the message was clear: We are against the brown coal mining limits breaking and the further expanding of the coal industry.

Same year in June we continued with the protests in more than twenty places which were joined by more than a thousand people. The protests were supported by our allies in Germany, Belgium, Finland or Brazil. Furthermore, we held a manifestation in front of house belonging to one of the owners of the region’s coal mines (owner of Severní energetická, Northern energetics, Jan Dienstl), where we played the sound of the excavator in front his residence’s gates. We organized a similar manifestation during the tripartite negotiations.

In the petition, collected between February and September 2015, more than three thousand people vowed to protect Horní Jiřetín from demolition in case of breaking the mining limits. We submitted the petition to the government.
The campaign reached its peak in the form of the demonstration during the governmental meeting in the Ústí region, where the government decided to partially break the mining limits in Bílina, and to release more than a hundred tons of the brown coal.
Limits alone are not enough

In May 2016, we joined thousands of people from all over Europe in the massive Ende Gelande event and the closing of the brown coal mine in Lusatia in Germany. We were protesting against the ongoing mining and against the planned sale of the Lusatia mines belonging to a Swedish company Vattenfall, Křetinský’s EPH.

http://limityjsmemy.cz/english/