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Don't Frack With Sussex activist with Jeremy Corbyn

Don’t Frack With Sussex activist with Jeremy Corbyn.

Don’t Frack With Sussex meet Corbyn

Hastings artist-activists, Don’t Frack With Sussex, protest energy minister’s short-sighted energy policy at London’s Climate March. Here’s their report of their day, including some time spent with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

On Sunday, representatives of Hastings based activist group, ‘Don’t Frack With Sussex’, joined sixty thousand people including Members of Parliament and celebrities such as Vivienne Westwood, Charlotte Church and Radiohead singer, Thom Yorke on The London Climate March.

Don't Frack With Sussex

Dressed as opticians in labcoats and giant glasses and holding placards with  such as slogans ‘IT’S TIME TO FOCUS ON RENEWABLES’ and ‘DON’T TURN A BLIND EYE TO CLIMATE CHANGE’, the group marched alongside other Hastings residents from groups such as Transition Town Hastings and The Hastings and Rye Green Party – and even protested outside 10 Downing St – to call for positive action to tackle climate change at the crunch Paris Climate talks which started [November 30] and continue for two weeks.

The Group met Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn on a walkabout, who praised their campaign against Amber Rudd’s short sighted strategies and told them to “Keep the pressure on”.

Addressing the march, Corbyn accused the Government of “closing down” the UK’s solar energy industry and called for them to “use the technology, use the human genius that we have to use less resources, pollute less, protect and preserve more”.

Caroline Lucas MP spoke of the need to be more ambitious in tackling climate change. “We already know that what’s on offer in Paris is nowhere near enough. We know that business as usual will take us towards a world of 4C warming”.

Don’t Frack with Sussex activist and local artist, Beccy McCray said: “Why replace coal power stations with gas-powered ones? Amber’s argument about energy security and problems with storage is blind to the possibilities. Subsidise clean, green energy like Ireland who, in 2016, are building a high-tech renewable storage facility and you have sustainable energy for future generations. We’ll be watching Amber throughout the Paris talks.”

Don't Frack With Sussex artist-activists

Don’t Frack With Sussex artist-activists on the march.

Ad Exec and fellow Don’t Frack with Sussex activist, Mike Laloe: “Amber recently said she is doubling funding for renewable energy, but she is blurring the facts and obscuring the truth as industry website edie.net spotted: ‘this is not actually ‘new’ money – it is just the existing fund for supporting renewable energy agreed under the coalition Government…this actually means that spending on the RHI scheme will be around £690m lower than what was originally forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).’

“Since she has come in she’s taken the hatchet to renewable energy and her Chancellor has cut her department’s budget by 22%. If they see that as a way to tackle climate change, then they both need a new pair of glasses.”

Don’t Frack with Sussex have vowed to keep a close eye on Rudd “until she sees the damage her policies are doing and has a better vision for UK energy.”

Further link:

The Guardian: New energy storage plant could ‘revolutionise’ renewable sector.

 

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Posted 20:17 Sunday, Dec 6, 2015 In: Energy Wise

Also in: Energy Wise

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