Hard Times: Coketown Woes

The following is copy of the Gene Hashmi's (Greenpeace) email appeal:

In October 2007, Al Gore accepted his Nobel Prize with the words: "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants."

At precisely the same moment, six Greenpeace activists -- one of them six weeks pregnant at the time -- entered a highly-secure coal-power plant and defaced one of its chimneys. Retribution was swift. We were arrested and sent to jail and, nearly two years later, the incredulous charges against us are yet to be dropped. Our case, unreported by the media, drags on in court.



My daughter Johanna was four years old when I went to jail for that crime. She's six years old now. In these two years, instead of shutting down coal-power plants, our government has been building more of them.

The unfair part is, the people building these coal-power plants won't be around when climate catastrophe finally hits us. They won't be running from refugee camp to refugee camp. They won't be escaping hunger and drought and famine and disease, but Johanna will.

It's for her sake, and for the sake of all children, that ordinary citizens like you and me must go beyond empty talk, and take direct action against climate change.

Why direct action? Because patient petitioning through the "proper channels" isn't working. Our Prime Minister has ignored over 50,000 people like you who have asked him for a Renewable Energy Law. He talked of climate change in his Independence Day speech, but has shown no sign that he intends to match his words with deeds.

It was to make climate change his No.1 priority that six of us went to jail. This is our story. I hope when you read it, you too will be inspired to act, and succeed where we failed.