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Activists call coal protest a success

Greenpeace campaign hopes to influence UN climate negotiations

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
December 12th, 2007 issue

Greenpeace activists are calling their protest at a north Bohemian smokestack a success in influencing the United Nations Climate Change Conference that Environmental Minister Martin Bursík is currently attending in Bali, Indonesia.
Around 4 a.m. Dec. 6, 11 protesters from across Central Europe climbed halfway up the 300-meter-tall smokestack Prunerov II, which Greenpeace says is the country’s largest carbon-dioxide polluter.
According to Jan Rovenský, head of the Greenpeace campaign, Prunerov II emits about 9 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, which is roughly the same amount as all annual car emissions in the country combined.
Five of the protesters climbed down after about 15 hours on the chimney. Inclement weather forced the rest down around 5 p.m. Dec. 7.
The protest, Rovenský says, “was not against one particular smokestack. It was against the entire Czech addiction to lignite.” Up to 60 percent of domestic electricity is produced by lignite, or coal. “It’s really unsustainable,” he says.
The three goals of the protest were to spark discussion about Czech participation in the Bali climate meeting, to establish a communication center on the chimney in order to transmit photos to Bali, and to unfold a 60-meter banner. The last objective was thwarted by heavy winds.
This particular smokestack, owned by the country’s largest energy company, ČEZ, is a symbol of the wastefulness of fossil energy, Rovenský says. Prunerov II is only 32 percent efficient; the rest of the energy it produces is wasted, he says.
Rovenský and other activists met Dec. 8 with Bursík on his way to the airport to attend the conference, and asked him to support the position of the European Union at Bali, which calls for a sharp reduction in greenhouse emissions by industrialized countries by 2030.
“Greenpeace wants the Czech Republic, and the EU, to take the lead in the race against climate change,” it states in a press release. “[We] call on the Czech government, and nearly 200 other governments attending the UN climate talks in Bali, to end reliance on coal as a fuel.”
Rovenský says Greenpeace will likely climb the tower again but declined to say when. ČEZ did not file criminal complaints against the activists.

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com


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