Stories of ships being seized usually come to us from Somalia rather than Kent, but Greenpeace activists boarded a ship in the Medway in the early hours of this morning.
The ship was loaded with 20,000 tonnes of coal, and bound for the Kingsnorth power station, site of several previous climate change demonstrations.
I just spoke to activist Sarah Shoraka, who is currently on top of the mast of the ship:
Coal is not an option in an age of climate change, as Jamie Wooley from Greenpeace explains: “Kingsnorth is, of course, the proposed site for the first coal-fired power station to be built in the UK for over 30 years. Despite recent government assurances that any new coal fired power stations will capture the carbon they release into the atmosphere, the devil in the detail means that a new plant at Kingsnorth would still pump three quarters of its carbon into the atmosphere – six million tonnes of CO2 a year, a phenomenal amount.”
The ship has now docked, but activists are blocking it from being unloaded. The police are trying to coax them down. You can follow the story on the Greenpeace blog, or on twitter.
The Earthbound Report 