6th March 2024
Drax and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Earlier this week I joined an action outside the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero protesting against government plans to continue to subsidise Drax power station. Two key groups campaign against the unsustainable and unethical functioning of this power station – and its smaller sister at Lynemouth. They are ‘Axe Drax’ and ‘Biofuel Watch’. I was invited to speak on behalf of Christian Action. This is what I said.
“As I come from a faith back ground and am part of Christian Climate Action, I thought I would reference one of the trees from the Bible – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We know we humans do not always make good choices, and it was probably not the best of choices that Adam and Eve made when they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of gold and evil.
But once you have the knowledge of good and evil, would you not be very foolish to to make choices that will cause evil?
If you knew the difference between good and evil when it comes to cutting down primary old- growth forests, would you be foolish enough to continue to cut down those trees? Foolish enough to destroy those ancient and biodiverse habitats? Foolish enough to destroy that long term effective carbon sink?
If you know the difference between good and evil when it comes to shipping products half way round the world, would you be foolish enough to burn shipping fuel just to transport tonnes of timber pellets from the west coast of Canada to the east coast of England just to so you could burn them?
If you knew the difference between good and evil when it comes to generating energy, would you be foolish enough to burn anything when you could alternatively use renewable energy from the sun and the wind and the tides?
And would you be foolish enough to do so at a price that diverts £6 billion of tax payers’ money into subsidising those carbon emissions?
And would you be still foolish enough to offer a further £2.5 billion a year of tax payers’ money to continue importing and burning the wood from those precious forests?
Come on Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, think again! Use some common sense!!”
“Drax Power Station, in North Yorkshire, burns 25 millions trees a year that are shipped in from across the world. In September 2022, it was revealed that Drax’s practices abroad are the cause of large scale environmental racism. Trees are condensed down to pellets in factories placed in predominantly Black communities in the global south. The process is so polluting, people are left struggling to breath and often trapped in their own homes. Drax presents itself as a world leader in using BECCS*, and is the worlds biggest burner of trees. They can only operate because of over £6billion in subsidies taken straight from our energy bills, supposedly for renewable energy.” (Axe Drax)
For more information on Drax and the campaign to end such power stations, see https://axedrax.uk/ and https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/axedrax-campaign/
*Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage is the process of extracting bioenergy from biomass and capturing and storing the carbon, thereby removing it from the atmosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioenergy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage
The Green Tau 