It is the height of hypocrisy for the government to talk about being green and then enter into plans to expand airports. Those "men in their amazing flying machines", leave the ground in lots of cases with 200,000 pounds, (weight) of high octane aviation fuel, and as the skim seamlessly through the air they burn most of that before landing, spewing it into the atmosphere. How many planes are in the air at any given time? Yet airport developers make statements like we will be carbon free in such and such a year, while planning to double capacity. Apart from the burning and spewing that poison into the atmosphere, there is the highly dangerous process, in every city that has an airport, of transporting and storing unbelievable volumes of this extremely volatile substance, usually in densely populated areas. Of course this will only get worse as the airport expansion brigade push there planet destroying plans, naturally the plans will all be painted "green".
Aviation Fuel Tankers Attacked in Bristol,UK
In the heart of Easton, next to a school, in a busy residential area
between a well used railway line and a motorway, is enough aviation fuel to cause a major explosion. Aviation fuel contains over 2,000 chemicals. Once ignited it has a much higher BTU (British Thermal Unit) than gasoline and can burn much longer. In Easton, there are 6 white tankers, each 60 foot long.
We are often labelled “terrorists” but if we were then… boom! bye, bye! Instead, we decided to attack these containers with dark blue paint. In executing this small act of defiance we hope to highlight their existance, and the danger they pose. This prank was also done to add to the current discourse and campaigns around the expansion of Bristol Airport.
The huge quantity of aviation fuel is kept in case there is ever a
shortage at the airport. The reality is that the existance of these
tankers puts people’s lives at risk everyday, just so that corporations can continue “business as usual” at all costs. If anything was to happen at Bristol Airport, then this fuel would be taken to Filton Airfield. Filton Airfield is currently used by the National Police Air Service to fly the police helicopter (residents of Bristol will be all too familiar with it’s oppressive presence). Filton is also home to a large Airbus Factory, which was occupied in 2018. Airbus supply the Turkish regime with missiles, fighter jet components and other technology.
The Bristol Cable have previously investigated these connections.
The ports and docks of Bristol have a long history of profitting from slavery, the military, and, most recently, the distribution of fuel. Q8 Aviation recently celebrated the fact that over 10 million tonnes of aviation fuel had passed through Bristol dock. There is a huge network of pipelines that start in Bristol and were used in so-called ‘World War 2’ to disseminate fuel. The comedian Mark Thomas has commented on the voltality and precarity of this. The pipelines form a network all over this island. Thomas highlighted the use of signs on farm land in the South West to warn against digging (due to the pipelines). These signs are still visible near Avonmouth and the Severn Estuary, and the
pipelines are an accident waiting to happen.
Bristol Airport has put forward plans for expansion, and wants to double it’s capacity (to 12 million). It has used green wash to legitimise this, publishing a ‘Carbon Roadmap’ which claims it will become “carbon neutral” by 2025.
The amazon is on fire and we are sleep walking into an unprecedented ecological disater. Claims by any corporation to be “carbon neutral” are a sick joke at the expense of the planet. This is no time for offsetting.
We are not XR. We ask for nothing, and make no demands. We are accountable only to ourselves. We don’t think that our action will change much, but we hope that it will make people think.
Solidarity with the Indigenous Mura people in Canutama, Brazil who are fighting the destruction of the Amazon. Also, belated solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners (following the week of action 23rd-30th August), especially Der Drei Von Der Park Bank.
