Activists court case moved as Minister indicates Marden B unlikely to happen

Whangarei, Monday 6 November: The three Greenpeace activists, who scaled Marsden B power station on Saturday morning have been remanded on bail to appear in Auckland on 20 November.

Michael Simpson, Emma Giles and Katrina Tamaira, were charged with being unlawfully upon a building after they evaded a posse of Mighty River Power security guards, with dogs and climbed the 60m mothballed power station.

Greenpeace's online radio Heatwave FM finished last evening, receiving overwhelming response – collecting nearly 2000 signatures for an open letter to the NZ Government, calling on it to take action on climate change.

Greenpeace welcomed the comments made yesterday on Heatwave FM (1) by David Parker, Minister for Energy and Climate Change that he does not think that the Marsden B coal fired power station proposal will go ahead.

Parker said he thought Marsden B was "unlikely to happen".

"If David Parker doesn't think that Marsden B will go ahead, then he must step in and stop the project, and provide some certainty on this issue instead of having it hashed out in the courts," said Vanessa Atkinson, Greenpeace climate campaigner.

"Mighty River Power, a state owned enterprise is wasting taxpayers money proceeding with the climate polluting Marsden B proposal, including now dragging it into the Court of Appeal challenging the October High Court decision that climate change must be considered in the Marsden case," she said.

In addition to David Parker, Heatwave FM interviewed Nick Smith from the National Party, Peter Dunne the leader of United Future, Doug Woolerton from New Zealand First, Jeanette Fitzsimmons and Nandor Tanzcos from the Green Party.

Over the weekend, the radio station talked to activists around the world.

"It is evident that there is huge public support – in New Zealand and around the world, calling for action on climate change. Everyone we talked to - in Sydney, the Netherlands, London, Bulgaria, Sweden, Brussels, Auckland and Darwin - told the same story of exponential growth of concern from the grass roots about this issue," said Atkinson.

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(1) All interviews are available on podcast on http://www.heatwavefm.net

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