On a cold and wet day in the English winter of 1962-63 a couple of hundred supporters of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, blocked the entrance to York Barracks.
We were protesting at the presence deep below ground of one of the regional seats of government from which Britain would be governed after the nuclear holocaust. We doubted that there would be very much left to govern.
Thankfully the USA and the Soviet Union recognised that a nuclear attack from either side would lead to the mutual annihilation, and I retired from sit-down protests for 57 years.
During the last 20 years I, like so many other people, have become increasingly concerned at the seemingly unstoppable rise in CO2 emissions.
I had read and listened to the warnings from scientists and watched their predictions come to pass, but sooner than their timetable suggested. I saw the changes that were occurring around me: less reliable rainfall, fewer frosts and the virtual disappearance of snow, gooseberries and strawberries ripening earlier and other plants dying from lack of moisture.
But the seminal event for me occurred on New Year’s Day 2020. There were TV pictures of Australian families driven to the beaches as the bushfires raged; and above my home on Mount Cargill, 2500km to the southwest of the fires, the sky was a dirty yellow.
Light rain brought down the smell of the smoke and the gritty taste of ash. It was eerily quiet that morning.
I saw too the coal-train come through my beautiful bay-side village each day on its journey from Bathurst Resources’ Takatimu mine in Nightcaps, Southland, to Fonterra’s Clandeboye dairy factory in South Canterbury.
Five hundred tonnes of coal every day that yields an awful lot of greenhouse gases, the same as 17,000 average New Zealand households.
That 500 tonnes of coal is equivalent to 1100 tonnes of CO2. A "typical" New Zealander emits 8.6 tonnes GHG per year. The average New Zealand household is 2.7 people, so that is 23 tonnes per household per year of GHG emissions.
This output of greenhouse gases is cynically promised to cease by 2050. That is ridiculous and fatuous and insulting.
If burning coal is the only profitable way that milk can be processed we simply should not be doing it. It just can’t be the right thing to do.
When I was asked to join a protest that would delay the coal-train to draw attention to what was happening I was ready to take part, and after I attended the briefing meetings I felt honoured to be there.
There was nothing lighthearted here: weathered veterans from other protests who tightly and silently embraced, fresh-faced young people who were still at school, nanas and grandads in their 70s, medics and artists and lawyers, men and women who were going to lock themselves to the train tracks and to the tops of the coal trucks, and dedicated planners who stressed the importance of safety and discipline.
Early on Saturday morning we met at the rendezvous and then moved to the track-side carpark to wait for the message to move on to the track.
It was a case of that military adage of "hurry-up and wait" until we received the message that the coal-train was moving.
There was a quick donning of high-viz jackets, unfurling of banners and then a slow walk towards the oncoming locomotive.
It was a bit unnerving as this huge machine came slowly forward until it stopped a few metres from the young person leading our advance.
We had done it, and I understood the long embraces of a day or two earlier, particularly when I looked behind me to see the people lying across the track and locked on to it.
Seven hours later, cold and a bit damp and suffering from "internal pressures" I was helped to walk back to the platform, receiving cheerful support from those men and women still locked to the track.
I can think of no better way for a 79-year-old man with eight grandchildren to have used a Saturday.
Is the smoke and ash of New Year’s Day a foretaste of my grandchildren’s’ future? Will they be able to hope and dream?
Will I be able to look them in their eyes when they ask, "How did this happen? What did you do to stop it Grandad?"
— Three years after he was arrested Michael Fay was unable to attend the trial of the CoalTrain8 due to ill health: he died peacefully on August 21. The other members of the CoalTrain8 recently appeared in court and are awaiting the judge’s verdict.
