George Bush vs the Ents

George Bush vs the Ents
It was a rainy Monday morning last week, one of my first days after finishing work. My train-driving friend Bea came up to Newy to visit me, have lunch and say bon voyage. I dragged her out to the dog beach for a demo for World Environment Day.
Newcastle harbour - AKA the worlds biggest coal port- was the target for this action. The coal industry wants to expand coal exports from the Hunter, and are getting a truckload of money from the state and federal governments to build new rail lines for their coal, and dredge Newcastle harbour to make it deeper for more coal ships. Despite local communities like Anvil Hill opposing any increase in mining due to its effects on the environment and peoples health- residents in the mining areas have sky high rates of asthma, COPD, and other nasties and theyre over it.
Anyhoo, Rising Tide, a climate change group in Newy, put on the action for World Environment Day, and it captured my imagination. People were gonna go out in boats and have a symbolic blockade of the coal ships to make the point we need to reduce coal exports, not increase them, if we all want a future for humanity.
A noble cause. But lets remember its been organised by hippies so theres the inevitable comedy about it. There were many in wetsuits and kayaks, brave given the cold. I wanted a staying-dry boat option, and we were shown our canoe. Driver Bea ran the other way screaming. Yet strangely it was not the least seaworthy vessel there. There were the two guys who no doubt were trying to make some point about recycling, who strung together some of those big plastic water containers, a couple bread crates, some piping and god knows what else, and set sail. They got about 2 metres off shore before the thing collapsed, much to the amusement of the on-shore wooses such as myself.
Yes we opted for the on shore, holding placards, listening to speeches course of action. But there were some touching moments, too, like when someone made a space for a tree in their canoe, and took it to the front lines on the harbour, its leaves glistening in the rain, where it stood up for all flora facing extinction. It reminded me of the Ents of the Lord of the Rings. We sure could use some of them in this movement; some pissed off trees kicked George Bush's lily-white Texan-oil arse.
All in all, not a bad way to spend a morning, especially when we followed it up with some coffee and yummy lunch. Thanks for coming Bea, it was memorable.