Rod Quantock: Fossil fuel industry commits crimes against humanity
Channel: Mik Aidt
Date: 2013-08-22

"These are crimes against humanity, and our political system and our legal system should hold these people to account. They should be in jail for the damage they cause to our generation and the generations to come," says the Australian comedian Rod Quantock in this video clip.

On 18 August 2013, he moderated a line of speakers at a rally in the streets of Melbourne, 'Farmers against fracking'.  

My 8-year-old son Alexander and I video-interviewed a couple of people attending the rally. Here is a transciption of what Rod Quantock told us, word by word:

"Recently we hit 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. And that guarantees that the world will be at least two degrees warmer by 2030 or 2040. And beyond that, the world will become uninhabitable for people, animals and plants, and all sorts of things. 

So these people who are fracking for gas, who are digging up coal, transporting and reverting it, are committing crimes against humanity. These are crimes against humanity, and our political system and our legal system should hold these people to account. They should be in jail for the damage they cause to our generation and the generations to come. We are going to live on a dead planet because these people are unconstrained. 

We have democratic movements in this country and around the world who are demanding that they are freed of these people and the damage that they do. But our parliaments and our legal system support them. So shame on them all. They should all be in jail, and we must now get involved in direct action. We have to pull these people down. We have to pull their rigs down. Stop them digging. Stop them drilling. We gotta save the planet, because nobody else will."

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Ursula Alquier work with Friends of the Earth and Lock the Gate and was one of the organisers of the rally in Melbourne.

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• More and more people out there involve themselves in this struggle for the future of our planet which Rod Quantock and Ursula Alquier talk about. Read more on www.climatesafety.info
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More information about the rally can be found here:

• ABC - 19 August 2013:
Fracking concerns mount in Victoria
More than 400 protestors marched through Melbourne on Sunday calling on the Victorian Government to ban fracking. By Kath Sullivan.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-19/nrn-csg-protest/4896094

• Yes 2 Renewables - Friends of the Earth (Melbourne)'s renewable energy campaign - 19 August 2013:
No to fracking, yes to renewables!
By Leigh Ewbank
http://yes2renewables.org/2013/08/19/no-to-fracking-yes-to-renewables-2/

• More photos:
https://www.facebook.com/quitcoal.org.au/media_set?set=a.420077811442101.1073741832.100003196581402&amp;type=1