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Climate activists have celebrated the cancellation of this year’s mining and oil industries conference by taking direct action against one of the country’s biggest coal mining firms.
The Minerals Forum was due to start in Hamilton today but was called off because of security concerns.
Activists who travelled to Waikato to protest it instead turned their attention to the Rotowaro opencast coal mine, attaching themselves to gates with chains, padlocks and steel boxes.
Rotowaro is owned by the conference’s lead sponsor, Australian firm Bathhurst Mining, and New Zealand conglomerate Talleys.
Emily Bailey from Climate Justice Taranaki says the Minerals Forum is a gathering of economic degenerates from gold, coal, oil, gas, iron sand, phosphate, lithium and aggregate mining companies as well as intensive farming companies and government departments.
She says their dig-burn-dump economic model is highly polluting at all stages of the process as well as increasing the gap between rich and poor.
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