Hello!
Today We will be writing about the Protesting Action against the coal power that I took part in at Kobe on June 27th!
Center：Takuro Kajiwara
I had the opportunity to participate in the Kobe protesting action against the coal power.
The world is now facing a serious climate change, and lots of other environmental issues nowadays, and the shift of the coal power energy to a natural, renewable energy is strongly expected to proceed.
From my personal interest to the environmental issues, especially climate change, I had joined Fridays for future before, which is an action against climate change by the young generation, and for this Kobe action, Hiroto, who is in the committee of Friday’s for future kindly invited me to join it.
Joining this action, I mainly felt and learned two things.
First is that seeing the thermal coal power plant and its emission gas smoke in a very close distance,it was so obvious that fossil or coal energy is harming both the environment and the people. Staying in front of the power plant, I felt sick from the smoke and the chemical smells. The sea around the power plant looked polluted, and I cannot say that it has a clear relationship, but I saw one bird dead floating in the bay. As I heard one man talking who is protesting to the power plant, the effect on the local people’s health was seriously concerned.
More shockingly, there was an elementary school in a 5 minute walk distance from the power plant, and I saw many children walking just nearby, which made me really frustrated toward the company.
What I also felt was the fear toward the company of this power plant, which is “Kobe-seiko”.
One party members of the Green Party Japan took me to the Nadahama Science square, which is a kind of a museum that displays the coal power plant.What I felt fear toward is that the display lacked the information of the negative effects on the environment, and I felt that the company is trying to make the children, especially those local children believe that coal power is great technology by impressing them with a misleading information.
Also, when I asked the women why the local people won’t protest against the company, she told me that the company is strongly connected with the city, such reasons like by creating job opportunities, so there is this atmosphere that
people cannot say something toward them
In the society today, where climate change is a serious issue and we need to face the environmental issues more seriously ,the coal energy and its industry of course must be avoided. The company itself will have less profit where people’s attention is toward natural energy. More than the coal industry itself, but the big Japanese bank such as the Mitsubishi and Mizuho must stop from investing on the coal industry. The Kobe action was a precious opportunity for me to understand again that the coal industry must be revised and to shift to natural power.
International Christian University , Tokyo
Takuro Kajiwara