A jury in Kingsnorth, UK, has decided that 6 Greenpeace activists who caused $60,000 of damage to a coal plant are not guilty of violating any crime. According to Greenpeace:

To recap on how important this verdict is: the defendants campaigners were accused of causing £30,000 of criminal damage to Kingsnorth smokestack from painting. The defence was that they had ‘lawful excuse’ – because they were acting to protect property around the world “in immediate need of protection” from the impacts of climate change, caused in part by burning coal.

So the evidence for the defence centred around the enormous damage burning coal does to ecosystems, people and property around the planet – and the UK government’s abject failure to take any meaningful action.

(This is the first case, by the way, where preventing property damage from climate change has been used as part of a ‘lawful excuse’ defence in Crown Court.)

During the trial, the world’s leading climate scientist [James Hansen] came to court and challenged the government’s plans for new coal, calling for Gordon Brown to announce a moratorium on all new coal-fired power plants without carbon capture and storage.

One of the protesters commented to the BBC:

“When 12 normal people say it is legitimate for a direct action group to shut down a coal-fired power station because of the harm it does to our planet then where does that leave government energy policy?”

Where indeed. Earlier this week a story in The Telegraph highlighted a looming energy crisis in the UK, as well as the interesting role played by Jim Hansen in the trial:

Mr Hansen told the court that the new power station alone would be responsible for the extinction of “400 species”.

It might seem odd that a senior US public official should fly the Atlantic to support the defendants in a criminal trial, but Mr Hansen regards it as a test case in the campaign by greens on both sides of the Atlantic to close down all coal-fired power stations in the next 20 years.

Before his court appearance it was reported that he met with the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, a passionate supporter of the environmentalists’ cause. Mr Miliband opposes the Kingsnorth plan, but it is strongly supported by the Business Secretary, John Hutton, who is urging Gordon Brown to approve the scheme.

The deep rift between the two sides was made clear by an interview Mr Hutton recently gave to The Daily Telegraph. In a little-noticed passage, while allowing that “of course we’ve got to tackle climate change”, he went on “but we’ve also got to be absolutely clear that our energy policy has got to be figured first and foremost with a view to supplying Britain with the affordable and secure energy it needs for the future. That is why we cannot turn our back on any proven form of technology. We cannot afford to say no to new coal, new gas or new nuclear.”

The reason Mr Hutton was so vehement was that, as minister in charge of energy policy, he is the one senior politician who recognises the scale of the approaching crisis. In the next decade, we are due to lose 40 per cent of the generating capacity that keeps our lights on and our economy running.

Within a few years, eight of the nine nuclear plants that supply 20 per cent of our power will come to the end of their life. We shall also – thanks to an EU anti-pollution directive – have to close nine of the major coal and oil-fired power stations that provide another 20 per cent.To make up that shortfall – as the minister and his more responsible advisers have come to realise – is as urgent a problem as any that Britain faces. But how?

Now that a UK jury has sanctioned what some will view as appropriate civil disobedience and what others will call domestic terrorism, it seems unavoidable that the UK energy crisis has become that much worse, as new coal projects will seemingly inevitably now face more property damage from emboldened activists, which if they are successful would stop any future construction. What that means for energy costs, energy availability, and the continuing debate over climate change policies will bear watching, as the UK is soon going to see a mighty collision of all of these political issues, with uncertain outcomes.