Six campaigners from Greenpeace will be appearing at Maidstone Crown Court for the start of a trial centring around Kingsnorth, coal and climate change.

In October last year, they took a personal stand to protect the environment and climbed to the top of the smokestack at Kingsnorth coal-fired power station in Kent.

Now, the Kingsnorth Six (Ben Stewart, Emily Hall, Huw Williams, Kevin Drake, Tim Hewke and Will Rose) are being prosecuted for criminal damage and trespass.

Find out more and get updates from the Greenpeace website.

The UK risks scuppering it's leadership on tackling climate change, and puts future international efforts to cut carbon emissions in jeopardy if it pursues the building of a new coal fired power station at Kingsnorth.

Scientists from the US recently wrote to David Miliband to outline their objections to the proposed 'cleaner coal' power station at Kingsnorth.

"We have a deep respect for your government’s historic commitment to lead on global warming in Europe and around the world.

However, we are writing to urge you to reject the wave of massive conventional coal-fired power plants under consideration in the United Kingdom, including the pending proposal at Kingsnorth in Kent. As proposed, these conventional coal plants lack any limits on their emissions of carbon dioxide and would drastically increase the U.K.’s carbon dioxide emissions and make achievement of your stated pollution reduction goals extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.

Building new conventional coal plants and setting the U.K. up to fail and lose its leadership mantle will make our work in the U.S. all the more difficult.”

Read more: US scientists challenge UK over dirty coal, says US groups (guardian)

Lord Smith, the new head of the Environment Agency, this week gave a cautionary warning to the government over the folly of continuing with climate damaging super projects like the third runway at Heathrow, and the proposed new coal power station at Kingsnorth in Kent. He also highlighted the threat that climate change induced sea level rises and coastal erosion will have on the UK’s coast line and that tough choices would have to be made over whether to defend threatened communities.

The World Development Movement has also put two and two together; stating that plans for a new coal power plant are completely incompatible with plans to tackle climate change. And that huge areas of Kent’s coastline will be seriously threatened by predicted sea level rises, demonstrating the sad irony of stationing a new carbon belching coal power station in the very same area.

Millions of people all over the world are already suffering as a result of climate change. It is usually the poorest people who are left most vulnerable to increasingly severe weather phenomena such as typhoons and flooding. For coastal communities in the UK, Bangladesh, the Philippines and across the globe, whose homes, jobs and unfortunately lives are threatened, the government must be resolute in its ambition to tackle climate change. It cannot be, or even give the illusion of, being serious about this if it says yes to new runways and new coal power stations.

Read about areas of low-lying Kent due to disappear (Kent online)