Major development and green groups tell Miliband ‘coal kills…polar bears, birds and people.'

Campaigners from RSPB, the World Development Movement, Christian Aid, Oxfam, WWF and Greenpeace will hold a 'coal kills' vigil today outside the Department for Energy and Climate Change on Whitehall.

At 16.30, the organisations' CEOs and campaigners will hold up images of glaciers, polar bears, birds, food and water supplies of the millions of people in the developing world who will lose their lives and livelihoods and a stark message of 'coal kills'. These will represent what the campaigners believe that Climate Minister, Ed Miliband will save if he makes the right decision - to rule out new coal.

The charities are coming together to remind Ed Miliband that he must go further on his policy proposals on coal and provide a cast-iron guarantee that no new dirty coal-fired power stations will be built in the UK unless all of the carbon emissions are captured from the start.

The CEOs will invite Ed Miliband to meet with the groups to hand him personally a statement detailing the thousands of powerful pledges and statements that each organisation has collected from supporters. These include letters from young RSPB members asking Miliband to do more, photos from Christian Aid supporters asking him to reconsider, and promises of thousands of Greenpeace and World Development Movement supporters that if Miliband consents Kingsnorth, they will ‘stand in the way’ or 'vote for a candidate in the next election that does not support new dirty coal'.

Deborah Doane, director of the World Development Movement said:

“Millions are already being affected by increasing droughts, disease and hunger. If we build new coal plants in the UK, we will be directly contributing to this impending catastrophe while effectively saying in Copenhagen “do as we say, not as we do.” That's why our supporters have been pledging in their thousands to vote for candidates that don't support new coal and to organise similar protests across the UK if Ed Miliband gives the green light to new dirty coal in the UK."

Laura Trevelyan, a campaigner for Christian Aid said:

“Ed Miliband has understood the enormous threat that coal poses to our planet, and declared in the summer that ‘the era of unabated coal is over’, but his current proposals would still allow new coal plants to pump 75% of their emissions straight into the atmosphere, making them the dirtiest power stations built in the UK for decades. We need a cast iron guarantee that no new high-emission power plants will be built in the UK – anything else will undermine both our own efforts to cut emissions and our chances of getting a meaningful international agreement at the Copenhagen summit in December.”

Leila Deen, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said:

“We’ve had thousands of people pledging to take action if the government gives its consent to a new coal plant at Kingsnorth, including over a thousand who’ve pledged to come and take peaceful direct action to stop it being built. This is the popular movement on climate change Ed asked for last year – we’re here to offer our support if he does the right thing and rules out new coal, and to let him know that we’re ready and willing to stand in his way if he caves in to pressure from the coal industry.”