SYDNEY (AFP) — Environmental activists targeting an Asia-Pacific summit meeting broke into an Australian power station Monday and chained themselves to a conveyor belt, a company spokesman said.
The Loy Yang power station in the south-eastern state of Victoria activated emergency procedures and reduced power output after four demonstrators locked themselves onto the coal-carrying belt, the spokesman said.
Loy Yang Power owns and operates a 2,000 megawatt station and an adjoining coal mine and supplies about 30 percent of Victoria's electricity demand.
A spokeswoman for the activists, Michaela Stubbs, said the protest was one of several planned actions targeting the fossil fuel industry across Australia Monday.
The demonstrations were designed to send a message to the 21 leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum meeting in Sydney this week, she told national radio.
"We're already seeing the effects of climate change and it's our generation and future generations that are going to be dealing with the long-term consequences of climate change," she said.
"We need to see real action now. Their non-committal, aspirational targets are completely inadequate to stop dangerous climate change."
Climate change is on the agenda for the summit, but host Prime Minister John Howard has drawn criticism after revealing that no attempt will be made to set binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases.
Instead, APEC will likely agree on a "long-term aspirational global emissions reduction goal" to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012.
APEC includes the world's two biggest polluters, the United States and China, while Australia is a major exporter of coal, one of the fossil fuels blamed for global warming.
