Campaign against Climate Change

Hi Climate Changers,

I'm hoping that some/one of you can reply to the shockingly depressing letter I've just read in the April edition of The Ecologist Magazine.

[ OK, so I'm not up to speed with my stack of reading. I don't give The Ecologist priority. My reasons are many, including the poor science of some of their articles, for example, about telecommunications signals which they continue to claim cause migraines and so on... But anyway... ]

Here's the letter (which they don't have online, so I've typed out) :-

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LETTERS The Ecologist April 2008

CLIMATE CHAOS

Further to Morgan Phillips' letter (February) about the Climate Change March in London on 8 December 2007 being more like a carnival than a protest, I'd just like to say that you are not alone in experiencing this feeling that there really is nothing to celebrate.

Worse than that, we had actually gone along to help steward the march, but left in disgust after just a couple of hours of appalling disorganisation and lack of communication.

When the organisers are running a car engine for the best part of an hour to power a generator to pump up a plastic balloon to promote their cause you have to wonder if you are really in the right place.

When the prime function of stewards was to hand out leaflets to an all-night party in South London, most of which would be thrown aside to litter the streets in their wake, what hope do the rest of us have ?

When the head steward comes along with a Starbucks coffee, complete with plastic top and then discards the empty cup in the street for somebody else to clean up, you began seriously to worry.

I'm past anger. I'm just very sad if this is the level of commitment to the cause on a very basic level, and if this is what passes as acceptable 'green' behaviiour these days.

Alison Arnold, London

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POINT NUMBER 1 : The Campaign against Climate Change is run on an exceedingly small budget. Although there was a good deal of training for the stewarding of the event, there were not enough funds for radio communications for all involved. We did not have enough people on the day, despite promises of help, and no, nobody got paid for stewarding.

POINT NUMBER 2 : If you can't show commitment to the role you have volunteered for, you should never have turned up in the first place. You just added to the problems by vanishing into the ether. We needed all the helping hands we could get to tidy up the inevitable waste and answer peoples' questions.

POINT NUMBER 3 : Despite all the efforts to organise, shortcuts needed to be made at the last minute due to failed logistics. We could have abandoned the world balloon, but it was important to have this as this is the campaign symbol. Although some people were able to provide drinks and refreshments at the Climate March (all hail the Hare Krishnas), some people had to buy drinks and food from local businesses, including, yes, Starbucks.

POINT NUMBER 4 : We all know that a day marching in Central London is not going to solve Climate Change. This is the reason why we needed to advertise upcoming events to get people along to. The "after-party" was only a small element for what was planned at Synergy, which is not just a nightclub, but a centre for social movements.

POINT NUMBER 5 : The Climate March is only a very small part of what the Campaign against Climate Change do. Our aims include attracting voices of influence, and engaging in dialogue with people who make pulic decisions. Sometimes this can get drowned out by the focus on public protest, but that's not all we do.

See below for more discussion on how effective (or not) we are. Ann Pettifor of Operation Noah accuses the Climate Movement of focussing on "voluntary behaviour change". It's Government policy to pile responsibility on the public, through "Climate Change Communication". The authorities, so far, have only permitted and financed campaigns to engage the public in personal lifestyle change.

We in the Campaign against Climate Change know that action has to go beyond what happens at home, as household emissions are only a third of the problem.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7385615.stm

Page last updated at 13:26 GMT, Tuesday, 6 May 2008 14:26 UK

Green movement forgets its politics

VIEWPOINT
Ann Pettifor

Organisations campaigning on climate change need to learn the lessons of the anti-slavery and anti-apartheid movements, says Ann Pettifor. By focusing on individuals rather than governments, initiatives such as the recent Energy Saving Day are bound to fail in their bid to reduce emissions, she argues.

Could the US civil rights movement be a model for climate campaigners?

Climate change is the issue of the day.

Scientists finally agree on the threat to the planet posed by rising temperatures. Books on the subject proliferate.

Campaigners, like those at Plane Stupid, do amazing things to bring it to public attention.

Big business frets too. The world's giant investment funds join green groups in demanding drastic action.

Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest - How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, writes that "there are over one - maybe even two - million organisations (worldwide) working toward ecological sustainability and social justice".

And yet... and yet... there is no real climate change movement. There is no organised effort leading society towards a legislative framework that would urgently drive down greenhouse gas emissions across the board, and begin to sequester carbon dioxide.

Not in the UK, or in the US, or internationally. The "movement" that Hawken refers to is, he notes, "atomised" and "largely ignored".

Green organisations... fail to highlight the need for the kind of change that can only be brought about by governmental action

Yet in September 2007, a public opinion survey from Yale University (in conjunction with Gallup) found that "nearly half of Americans now believe that global warming is either already having dangerous impacts on people around the world or will in the next 10 years".

The authors noted that this was "a 20-percentage-point increase since 2004", representing "a sea change in public opinion... and a growing sense of urgency".

If there is a "growing sense of urgency", why isn't there a climate change movement in the US?

Low level lighting

The reason is that green organisations focus on individual ("change your lightbulbs") or community ("recycle, reuse, reduce, localise") action.

They fail to highlight the need for the kind of structural change that can only be brought about by governmental action.

Governments helpfully collude in this atomisation and fragmentation of action and reaction.

Throughout history, social movements have focused on the need for government action.

Campaigns against the Iraq invasion failed - should they have tried harder?

The anti-slavery movement sought to change laws that permitted slavery.

The suffragette movement only ensured votes for women once discriminatory laws had been displaced; the anti-apartheid movement was only successful once apartheid laws had been removed.

In the US, the black civil rights movement campaigned from 1947 until the introduction of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act to end discrimination in certain spheres.

Today, as the UK government's hesitancy in dealing with Northern Rock reveals, governmental action is unpopular and out of fashion.

Not just with big business and neo-liberal economists, but also with anarchists and many green campaigners. Minimal government is now ideologically dominant.

The failure of anti-war demonstrations to halt the Iraq war is often cited as evidence of the failure of governments to respond to such popular pressure.

However, as the civil rights movement demonstrated, a successful campaign does not stop at one defeat. It moves forward inexorably over time, in pursuit of its legislative goal.

Fair shares

The population at large instinctively understands that they alone, or even in community, cannot deal with the threat of climate change.

They are acutely aware that while individuals may take action, others may become "freeriders".

Parliaments fiddle while the planet burns, and individuals are pressured to take responsibility

They know a fair legislative framework is required to share the burden of adjusting to climate change equitably between rich and poor.

Burden-sharing has several dimensions; between those who live in Bangladesh and those who live in Zurich, those who drive 4x4s and those who cycle, those who take foreign holidays and those who do not.

In the UK, Ipsos Mori polled public attitudes to climate change in July 2007.

Seventy percent "strongly agreed" or "tended to agree" that "the government should take the lead in combating climate change, even if it means using the law to change people's behaviour".

Green organisations in the UK support the government's very cautious climate change bill by lobbying for a stronger legal framework - but not much stronger.

The call by UK NGOs for 80% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 - now accepted by government - lacks ambition, and underestimates the urgency.

Furthermore, the call for action by 2050 is so distant that the government feels under no pressure.

Switching off

Growing scientific evidence of accelerating greenhouse gas emissions, melting icecaps and the shrinking capacity of "sinks" to absorb emissions means we need bold, urgent action by government to drive down emissions to zero.

Britain's only Christian campaign dedicated exclusively to climate change, Operation Noah, pressures government to take much more radical action - to cut emissions by 90% by 2030, not 2050.

We may not have got it right, but we are trying to pressure government to act urgently, and to mobilise society in the way that Jubilee 2000 mobilised millions of people to cancel third world debt.

In other words, we are pressing for governmental action by a deadline.

To succeed, climate change campaigns first need first to unite - at both national and international levels.

Secondly, they must unite behind a radical goal that requires structural change, regulation and enforcement that will urgently drive down emissions and sequester carbon dioxide.

Thirdly, they need to exercise leadership by mobilising society in a concerted way behind this goal. This will intensify pressure on politicians and governments.

It ain't easy, but it has been done before; witness the Jubilee 2000 global campaign.

As things stand, the movement remains disparate, atomised and marginalised.

This frees politicians to expand airports and increase road capacity.

Parliaments fiddle while the planet burns, and individuals are pressured to take responsibility for global climate change by "switching off at the wall".

And so, inevitably, the Titanic's deck chairs are rearranged - and energy use goes up, rather than down, on Energy Saving Day.

Ann Pettifor is executive director of Advocacy International and campaigns adviser to Operation Noah

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