It is heartening to discover the campaign for direct action against the root causes of climate change gathering new and noteworthy supporters before our very eyes. Gordon Clark recently cited the remarks of ex-presidential candidate and high-profile campaigner on climate change Al Gore, and of prominent NASA climatologist James Hansen, in support of such campaigns:

In his recent global warming op-ed in the New York Times (“The Big Melt,” August 16, 2007), Nicholas Kristof reported on a conversation with Al Gore in which the former Vice-President said: “I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers, and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.” His comment was a reaction to the ever-quickening pace of polar ice meltoff, with all its catastrophic implications, and the huge role played by coal-fired power plants in advancing our demise through global warming.

Gore's comment was also strikingly similar to a recent quote from Dr. James Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA: “It seems to me that young people, especially, should be doing whatever is necessary to block construction of dirty (no CCS) coal-fired power plants.”

Gore presumably failed to notice last year’s action against Drax power station in Yorkshire (the largest coal-burning power plant in the UK) - but perhaps he can be forgiven that oversight. Clark is also, of course, quite right to point out that the onus falls not only on “young people” to take direct action - even if the most common stereotypes would seem to suggest otherwise.

The case for concern about coal in particular was powerfully made by John Harris in the Guardian this week. Terrifyingly, Harris notes,

The recent energy white paper … talks not only about securing “the long-term future of coal-fired power generation”, but the imperative “to optimise the use of our coal reserves”.

This is in the context of so-far unproven “carbon capture and storage” systems which, “[e]ven on the most optimistic projections, … won’t become viable on any convincing scale until well after 2030”.

Fortunately the movement for action on climate change within the UK, which has received such a shot in the arm after this year’s Camp for Climate Action, continues unabated - at least if this encouraging press release, courtesy of the Media Lens editors, is anything to go by:

POP UP CLIMATE CAMP AT FLOOD SUMMIT

3 September 2007
For immediate release

Activists from the Camp for Climate Action have set up camp this morning
outside the "Flood Summit" which is being held near Finningley Airport
near Doncaster. Using pop up tents, and displaying banners proclaiming
"Flying Costs the Earth", they will be leafleting delegates and inviting
them to attend workshops highlighting the links between aviation growth
and climate change.

Hosted by Yorkshire Forward, the summit is being billed as a chance "to
learn lessons from the floods" and it will be attended by John Hutton MP,
Secretary of State for the Department of Business, Enterprise and
Regulatory Reform and Steven Timms MP, Minister for Competitiveness. The
campers' message is that the summit is missing the point: it concentrates
solely on emergency response, rather than the policy changes needed to
prevent climate change spiralling out of control, with devastating
consequences for regions like Yorkshire.

Camp participant Rachel Goodweather said: "Climate change is real, it is
happening now and Yorkshire is in the front line. There is still a small
window of opportunity to prevent runaway feedback effects taking hold, but
the business-as-usual agenda of the government and Yorkshire Forward will
slam that window shut. Their Northern Way growth strategy prioritises
aviation and 25 million pounds of tax payers' money has been pumped into
Finningly airport. This is environmental lunacy."

"Plans to treble air passengers are incompatible with the scale of CO2
emissions reductions required to avert disaster. Emissions from aircraft
already account for nearly 20% of the UK's total contribution to global
warming. If emissions from other sectors meet their reduction targets
while aviation continues to grow, aviation emissions will use up 100% of
our national carbon budget sometime around 2030."

"The lessons from the Yorkshire flooding are clear - emissions from
aviation must be included in the climate bill and tax breaks and public
subsidies given to the airport industries must cease. Public money should
not be spent on hot air. It should be wisely invested in saving Planet
Earth."

ENDS

Contacts: 07847 815 926 (to speak to activists at the site) or 07828 632
136 (office)

Which brings me to my last article of topical commentary - this one by Alex Callinicos, an SWP stalwart and currently professor at King’s College London, who asks why “only” two thousand people turned up at the Heathrow Climate Camp. He adduces a couple of reasons: firstly, that “the camp organisers’ emphasis on specialised forms of direct action for which people had to be trained in advance must have helped keep the numbers down”; secondly, that because of the general emphasis on lifestyle, green consumerism and so on in the media, “[t]he idea that collective political action is essential to addressing climate change doesn’t yet seem relevant to many people”.

Callinicos’ proposed solution is far from expansive, but worth considering nonetheless. He writes:

“This will change as people develop greater confidence in their ability to change the world. Here numbers are important. Mass marches, dismissed by [Plane Stupid activist Joss] Garman as “boring and disempowering”, can give a sense of collective power …”

This is very much a value judgment, of course, but it occurs to me that one’s impression of empowerment probably differs according to whether you are on the Central Committee of one of the key groups organising the marches (as Callinicos, a member of the Central Committee of the SWP, has been with regard to the anti-war marches), or whether you are just another face in the crowd. Personally, I don't share Callinicos's optimistic view of such demonstrations. These marches do have a part to play, and a very significant one, in attracting and expressing mass support. But they are often pretty tedious, and very far from fostering a genuine sense of empowerment. The sense of empowerment generated by the Camp for Climate Action’s emphasis on collective decision-making, mass participation and autonomous direct action, on the other hand, was huge. I also share with many others the view that, powerful though the 2003 anti-war march was, its failure in preventing British participation in the invasion of Iraq owed a lot to the failure subsequently to capitalise on the mass support with an organised campaign of civil disobedience - a campaign which could have succeeded in raising the political costs for the government immeasurably. The Iraqi people, I'm afraid to say, have paid dearly for that failure on our part.

In any case, perhaps the most important point to raise is that this is obviously far from a case of “either/or” - and if different actions can be used to serve different functions in our campaign efforts, so much the better. International rallies for action on climate change, as it happens, are planned for the 8 December this year - definitely a date, dear reader, to make a note of.