Climate activists change course

There will be no Camp for Climate Action this year, and leading activists say this is in recognition of the world’s changing economic and political landscape.

After a lengthy meeting of camp activists, a consensus was reached and a statement issued which says:

“The near-collapse of the financial system; droughts in the Amazon, floods in Pakistan; a new government in the UK; a violent programme of unprecedented cuts; food prices rising and real incomes eroding; revolutions across the Middle East… This is all very different from 2005 when the Camp for Climate Action first met to spark radical action on the greatest threat to humanity, climate change.”

Climate Camp mobilisations, as well as the protests by students last year, have shown that there is nothing passive or deferential about young people in Britain. Their actions have put the trade union leaders to shame, exposing them as weak-kneed in the face of injustice.

Visiting the camp over the years, you could chart the deepening of people’s understanding of the source of the climate crisis. Year by year, people moved away from the idea that ordinary human beings and their consumerism are to blame, to a recognition that it is the capitalist economic system of production itself that is the root of the problem.

As the Camp’s statement says: “As the financial crisis unfolded we moved to directly targeting the root cause of airport expansion and coal-fired power stations: our economic system.” The 2009 camp was the high point, with a huge sign at the entrance on London’s Blackheath stating “Capitalism IS crisis”.

But at Blackheath, the question arose – can we overthrow the corporations DIRECTLY by targeting them with protests; or can we only create change that is truly transformative by bringing down the governments and STATES which maintain their rule of the transnationals that have gone about destroying the planet’s eco-systems?

Climate Camp answered that question with more of the same, culminating with the occupation of the RBS bank’s headquarters in Edinburgh. This protest simply did not rise to the political challenge people in Britain were now facing, with the election of a Coalition government hell-bent on imposing the cost of the crisis on the mass of ordinary people.

This is a government that, far from curbing the role of the corporations in response to the climate crisis, is extending their reach. Ministers took part in the Cancun conference’s decision to abandon any attempts to sign a replacement treaty for Kyoto. Privatisation and cost-cutting will drive down standards in the name of profit.

The Climate Camp’s statement continues: “This is a unique opportunity to work together with others to create a more co-ordinated, dynamic and stronger movement against climate change and its root causes. Now is a chance to team up with the anti-cuts and anti-austerity movements and play a crucial role in the revolutionary times ahead. Anything but co-ordinated action is doomed to fail.”

The revolutionary times are, in fact, here and now. The new generation that is leading the revolutionary upsurge in North Africa and the Middle East are driven by the impact of the global crisis, including climate change that has contributed to soaring food prices.

Climate campaigners championed People’s Assemblies during the protests at Copenhagen in 2009 . Hopefully, climate camp activists will now join the movement to establish a network of People’s Assemblies throughout Britain. Then we will not only challenge the power of the state to impose cuts, and the corporations that are wrecking the eco-system, but actually go on to build a sustainable alternative to capitalism’s destructive growth addiction.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Capitalism IS crisis

The sign over the entrance to the Climate Camp at Blackheath overlooking the City of London, was spot on: “Capitalism IS Crisis”. Broadening out climate change from a single issue, to seeing it as a part of the interconnected crisis that pervades every aspect of human economic and social life today, is a big step forward. And by the same token, to ask for, or expect, solutions to climate change within the existing structures is to call down misery on the heads of millions.

A report just published by the Grantham Institute for the study of Climate Change at Imperial College, London, shows that the cost of adapting to the impacts of climate change has been consistently underestimated by the United Nations.

The report warns that the real costs are likely to be two-three times greater than estimates made by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). And if the full range of impacts on human activities is considered, the cost would be even more. For example, the UNFCCC left out energy, manufacturing, retailing, mining, tourism and ecosystems.Where is the funding for adaptation to come from? Who will be protected? In Britain, the public finances are shot to pieces and Darling will not even limit bonuses in banks the public owns. Government bonds are not selling and next year will bring a devastating round of public service cuts.

In the US, it is estimated that as a result of the recession, one in five families do not earn enough to feed themselves. Repossessions will add 1.5 million more to the soaring homeless total in the next two years. A number of state governments are facing bankruptcy and are slashing their budgets. In the EU, Italy and Germany are back-peddling on the existing carbon trading scheme and everywhere there is a desperate desire on the part of governments to shore up business-as-usual at any cost. Throughout the world, the burden of the economic crisis is being imposed on the poorest, and it will be no different with the impacts of climate change.

We must not get hung up on single issues, such as coal-fired power stations, but rather recognise the world in the same way the capitalist class does – as a series of interconnected structures bent on nothing more productive or useful than the generation of profit from private property. The Climate Justice campaign, to which Climate Camp is affiliated, says it is time to “change the system, not the climate”. They plan to mobilise to take over the conference hall at the Copenhagen climate summit, for one day. Well, it’s a start. But the knotty problem is how do we remove the decision-making power of capitalism for good?

The AWTW workshop at Climate Camp focused on this – and we agreed that we would open up a forum for debate about how it can be done. One idea we discussed was the need for a democratic Convention of the People (working title!). It would not seek to co-ordinate protests or strikes – activists can do that quite effectively themselves – but instead focus on becoming a rapidly-developing representative body, with the perspective of replacing the existing structures of ownership and power.

It could bring together climate campaigners, trade unionists, miners, migrants, power workers, unemployed people, public sector and any other workers in a representative body for mutual defence and development of agreed alternatives in economy, energy, ownership and political power. Its ultimate goal would be to challenge the legitimacy of the current political system, and achieve a transfer of power to the people in a regenerated popular democracy.

Penny Cole
Environment Editor

All out for the Climate Camp!

Climate Camp 2009 will “swoop” on a site near the hated City of London, on August 26 and the camp’s website sets out 10 good reasons for choosing this location.

One reason is that there are more branches and subsidiaries of international banks in London than in any other city in the world. “The Royal Bank of Scotland, Britain’s high street bank most closely associated with financing fossil fuel projects, has received billions of pounds of public money and is now more than 70% owned by the UK government.

“Yet despite this research shows that, since October 2008, RBS has financed loans to companies involved in the oil, coal and gas industry worth almost £10 billion. And yet renewable energy projects, like the Isle of Wight wind turbine blade factory, are being abandoned,” says Climate Camp 2009.

Top of the list for being in the City, however, is the fact that “London is currently the natural habitat of the transnational corporation, one of today’s most powerful causes of social and ecological injustice. Unaccountable, undemocratic and causing catastrophic climate change, these creatures need to driven into extinction.”

How to achieve this excellent goal will be the focus of the workshop that A World to Win is hosting on Saturday, August 29

The title of our workshop is “Composting Capitalism”, and we will argue that it is the capitalist state that stands between us and a sustainable future for humanity and other species and eco-systems.

The transnational corporations do not maintain their rule over us directly. For that they rely on the state - parliament, local government, education, the police, the army and of course, the monarchy. This network of control maintains the rights of private property and the right of the transnationals to exploit the planet for the extraction of profit.

Whether we like it or not, we can’t ignore the state, jump over it, or opt out of it. And experience shows that it is impossible to reform it, either. We must not rely on these structures to act to halt climate change.

We cannot start to tackle the devastation wrought by the capitalist drive for profit until we liberate the resources, talents and technologies created by humanity as a whole from their power and control.

We need to overcome what Marx called the “metabolic rift” that capitalism has imposed between humans and nature. Only in this way can we defend our own society, other species and eco-systems.

Therefore, creating a new democratic, transitional state is the key to liberating nature from corporate pillaging. We need to start now by organising local, regional and national Conventions that bring together people whose lives and livelihoods are being destroyed by the capitalist crisis.

As more and more people reject parliamentary politics and parties and start looking for new democratic solutions, we have a window of opportunity. We should not hesitate to establish our own parallel structures as test beds for democracy.

Direct actions along these lines would amount to a sustained challenge for power.

We look forward to seeing you at Climate Camp, and hearing your views!

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Production, jobs and climate change: one story

Drax power station in Yorkshire, the UK’s largest single CO2 emitter and the site of the first-ever climate camp and numerous actions since, this week announced a fall in profits for the first quarter of 2009, due to a collapse in demand caused by the recession.

The power generator’s profits for the first quarter of 2009 were £34m against £150m in the same quarter last year. Demand overall for its electricity was down 6.1%, and most significantly, demand from industry was down 8.2%. Long closures and shorter working at car factories and companies making vehicle parts, was the major factor.

As climate campaigners in Scotland yesterday put out of action a conveyor belt that takes 100,000 tonnes of open cast coal from Glentaggart to power stations like Drax, this profit collapse is something worth thinking about.

It is an excellent example of how a reduction in production of goods, such as vehicles, reduces the need for power. It underlines that only a global transformation in the quantity, durability and materials content of the goods human society produces to meet its needs, can make an immediate reduction in global emissions of greenhouse gases.

However, as long as these reductions take place within the social context of capitalist enterprise, the impact of a cut in production is devastating for those workers who rely on these industries for a living.

Over the same period that Drax experienced its slump in demand, the number of people in work in the UK fell by 271,000, the biggest quarterly drop since comparable records began in 1971. Young people have been particularly hard hit, with the unemployment rate in the 18-24 age group reaching 16.6%, its highest point since 1993. The highest rate of unemployment is in the West Midlands, the UK’s manufacturing heartland, where 9.3% of people are now out of work.

However, new car sales rose this month, as a result of the government’s scrappage scheme. A total of 157,149 new cars were registered in July - an increase of 2.4% on the July 2008 figure, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

The government itself admits while the scheme MAY deliver a small reduction in emissions as a result of people buying more fuel efficient cars , the real purpose was to boost the car industry.

And it won’t reduce emissions. As a report from the Campaign for Integrated Transport explains: “Technical improvement in engine efficiency is vital, but it cannot meet the [government’s climate change] targets alone, not least because the fuel saving from more efficient vehicles will of itself lead to an offsetting increase in travel. It needs to be said quite simply that transport will not effectively contribute to carbon reduction unless the growth trends in private car use and air travel are changed....”

The reality is that we cannot unpick the economic devastation that capitalism is wreaking on people’s lives and livelihoods from its destruction of environment and eco-systems. They are an interconnected whole and need to be tackled in that way.

Workers who occupied the Vestas wind turbine plant in the Isle of Wight and car workers in South Korea who took over their plant and fought pitched battles to defend jobs, have everything in common though the products they make couldn’t be more different.

Both struggles raise the central issue of who owns and controls production. While these resources remain in the hands of shareholders who demand year-on-year profit increases, there are no real prospects of tackling climate change or the misery of mass unemployment.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Beware police 'troublemakers'

Two reports published today provide evidence of the deepening assault on human rights in Britain. Read alongside Metropolitan Police plans to deal with anti-G20 protesters in London on April 1, they lift the lid on the state’s preparation for major social unrest.

The Database State published by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust pulls no punches. The report report assesses 46 databases across major government departments, and finds that:

 A quarter of public-sector databases reviewed are almost certainly illegal under human rights or data protection law
 Fewer than 15% of the public databases assessed are effective, proportionate and necessary, with a proper legal basis for any privacy intrusions
 In Britain, data is increasingly centralised, and shared between health and social services, the police, schools, local government and the taxman, whereas in other countries it is held locally
 Sharing can harm the vulnerable, not least by leading to discrimination and stigmatisation
 The UK public sector spends over £16 billion a year on IT. Over £100 billion in spending is planned or the next five years. Yet only about 30% of government IT projects meet their claimed objectives.

Among those rejected as unlawful is the National DNA Database, which holds DNA profiles for approximately 4 million individuals, over half a million of whom have not been convicted, reprimanded, given a final warning or cautioned, and have no proceedings pending against them. It includes more than 39,000 children.

The authors assert that the National Identity Register, which will store biographical information, biometric data and administrative data linked to the use of an ID card, will also break the law. So too will ContactPoint, the new national index of every child in England.

Two more databases criticised are a communications database introduced as part of the Interception Modernisation Programme which will hold everyone’s communication traffic data such as itemised phone bills, email headers and mobile phone location history; and the Prüm Framework, which allows law enforcement information to be shared between EU Member States. The report recommends that these are scrapped. Not much chance of that happening, unfortunately.

Also published today is the Parliamentary joint committee on human rights report into policing protests. The report is critical of the use of anti-terror laws to stop and search activists at events like the climate camp in Kent last summer and notes the swamping of protests by large numbers of police.

"Protesters and journalists reported a number of specific incidents where they felt intimidated by the police, as well as a more general sense that the policing of protest had become more heavy-handed," the report says. As to the police, when asked whether it was appropriate to use counter-terrorism powers against protestors, one senior officer replied that “there are occasions when we do need to use our counter-terrorism powers: I would say that that is why we have them”. There’s no arguing with that kind of logic.

More intimidation is clearly on the way, whatever the MPs and Peers who drew up the report say. The Met has let it be known that it will deploy thousands of police, including armed officers and riot police, in London next week when protests are planned to coincide with the G20 economic summit. Leaking the plans is aimed at putting people off taking part. The police want to discredit protesters and activists, and no doubt have agents working inside the protest to cause trouble. You don’t have to look further than Scotland Yard to identify who the real “troublemakers” are.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

Stop the real climate criminals

How are ordinary people to make their voice heard on climate change in a country where their vote counts for nothing, their MPs are powerless and cowed (with a few honourable exceptions) and peaceful protest is being outlawed?

This is a valid question to ask as we hear more this week about the police operation against the Climate Camp held last year in Kent. The camp highlighted the government’s reckless plan to allow more coal-fired power stations to be built at Kingsnorth power station.

Using freedom of information rules, the Liberal Democrats have obtained a list of the items confiscated by police in the course of their £5.7m operation. Balloons, disabled ramps, coloured crayons, a clown’s outfit, fire safety equipment, a marquee, camping equipment, an elderly person’s walking stick – all of these were seized as the police repeatedly searched everyone attending the camp.

The reality this highlights, is that anyone who opposes the government’s failure to act on climate change – indeed to adopt policies that will increase emissions – is now subject to an arbitrary police force that acts pre-emptively against them.

Sarah Perkins, one of Climate Camp’s lawyers, said: “It certainly was disproportionate policing and a real sea change in the way police are using their powers. Absolutely everyone was searched, many people several times over, and then police raided the camp and searched yet again.” Police also mounted a classic “psyops” operation developed by the military, driving round the camp in the middle of the night and using a helicopter to disrupt sleep patterns.

Kent's assistant chief constable (or should that be General?) Allyn Thomas was unabashed. “While the majority of people were law abiding,” he said, “it was clear from the first day of the camp setting up that a number of people were intent on causing trouble.” How was it clear? Where is the evidence? But then all becomes clear: “By seizing items which could be used to commit a crime, we were able to ensure criminal acts were not carried out … We hope that anyone who attends a similar event in future accepts their responsibility to do so lawfully and in a legal manner.”

So rather than policing actual crime based on evidence they now police the possibility of crime based on no evidence - they have become the Thought Police. Now Scotland Yard has established the Confidential Intelligence Unit to spy on climate activists and workers involved in strikes. Taking over the role played by MI5 in the 1970s and 1980s, the unit will send spies and agents to infiltrate groups and strikers opposed to the government’s policies.

We have been warned. Alongside the protests and direct actions, we must urgently start to consider the nature of political representation in Britain, the definition of crime, and the need for a transformation in how decisions are taken.

There is plenty of actual evidence about the impact of climate change (on policemen and their families too). Imminent catastrophic events will be discussed when scientists hold an emergency meeting this month in Copenhagen. They will explain how global warming is speeding up, and ask governments to take urgent action.

We the people, are entitled to ask ourselves what can we do to prevent the state from using its powers to permit them to continue on their criminal course of inaction, and “business as usual”. The only solution must be to replace the secret state with one that is open, transparent and subject to the will of the people.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Composting the state

The Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow brought activists, local communities and others opposed to the building of a new runway at the airport, together in an inspiring, united way. The political support of local MP John McDonnell was also important, especially in dealing with the state. This enclave of democracy and self-organisation surrounded by surveillance cameras and massive searchlights, police horses and vans was a shining example of self-sacrifice and utopianism. The camp was well prepared and organised and did not allow itself to be derailed by innumerable provocations from police and media. An extremely high level of understanding about the crisis was self-evident, with many scientists and students of ecology present.

A united front of a different kind confronted the camp – a combination of the New Labour government, the global corporate owners of the airport and the forces of the state. These forces remain unmoved by the protest. The government is not much concerned about the communities who are under the flight path of the proposed new runway. Expansion of the airport is deemed an economic necessity – and that’s what counts for this government. Ferrovial, the construction giant that owns the privatised British Airports Authority, worked closely with thousands of police (and police spies) to blockade the climate camp and protect their property.

Which brings us to the nub of the fight against climate chaos – how can we tackle the source of global warming if we are denied access to the means to do so? There is no doubt that the science, technology and organisational skills exist that, if deployed in a positive way, could open the way to a sustainable future. But at present these resources remain in the hands of the global corporations like Ferrovial and are deployed primarily in the interests of profit. Endorsing this set-up are governments like New Labour, who insist that carbon emission reduction policies do not interfere with the market economy and, as a consequence, make no impact. Finally, the institutions of the state like the police, using a wide range of powers including anti-terror laws, will use force to protect private property and their political masters.

Direct action serves to highlight some of these problems but because it is restricted to a series of short-term protests leaves unanswered the strategic challenge. This revolves around the pressing need to transform the economy from one run along capitalist lines to a system that is founded on a co-operative, not-for-profit basis offering maximum protection to eco-systems. It is a mistake to think you can achieve these aims without addressing the issue of the state and state power. Capitalism rules through the state and especially since globalisation, the state is pretty much immune to pressure and protest.

To compost capitalism, to recycle corporate wealth, resources, technology, science and skills, we have to compost the state as well. The movement against climate chaos, and other groups fighting for a sustainable, non-capitalist future, have to direct their energies towards transforming the state. In place of the fraud of the parliamentary system, we should campaign for forms of direct democracy at local, regional and national level. We should extend the principles of democracy beyond the vote to include self-management and control of workplaces and public bodies. This would mean democratic ownership and control of all the principal economic, financial and technology resources by communities, producers and consumers. Do this and we really will have composted capitalism.


Paul Feldman, communications editor