Tonight’s Campaign Against Climate Change (CACC) rally in London filled the ground floor of Friends Meeting House in Euston. That’s about six hundred people.
The mercifully small platform comprised CACC’s Phil Thornhill, John from Greenpeace, Sophie from the Heathrow protests and George Monbiot whose speech you can download here as an MP3.
It was a nicely democratic format. Following the platform three or four rounds of speakers were taken from the floor. They all expressed different ideas and even disagreed with each other. Only the man who spoke in favour of nuclear power got heckled.
There are big chunks of the introductions I am not qualified to comment on. Each time I change a light bulb and it doesn’t explode I’m pleasantly surprised. So when speakers start talking about micro generation of electricity as opposed to filling 5% of the Sahara with solar reflectors the only option is to nod sagely.
A comrade from SR who attended last year’s rally felt that this year’s was substantially to the left. Phil left the meeting in no doubt as to the likely human cost of climate change. Sophie began by saying that governments had got us into this mess and are now offering only techno-fixes when what’s needed is social movements which are active the whole year round to force change. She made the point that people in the richer nations have the freedom to organise and protest without risking getting shot because they stand up to the oil companies. For her one part of the solution is to create autonomous, sustainable communities which will support each other in times of need. As an example she suggested that we could all go to Hull to help out the next time there are floods.
The Heathrow camp has had an international impact. Next year there will be four similar camps in north America plus, Australia, Holland and some other places I didn’t write down. April 1st 2008 will be the first Fossil Fools Day.
If you want to find out what George Monbiot had to say you can listen to it yourself. These are the points that stood out for me.
- Offered a choice between meeting Elizabeth Windsor at Buckingham Palace and addressing the meeting he choose mass action.
- He referred to a conversation with a Labour minister who said that while he understood that the science required a 60%+ cut in carbon emissions the CBI would not accept it so Labour wouldn’t do it.
- In a reply to a question from the floor he said that the source of the climate problem is capitalism and its need for constant growth. It may have been wishful thinking on my part but he almost began to develop the idea of transitional demands within capitalism which would lead to its overthrow.
And here was the weakness in the discussion. There were wholly expected assertions about the power of individual action and discussions about this technological solution or the other. The thing that was missing was a sense of the power or organisation as opposed to individual action and neither the working class not its organisations were mentioned once. Though I did try to get in on the discussion.
Dave Packer adds:
John from Greenpeace began by pointed out the main problem was not Bali, Indonesia or China, but here at home on our doorstep; down the road was the Shell headquarters, but also Unilever and Nestles, etc. These and other multinational companies were driving the unsustainable production and extraction industries in the ndeveloping world. It was the Western multinationals demand for cheap commodities that was driving unsustainable cheap labour production in China.
Some figures: 85% of Walmart non-food production is manufactured in China.
China is second to the USA for carbon emissions, but Indonesia is third. This is because of environmental destruction – deforestation (mostly burning), replaced with palm oil plantations for a range of uses in the world market from cooking oil to bio-fuels. Unilever and Nestles among others are heavily involved. Brazil is the fourth largest emitter of Co2 for the same reasons. Bio-fuels threaten agricultural land in the developing world and therefore food production.
Most of the speakers emphasised the social dimension to climate change – Sophie from the Drax and Heathrow climate camps said that, ‘social justice and environmental justice are inextricably linked.’ She emphasised individual responsibility and the need to participate in direct action, which linked up with local people. She raised the interesting idea for a day of action on April Fools day, renamed Fossil Fools Day. Criticism was made of the myths of clean coal and other techno fixes and the solution of carbon trading, which has, ‘turned the atmosphere into a commodity’.
Phil Thornhill of the CACC made one of the best and most radical and anti-capitalist speeches I have heard him make, although maybe it was controversial among some in the audience. He began by emphasising the horrors of starvation and human calamity that will be the harvest of rapid climate change. He rejected any passivity and dismay when confronted by cynical inaction by governments and business. He also controversially criticised what he called a new, ‘the cult of the carbon footprint’, or ‘carbon reduction introspection’ – an emphasis on individual solutions, which was now becoming a profitable industry, but did not begin to solve the problem confronting humanity. He did say however, that life style changes were important, if only to maintain personal credibility, his emphasis however was on government action nationally and internationally.
George Monbiot (see Liam’s blog – this is a brief summary) argued that the changing science made the demands in his book Heat out of date: there he argued that to keep global warming below 2% a cut in Co2 emissions by 60% was necessary. The new science, he argued, now shows we need a rapid reduction of not 60%, but a per capita cut of 85 or 90%. His old figures – even more the government’s inadequate target (four years out of date) – will result in a catastrophic warming of 4%. Better still would be a cut in global carbon emissions of 100%.
Unfortunately the recent AGM of CACC held in Oxford called for a reduction of 80% by 2050 and rejected an amendment proposed by Jane Kelly for the demand on the December demonstration of a 90% cut by 2030, which was described by Jonathon Neale of the SWP as too radical compared to that raised by others in the alliance building the December demonstration. ‘We do not want to be seen as the left wing of the climate change movement,’ he said. Jane’s resolution was marginally defeated with the help of the SWP vote.
Mombiot come out unequivocally for carbon rationing (developed in his book), which he argues is the only fair way to allocate energy in line with the science – ordinary people will not accept hardships if they believe it is only they who are paying for the crisis. He also argued in reply to a question that the solution can’t just be energy efficiency (insulation of the housing stock, etc.) and that it is politically impossible to cut consumption by 100% or even 80%. So he argued that rationing/capping must be combined with a strategy to de-carbonise our energy system. The basis of this energy must be electricity generated through ‘ambient energy’- wind farms in the oceans, solar farms in the Sahara desert, and hydroelectric power, connected to an international grid constructed with high voltage transmission cables (energy efficient direct current (DC) not alternate current (AC) cables). This was both plausible given present technologies and, compared to the cost of the Iraq war, only modestly expensive (total cost of Iraq war will be more than $14 billion). He also argued that all forms of transport should go electric. He maintained, at some point in the discussion, that we have to show that it is possible to solve the problem and get away from the ‘puritan’ approach that says we must all suffer.
In this lengthy exposition he explicitly criticised the idea prevalent in the environmental movement, including the Green Party and Greenpeace that ‘small is beautiful’. He gave some examples of how local solutions would not work because the main centres of population were not located in the right place for ‘ambient energy’- e.g. London does not get enough sun and the wind speed averages only 4mph.
Some questions from the floor asked how under the present system (capitalism), his solutions could be implemented in time to avert disaster. Others suggested that he did not know how the economy works, which is premised on continuous growth, therefore radical systemic change is required to implement his solutions. Others said that there was also a need to reduce consumption.
His answer was that when US capitalism faced a crisis like the Second World War it was able ‘turn the economy round on a dime’, and that General Motors was producing war -planes in sixty days. He agreed that consumption had to be reduced equitably, but also maintained that we have to show people that there is a technological solution in order to facilitate the necessary political change.
In answer to a question about the dominance of neo-liberal capitalist ideology, he replied that the problem was systemic and not just about neo-liberalism. ‘You can’t separate growth from the system’ he said and, ‘what we are fighting for is incompatible with capitalism’. He also accepted the demand that as a first step the National Grid should be re-nationalised. He roundly criticised the Stern Report for its immoral defence of market forces and the profit motif, thus putting a cost on human life.
It was in the context of this discussion that he gave the example of the Copenhagen energy efficient power plant and the British minister who asked his Danish opposite number why such a plant could not be built in Britain. The sharp reply: ‘because it was built by engineers and not by venture capitalists’. In a similar vein, Mombiot asked a government minister why the government targets were so low. The reply: We have known for four years that they are too low, but if we raised them we would fall out with the CBI. The clear conclusion was that government is driven not by the science but by the logic of capitalism.
In the summaries, Sophie and Phil Thornhill, emphasised campaigning priorities, direct action and mass action and the international character of the movement. John somewhat sidestepped the challenge of ‘small is beautiful’ and said that both big and small solutions are necessary. Reiterating that the problem was not getting to Bali but was on our own doorstep.
Liam redux 
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