Climate campers in action against companies
5:25 pm - September 1st 2009
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Activists from Climate Camp held a series of direct action protests today.
One action was targeted at PR company Edelman. PR Week reports:
The agency has been targeted for its work with client EON, which owns the controversial Kingsnorth power station, the planned site of a new coal-fire power station.
The Climate Camp activists said they wanted to ‘expose the naked truth behind Edelman’. Activist Alice Fielding said: ‘Edelman are nothing more than new coal spin doctors, intent on making profit out of EON’s activities at the expense of the global climate.’
Another group targeted the Royal Bank of Scotland on Bishopsgate. Elsewwhere, indigenous Canadian activists protested against the exploration of tar sands by oil companies.
Another action targeted the Shell company headquarters and defaced their logo.
via @AdamBienkov
Bibi van der Zee writes on the Guardian blog:
But what does the last week tell us about Climate Camp? They said that this year, building and education would be the priority. In this they have succeeded. Attendances were at record levels, workshops were all full, everyone I’ve spoken to said that the atmosphere was inspiring and informative. Several of today’s protestors had never really protested before, but after spending a week with like-minded people were more willing to risk their necks (or arrest) in the cause of getting action on Climate Change.
On the downside, the camp has not succeeded in getting people outside the camp talking about climate change, as it has done brilliantly in the past. Once it became clear that there was no huge action planned (not even secretly) the media, largely, lost interest. Small actions like the ones above may be inspirational to the participants, but they are of little use to the wider aim of garnering support and jolting politicians into action; showing politicians that the world is moving on and that they need to move with it.
For that you need to be ambitious, you need to plan and research meticulously; the result can be actions such as Greenpeace’s climbing of the Kingsnorth chimney or Climate Camp’s occupation at Heathrow, which genuinely created a buzz.
A big bang needed for next time perhaps?
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Sunny Hundal is editor of LC. Also: on Twitter, at Pickled Politics and Guardian CIF.
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Reader comments
I said they should have had the camp in St James’s Park.
That might have created a bigger bang.
So was it the confrontation aspect (or ‘direct action’ as it’s called) that was lacking?
They weren’t weren’t up to much it seems from the photos.
The first one reminds me of that film Calender Girls with Helen Mirren and Julie Walters.
But fair play to them anyway as people. It still takes a bit of guts to do even that.
I went twice and wrote on this website on sunday after I came back, that I thought it was all a bit pointless and too worthy. Nice people and enjoyable to be there, but not really my thing.
I never got or read sunday’s Observer until now. But have just seen this article titled ‘The Climate Camp is too self-regarding to be effective’.
And then adds ”Charming though they are, the protesters should spend more time convincing others their arguments are sound”.
Honest, I didn’t read it before. But I think I almost entirely agree with him.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/30/peter-beaumont-climate-camp-protesters
See last paragraph particularly.
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