Nineteen years ago, on this day, August 31st, 2006 the first “Camp for Climate Action” has a day of “non-violent direct action” at Draw Power Station.
Day of action
On 31 August 2006, up to 600 people attended a protest called Reclaim Power converging on Drax and attempted to shut it down. There was a ‘kids march’ to Drax Power Station, with a giant ostrich puppet, made by The Mischief Makers. Two protesters climbed a lighting pylon at the edge of the Drax site and four others broke through the fence.[22] Thirty-eight protesters were arrested. The police reported that work at the power plant was not disrupted.[23]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_for_Climate_Action#Drax_2006
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 382ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that there had been previous efforts to do direct action on climate change (Rising Tide) but the issue wasn’t yet “salient” enough among environmentalists to get things moving. At the G8 protests in Gleneagles in July 2005, dissatisfied environmentalists had proposed “A Camp for Climate Action.” Its first public meeting had been in Manchester in January 2006.
The specific context was that there were enough people who could tell that there was trouble ahead. But they/we lacked basic anthropological/sociological/whateverical insights into what movement building actually WAS. Oh well, all too late now, and was probably too late then.
What I think we can learn from this – is that good intentions are really really not enough. But nothing was ever going to be enough, frankly. The inevitability was written in decades earlier – this is all just wriggling on the hook.
What happened next – “Camp for Climate Action” which had begun because people were fed up with summit-hopping had, inevitably, within three years, degenerated into (checks notes) summit-hopping. And bewildered, they gave up the ghost in 2011. There was then “Reclaim Power” before XR came along and… oh, one loses the will to live, you know?
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
August 31, 1998 – Green dollar growing on trees?
August 31, 1992 – “Community Energy Audit” in Canberra
August 31, 2005 – “Stop Climate Chaos” launched
August 31, 2011 – anti-carbon tax protesters call Anthony Albanese a “maggot”