The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
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.
The context was that the UK “Climate Camp” had been staggering on with diminishing returns since 2007 (it began in 2006). And eventually someone put the poor beast out of its misery because they were all burned out.
What we learn is that so-called grassroots “organisations” have a real problem with sustaining themselves (Theseus’ ship and all that) because the new planks are thick as two short planks and not particularly radical; you get an influx of the careerist NGO types (as whined about in the 2008 letter at Kingsnorth, but I digress).
What happened next NVDA against power sources continued with Reclaim the Power. And then, in 2018, along came Extinction Rebellion, and we will know how that ended.
On this day, 26 August 2006, after many months of planning the first “Camp for Climate Action” begins, near Drax Power Station, in Yorkshire.
However, we now know that the police let it happen as a “wave through”. Given how many undercovers there were (just the ones we know about!) they could have stopped this if they’d wanted to. They didn’t, because they didn’t want to. Too many opportunities to track who got involved. A honey pot. And here we are.
[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 380.6 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]
Why this matters.
We mustn’t forget previous resistance, or what happened to it. Hell, we might even learn something from it, and not make exactly the same mistakes, over and over again.
What happened next?
Climate Camp kept having annual camps for a few years, and then imploded.
Climate camps happened in other countries, for a whiile.
On this day, August 4, 2008, the forces of law and order provided law. And order. Forcefully.
At the Third Climate Camp
“Police used pepper spray on the crowd at the Climate Camp 2008. It was around 6am Monday 4th August and campers had been woken to the alarm of ‘cops on site’. They were trying to seize vehicles that campers had parked at a top gate of the camp. It was denied later the same day by Sir Ian Blair that any pepper spray would have been used, but this footage clearly shows its unnecessary use.
This was the same Climate Camp where the Met put it about that police had suffered injuries and been hospitalised. A Labour Minister said 70 police had been injured.
The right wing media picked this up (of course) and ran stories about crazed violent eco-anarchists.
But guess what, it turned out that NONE OF THIS WAS TRUE.
The Liberal Democrats put in a Freedom of Information Act request. The answer
“showed that no officers in the £5.9m police operation at Kingsnorth power station in Kent during August had been injured by protesters. Instead, police records showed that their medical unit had dealt mostly with toothache, diarrhoea, cut fingers and “possible bee stings”.
Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister, told MPs at Commons question time yesterday [December 15]: “I was informed that 70 police officers were hurt and naturally assumed that they had been hurt in direct contact as a result of the protest. That clearly wasn’t the case and I apologise if that caused anybody to be misled.”
On this day the PPM was 384.32 ppm. As of August 2021 it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.
Why this matters.
The media love a good beat-up. And most are in a symbiotic relationship with our lords and masters.
What happened next?
Climate Camp imploded (it wasn’t just down to the undercover cops, btw). Various groups kept the NVDA flame alive. Extinction Rebellion came along in 2018 and learnt absolutely nothing from the history. Nothing. Nada. Nowt.
On June 13 June 2008 climate activists involved in the whole “camp for climate action” thing stopped a train heading to Drax power station in Yorkshire (the site of the first Camp for Climate Action, in August-September 2006).
They shovelled coal off it before the police arrived and arrested them all.
“Twenty nine people were convicted in July following a four-day jury trial at Leeds crown court. Today, at the same court, Judge James Spencer QC, ordered five, who had previous convictions, to do 60 hours unpaid work and three were ordered to pay £1,000 in costs and £500 compensation to Network Rail. The judge said the loss to the company had been almost £37,000. Twenty one members of the group were given conditional discharges for 12 months.”
And in January 2014… those convictions were quashed because the driver for the activists had been… undercover cop Mark Kennedy.
On this day in 2007 perhaps a hundred people attended a climate action gathering in central Edinburgh, Scotland. At that time I was a student in Glasgow, so I travelled over for the event, along with some friends. Rising Tide Scotland coordinated the day, which involved workshops, plenaries, and film screenings.
My memories are hazy and there is very little information about the event that remains online. Nevertheless I can tell you about some recollected snippets from the day, and I can put the event in some context.
The context of Scottish climate activism in 2007
March 2007 was a period of significant concern about climate change in the UK. The 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (physical science basis) was released with stark warnings in February 2007. Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth documentary had made some impact in 2006. Public concern was growing and the UN Kyoto Protocol’s flaws were becoming more obvious.
We had not yet been hit by the global financial crisis which shifted public attention elsewhere (Northern Rock collapsed in September 2007). Nor had we yet been demoralised by the intense failure of the 2009 UN climate talks in Copenhagen (COP15).
The organisers of this gathering, Rising Tide Scotland, were involved in Climate Camp, which promoted actions of civil disobedience at sites of major polluting infrastructure, including Drax coal fired power station (August 2006) and Heathrow airport (August 2007).
Rising Tide Scotland, among others, sought to build climate activism from among the Scottish anti-war and alter-globalisation left that had mobilised against the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and against the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005.
In parallel, electoral strategies by the Scottish Green Party and the Scottish Socialist Party had led to significant representation in the devolved Scottish Parliament in 2003, albeit this ebbed away for the Greens in the May 2007 election and ended disastrously for the Socialists, who had been split by the ongoing Tommy Sheridan debacle.
Memories of the climate action gathering, March 17th 2007
These are hazy and partial, so if others have better recollections, perhaps they could leave a reply in the comments. I remember being excited about the day. There is a desire to learn, engage and connect, which activist groups should always be able to tap into.
The event took place in the premises connected to the Forest Cafe, which was then housed in an amazing, centrally located listed building that was a hub for arts and events, supported by volunteers and not-for-profit initiatives. This lasted until 2011, when the building was sold after the charitable owners went bankrupt. The Forest moved to a much smaller premises in 2012. I arrived early and had a coffee (vegan milk only).
In the workshops, I vaguely remember learning about some things I already knew, and hearing some things that I was not aware of. There were some interactive elements, including a memorable use of a ‘strength line’ in a breakout session. This involved people physically moving closer to one side of a room or another, depending on how much they agreed or disagreed with a proposition for debate. People could move during the debate, so you could see how it was going. One of the discussions was about technology, and at that time I was pretty sceptical about technological solutions, so I raised my hand to speak. I said something about technology getting us into this climate change problem and therefore not expecting technology to get us out of it, and found to my surprise that more people had moved away from my favoured position and towards the opposite!
I remember another workshop introducing people to non-violent direct action (NVDA), led by someone who was advocating this approach. For some reason – probably because I was learning analytical philosophy in my first year of university – I decided to quibble with the speaker in the Q&A about whether destruction of property could be considered violent. I think he had in mind destruction of polluting corporate infrastructure, and I had in mind personal property, so we ended up speaking at cross-purposes.
Aside from that, I remember seeing some familiar faces, and lots of unfamiliar faces. To my surprise, one of my philosophy lecturers, Prof Alan Carter, a specialist in environmental ethics, spoke with the microphone from among the rows in one of the gatherings. I suppose this confirmed to me that I was somehow in the right place, even if I was not yet much good at debating. It’s just very disappointing that the climate crisis has become so much worse since then.
