Tilting at Windmills: The Future of the Climate Change Movement

That the world is headed to disaster is agreed upon by all except the most delusional, yet the question of the hour is precisely “What is to be done?” From Drax to Heathrow to Kingsnorth, the climate camps, while effective at raising awareness of different forms of life that may survive climate change, have proven themselves to be monumentally ineffective at direct action aimed at actually “shutting down” carbon-intensive infrastructure. Luckily, even our dismal failures have a silver lining, for a truly successful direct action on this infrastructure would just imply that hippies don't want people to fly, or perhaps worse, that hippies don't want people to have electricity. As the most recent police raid upon the Kingsnorth camp proves, the territory of the climate camps almost always puts us at a disadvantage. It is just difficult to mount a successful mass-action in a field, isolated in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by police and cameras, with only a few rather obvious targets nearby.

Terrains of struggle come in cycles, and while never the same, the territory is always strangely familiar. The resemblance between the current upswing in momentum and the classical round of anti-globalisation struggles is stunning. The classical anti-globalisation cycle began a decade ago as encampments against a UK-wide road-building programme, a practical goal that had much popular sympathy. These encampments were for the most part semi-permanent and did manage to de-rail the road-building programme. Yet the true enemy was not the roads we ride upon, but the forces of capitalism that ride upon us. By moving the primary focus of the movement into the city of London itself at the “Carnival Against Capitalism” on June 18th 1999, a huge victory was achieved, and a host of global days of action took off – Seattle, Prague, Quebec, Genoa – that in parallel with rising global social movements, managed to help completely derail the “free trade” programme – as the total failure of the Doha round of the WTO put the nail in the coffin of Empire. Victory is possible, as long as tactics and strategy evolves with the changing times.

The climate camps currently suffer from “picture-thinking”: being unable to grasp the totality of climate change, the camps resort to targets that are “obviously” emitting carbon, such as coal-burning factories with large smoke stacks and airplanes with huge engines. However, climate change is itself located in the very flows of global capital itself, and the infrastructure of the state that maintains capital. These can be blockaded, stopped, and shut down. All we have to do is to choose a date and a target where the situation is to our advantage.

It's time to take it back to the streets. A tactical victory is possible in the city, which would both be impossible to ignore and perhaps more difficult for the police to control. A single victory would invigorate a whole generation to escape the sense of depressive gloom of passivity. Once a concrete victory is scored, all manner of actions will no doubt spread like wildfire. Calling for a European wide mobilization in a city could cause an exponential growth...and coming up next year, we have the chance to strike at Copenhagen: the Seattle of Climate Change. Also, a re-run of the G8, likely focused climate change, is coming to Italy. Let us move focus to globalize and intensify our struggle next year! Back to the cities! Internationally mobilize against the capitalist response to climate change! Time is running out, so now is the time to strike.