Video of Monbiot & others at recent climate change public meeting

kriptick | 15.11.2007 00:28 | Climate Chaos | London | World

Thursday November 8th saw the Friends Meeting House in London packed out for a tremendous Public meeting organised by Campaign against Climate Change.

http://www.campaigncc.org/
Speakers were George Monbiot - author and journalist, John Sauven - Director of Greenpeace UK, Sophie from the Camp for Climate Action and Phil Thornhill - National Coordinator of Campaign against Climate Change.

For those who wanted to attend but couldn't, here's the videos of the event on Youtube featuring Monbiot's speech and some of the questions and answers afterwards. Much interesting information was discussed including Monbiot's belief that micro-electricity generation power schemes are maybe not such a good way forward. A more robust plan would be able to cope with an entire country temporarily experiencing zilch renewables available, eg: Britain in freezing fog, by having huge renewable-energy solar and wind farms spread around all the different continents and linked together in a global grid by very long distance DC power lines. Such a bold scheme would of course entail massive global cooperation - somewhat hard to envisage on this warring, greed consumed planet.

http://uk.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E20B7F6B5E814E7D

kriptick
Homepage: http://www.campaigncc.org/

Additions

More Climate and Environment Audio

15.11.2007 10:43

There are some very good shows published on the A-Infos Radio Project, for example:

The Low Carbon Show, The Two Degrees Show, and Climate Radio (

http://coinet.org.uk/discussion/climate_radio ):

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=producer-info&uid=2768&nav=&

Radio Ecoshock (

http://www.ecoshock.org/ ):

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=producer-info&uid=1774&nav=&

Unwelcome Guests (

http://www.unwelcomeguests.org/ ):

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=producer-info&uid=18&nav=&

TUC Radio (

http://www.tucradio.org/ ):

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=producer-info&uid=44&nav=&

A-Infos Radio Project
Homepage: http://www.radio4all.net/

Editing

15.11.2007 11:50

Having looked at the videos, I'm a bit confused by the editing.

The editor obviously has a bit of a thing about Monbiot (each to their own :-) and this has led to a set of clips that misrepresent the meeting.

In particular, Sophie Cooke, on behalf of the climate camp, talked for quite a while on the importance and potential effectiveness of direct action, the social justice aspects of climate change (globally, the rich caused the problem and the poor are the first already suffering its effects), and the need for radical social change to deal with the causes. A lot more relevant than Monbiot's fantasy techno-solutions. She got a great reception.

But here Sophie gets one tiny clip taken out of context so it seems to say that direct action can be left to experts - the opposite of the thrust of her talk that argued direct action can and needs to be a mass movement. Was there a bias in the filming here?

Or has she just been edited out because she was the only woman on stage putting a point of view?

Elephant Spotter

interesting editing..

15.11.2007 12:18

Thanks Elephant Spotter,

I'd just checked out the video thought I'd have rather been cut out completely than just that small comment, in direct response to Phil saying that people marching on the streets should be supporting direct action, acknowledging that there will be a few out there not able to take some kinda of action and that they can support & and be part of direct action in a number of ways..

*sigh*

But way more exciting is that it seems every time I log on to indys around the world someone seem to be shutting down power stations or blockading coal ports.. now that's far more interesting news than what a bunch of us said in a room in London last week...

Sophie

the Speaker from Climate Camp

editing of Nov 8th meeting

15.11.2007 16:11

Elephant spotter and Sophie: you are both right, it does not reflect what was said at the meeting. I uploaded Monbiot's speech straight away and then tried to put the 90 minutes or so of Q and A into 2 x 10 minutes. Given that there is so much interest (pretty surprised), I'll replace the 2 x 10 minutes with a longer 3 x 10 minute version that gives more time to the other speakers.

John Ackers

Comments

Hide the following 12 comments

I say blah blah hideous repercussions blah blah choose me blah blah

15.11.2007 00:37

The leaders of the revolution no doubt. LOL.

Get up! Act up!

How much is existance worth?

Classy

good idea, but we really need somekind of true revolution

15.11.2007 05:48

lovely idea, but we really need somekind of true revolution,
a truelly delegated anarcho syndicalist society,
www.iww.org.uk
war, bird flu, climate change,police state&the matrix are getting v.vboring

Technology

15.11.2007 08:51

"very long distance DC power lines" - I don't think the issues have been thought through

GoldenEye

"The leaders of the revolution no doubt. LOL."

15.11.2007 09:09

Er no. But I'll say one thing about them. They're a million times more sorted and articulate than you.

sortof

Will listen later...

15.11.2007 10:25

It sounds like Monbiot is saying what he has said before, what he argued at the Climate Camp:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378866.html?c=on

Which is basically -- the problem is so huge that it can only be tackled by the *existing* governments undertaking huge infrastructure projects. Therefore social change from below must *wait* -- we must try to get our governments to solve the problem for us.

At the climate camp this was summed up when he said:

"Much as I'd love to see thing being done as a social transformation..."

A friend of mine already runs the whole lighting circuit in his family semi off solar and a small yacht wind generator and the shower off a solar water heater. This is in a poor urban area. He is investing in more batteries and panels and a bigger wind turbine to see if he can't provide *all* his own power. This is the bottom-up grassroots DIY action that is needed, but lots more of it and on a community scale.

Huge top-down infrastructure projects will just serve to further entrench the existing power hierarchies, next Monbiot will be advocating Nuclear power, you just wait and see...

This tragedy of this, bolstering of the establishment from the climate change left, is that it appears to be fooling a lot of people, people who should know better :-(

The *key* is social change, without this nothing else is going to solve anything.

If people haven't seen "How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" then get it and watch it -- it's the most positive film on this issue I have seen:

http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3675678/How_Cuba_Survived_Peak_Oil

Georgeous Moonbat

Climate change co-opted by Toffs

15.11.2007 10:38

http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2007/08/17/toff-colonisation-of-green-protest/

TOFF COLONISATION OF GREEN PROTEST

Firstly thanks to all who’ve taken the trouble to respond to my CLIMATE CAMP posting. I’ll make my case here:

Among those arrested at Heathrow yesterday were aristocratic eco-warriors FRED LAMBTON - son of the EARL OF DURHAM and grandson of LORD LAMBTON former tory cabinet minister - and TOM GUINNESS -son of Guinness brewery heir LORD MOYNE last seen modelling BURBERRY clothing alongside Kate Moss. Both Lambton and Guinness fit into the square jawed ZAC GOLDSMITH mould of rich and zealous proselytisers of Green politics. You get the whole package with them…….anti-supermarket, pro-farmer,support ‘independent’ shops and you might ask them where they stand on hunting and Countryside Alliance issues………….FRED LAMBTON hung an anti-supermarket banner from his multi-million 3 storey townhouse in Kings Road last year opposing Tescos/Sainsburys etc.

Fred Lambton sticks up for Britain

The support for ‘independent’ shops and anti-supermarket campaigns are veiled attempts to keep working class people after cheap food/goods out of their high streets - disguised behind green organic food concerns etc.

Lynas models the Lady Diana inbred look - a must for this years Climate Campers!

In today’s New Statesman there is a risible article by MARK LYNAS - front cover headline -‘Heathrow Climate Camp - the most important protest ever’. Far from doing much time at the camp Lynas plugs the apocalyptic predictions of his two books.In his first book he jetted round the world talking to ‘islanders,peasants,fishermen’ about their concerns about climate change - oblivious to his using up 20 years of his own carbon footprints in the process! Lantern jawed Lynas now offers his services to businesses and corporations in thre Square Mile at £2,000 a talk to improve their green credentials firmly hitched to the Goldsmith bandwagon.

Mark Lynas
Fee band from £ 1000 - 2000

To book Mark, please
call us on +44 (0)845 257 0807
or e-mail to:

info@cityspeakersinternational.co.uk

To build cross - class alliances with these rich eco-warriors and their ‘quality of life’ concerns is frankly fucking barmy and provides them with a stage army to validate their arrogant self -importance and further their rich lifestyles under the guise of ‘caring green capitalism. Having failed to build a coalition beyond the rural ballygombeen men with the Countryside Alliance the toffs have now found a way to construct an alliance with young idealistic urbanites. How long before the ‘countryside’ agenda and the ‘green’ agenda are conflated? The toffs were generals without armies - now some idealists have provided them with one. It straight outta Gramsci. Pass the sickbag comrades.

@ all the way

The rich get richer...

15.11.2007 10:54

Ian Bone, does have a point, beneath the unnecessarily abrasive style and rhetoric. Clearly climate change is being and is going to be further used to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, green and eco taxes are a prime example of this, as Gorgeous said above and what Ian is getting at, is that without fundamentally changing the nature of capitalism nothing is going to change for the better, things will simply continue to get worse. Green capitalism is no solution.

Guttersnipe

Time ends 2012?

15.11.2007 12:40

Classy -
Is the continued existence of Life on Earth worth an economic collapse back to the level of 1932? If it is, there is one problem - it is probably already too late. Climate change has started the feedbacks that could lead to our mass extinction.

jj -
Back before 1917 in the USA there were wobblies who had the answer that would have averted the presently approaching catastrophe - population control would drive up wages and reduce rents. They did not push that idea in the Union to avoid offending the religious among the founders. Today, God is desperately struggling to correct that mistake, but just isn't up to perfecting a lethal Bird flu for human to human transmission or getting Ibola into the Cites.

There is going to be an economic disaster. Few Wobs are planning to cope with the consequences of that, most are so intent of fighting the Class War they are forgetting about their real objective. Secret Fascists changed the Climate of Opinion to get Thatcherism / New Labour going to destroy the possibility of socialism. Unless that Climate of Opinion is changed so that a far more cooperative human society evolves, there will be a ruthless authoritarian fascism that will happily liquidate all opponents. Happily it will not last long as Mass Extinction sends us all to Heaven perhaps, though it is more likely to be the other place through God being too annoyed at the willful destruction of his Creation of Life on this planet to continue with the logistics of Life in Heaven forever.

What Hell with there be for Gordon Brown, who was a socialist and is a christian. A leading proponent of destroying the economy with inflation to build a similar situation that led to Hitler's takeover. There is no competent Economist. They have become satanic angels of destruction.

Ilyan

Nafeez Ahmed: Our Civilizational Crisis

15.11.2007 12:52

Ilyan, I know you won't be able to make this, but hopefully there will be audio of it online -- it's a meeting that is exactly about the stuff you are on about (but I think it will be addressed in a manner that people don't perceive as a bit crazy... and don't get sucked in by the 2012 misinformation / disinformation material...):

Public Meeting: The Hidden Holocaust - Our Civilizational Crisis

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
20th November 2007, 6pm

LT1, Sir Alexander Fleming Building
Imperial College
London
Exhibition Road
South Kensington
London, SW7 2AZ

2007: global food shortages cause riots (FAO)

2008: global banking collapse (Arlington Institute)

2011: world oil reserves critically depleted (Independent)

2015: climate change point-of-no-return (Guardian)

2025: two-thirds of world in water shortage (BBC)

2100: Earth uninhabitable (UN)

The crisis of the planet Earth is so profound that all of our lives will be caught up in it.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/2007/11/385315.html

Chris

not malthusianism again

15.11.2007 15:11

yeah thats right blame everything on population growth and forget about skewed distributions of income that see large companies and city high fliers generate the highest emissions

if every fucker in Britain had their property confiscated by the state tomorrow- (they could continue to live at home but they would have to accept guests) and was granted a place on their local resident association. You know like Jefferson suggested real democracy from the people configured in very loacl councils, through regions and up to the state level. Then you provide every fucker with their fucking rations like in WW2

as for toffs- what do you propose- are you actually gonna massacre them yourself. Its a very messy business and i'm guessing youve probably had a sheltered life

ignoramus

heh heh "sortof"

15.11.2007 15:49

so that's supposed to be an 'electronic kick in the balls' is it? Ouch : ) Not!!

I stand by what I said.

These middle/ upper class pricks stir nothing by their ongoing debates.

Classy

Mayan Time end

16.11.2007 00:48

Chris,
Thanks for the invite. three previous engagements to choose from already. Which Chris you email?

Ignoramus,
Those 1917 Wobblies knew all about skewed incomes. One small group of them saw limiting the number of children the working class produced as a way to increase wages and reduce rents, and to be able to fully educate their one child ready for the General Strike that will end Capitalism. They were using Marx's analysis of Capitalism in a scientific way that Marx himself had been foolishly blind to.

Are you a State supporter saying that non-fuckers should not have their property seized?

I have been in some bloody fights, Learned and applied a lot about stone fighting by the time I was eight.

Ilyan