Great Climate Swoop

Although this appears to be a terribly democratic way of doing things, there appears to be three basic problems. Firstly, anyone can vote as many times as they want to, which is hardly democratic.

Secondly, anyone can vote. There are obviously a lot of vested interests out there – Drax wants it to be at Ratcliffe and E.ON wants it to be at Drax. Similarly, junior police officers (extra overtime) or managers of private security companies (lucrative guarding contracts) want it in their area, whereas senior police officers do not.

So what the organizers of this protest are doing is allowing all sorts of people influence a decision which should really have been left to the activists who are involved.

The third problem is that I thought that there was going to be a commitment to non-violence which appears to have been omitted.

So the Climate Camp are offering the 'public' a binary choice and claiming it as democracy. Sound familiar? It seems the campers believe the tweedledum and tweedledee choices that the State presents us as democratic participation is a model that they should emulate.

I thought this had to be a joke but no it seems that they are serious. Some people have either lost their direction or they've always been lost.

Drax or Radcliffe, Labour or Tories - this is not what democracy looks like.

Is this instead of or as well as the 24/25th October, which was decided at a previous climate camp gathering?

Completely agree about the bullshit 'democracy'.

Other things are perhaps smaller details:
why use voting when the whole basis of climate camp has been consensus; whole jingoistic democracy & Union Jack stick in my throat; swoop as well (unless you've been involved in the camp process recently) is a really weird word, almost class-bound; what's Plane Stupid got to do with coal (& indeed, why not just a Camp for Climate Action thing? Have PS & CR decided by consensus, all the people in them, to join this, or why are we doing it with them?)?; and about the commitment to non-violence, don't worry, it doesn't even mention direct action (& in any case, what is non-violence, who are you trying to separate yourself from, etc...there's a whole can of worms there to debate, or maybe just eat)

We say vote Drax because the overtime is going to pay for out Christmas holidays in the sun!

We also like the Union Jacks – VERY patriotic.

This campaign was launched ten days ago - see  http://www.northern-indymedia.org/articles/55

Also, for anyone who's outraged by the flaws in the democratic concept, yes you're right to be alarmed. At the launch event it was fantastic to see the suited representatives of the two power stations on the hustings, both apologising for their corporate misdeeds. Here's a little contextual clue for anyone who still doesn't get it -  http://www.theyesmenfixtheworld.com/screenings.htm

agree with most of whats been said. The website is also lacking information with regards to access, terrain and other resources which will be needed. At the moment the decision seems to be based on who is emitting the most carbon. Ridiculous post-political environmentalists.

looks like a ridiculous PR attempt. Saw them quoted in the guardian yesterday as "trying to reach out to those that shop at Marks and Spencers".

I thought this decision was going to be made at the climate camps this summer...

obvously not

If Climate Camp adopts a commitment to non-violence they will be alienating large groups of people. Please for the love of our planet DO NOT take these authoritarian, racist, ineffective steps. Surely we have all learned by now diversity of tactics is vital to any movement.

This whole thing is a bit of a PR stunt and should be thought of as such. It doesn't matter who you vote for you will end up with the same enemy, rather like voting in general elections.

Please tell me this is a joke! Please!

If it isn't then the non-political liberal thrust of most of the Climate Camp inner circle have gone into overdrive.

If it's not a joke, then you can enjoy my rantings later!

When will camp for climate action / climate camp / climate fest 2009 (what ever it is called) take seriously its own self declared purpose of taking "the root causes of climate change".

2006, 2007, 2008 CCA targetted PROXIMATE causes.


In april there was a half assed attempt at takling the root cause but nothing came of it because no-one was listening, primarily due to the obsession with the police, but also because the "protest" wasn't a protest, but just a beer fuelled lay about in the sun.

Later this month is the second attempt - we hope for the best - but the camp is going to far more low key, when it should be making the most of finally targetting the real cause.

This year is a crucial year - there is no better time to finally start taking about the economic and political system elading up to copenhagen. This is our biggest gripe with the un process.

It is therefore crazy that direct action should be targetted once again at a proximate cause this october.

If you want to send a radical message to everyone about the COP 15 process, what better than having a day of direct action in London, not in Yorkshire or Nottingham.

plus it will be a waste of time as nothing effective will actually happen just like at all the other mass action we have had over the past three years.

By specifying the day, the time, and the place, there is no hope of closing down the power station.

It just makes us look like idiots full of rhetoric.

I'll be off to the Earth First! Summer Gathering instead this year - I've had enough of all this nonsense. Looks way cooler programme and in a beautiful place I can actually feel what it is we're fighting for. It's so easy to get lost in all the words.

It seems like there's no changing the gradual slide into we're so cool liberal pretty mainstream bullshit. Sad. (though glad to see the name change back to Camp for Climate Action - not that the name was every democratically changed to Climate Camp 2008!!!)

actually the Camp for Climate Action website header has changed back to Climate Camp 09 (so I take back that note of positivity!!)

1) The "marks and spencers clothes" thing was a result of a weird leading question by a journalist - "so you're trying to appeal to people who wear M&S then?" which made it into the article. It wasn't intended, and it's a bit weird.

2) The camp this year is intended to be a training base for an autumn of action in the run-up to Copenhagen. We'll be in the city to highlight specifically how it's the failed capitalist system that's causing climate change!

3) The coal action is separate from the London camp because it's a continuation of the eon face-off/ no new coal campaign

4) Yeah, the voting thing does basically look like a media stunt. I don't think it's supposed to be serious

5) Yeah, the imagery on that website is fucking awful and I don't get why we're not deciding the target by consensus. Don't have time to go to a gathering cos I live ages away from anywhere they're ever held. If you want to join the coal action working group and change some of this stuff, go to  https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/coalaction09

Gah!! Looks like the powers that be have already decided that it's going to be at Ratcliffe then. The duty roster has already gone up at Kegworth asking for bobbies to volunteer for overtime before it's made compulsary and all the rest days get cancelled.

Oh glory be. Now Clear Orf!

"4) Yeah, the voting thing does basically look like a media stunt. I don't think it's supposed to be serious

5) Yeah, the imagery on that website is fucking awful and I don't get why we're not deciding the target by consensus."

So people decide to set up a website to vote for a site of action but then we are told that it's not supposed to be 'serious'. I wish I was smart enough to write a great letter to everyone at Climate Camp organisers and attendees) that puts into perspective the totally abysmal grasp of anti-capitalism that comes across from all the CC posters and leaflets. There definitely seems to have been some sort of slide towards the mainstream liberal consensus that thinks that the more people say No the more anyone in power will give a shit and do something because we all have a voice, no? Which group of fucked-over people worldwide do you need to go and see to hear that this is just the worst kind of liberalism.

The moral highground is not the greatest foundation for getting rid of capitalism and by this I don't mean targetting the most obvious symbols of this (banks and investments, multinationals, financial houses etc) which are often portrayed as the bad against our obvious good. A genuine anti-capitalism is the one that attacks the very relationship that binds us day to day to work and wage-earning and puts forward another total way of organising society. In this way, a criticism has to be made of a green jobs economy. As much as the Vestas struggle is important, there seems to be more CC support for the turbines than the actual workers (and I exclude Workers Climate Action from this speculation). It's not as if the Vestas workers were enjoying making their turbine blades stuck all day in a crap factory full of glue fumes. The problem of a green economy remains bosses on top and workers below. If that's anti-capitalism you can keep it

I guess at the heart of the problem (and of course, the wider problem) is that genuinely radical ideas are not currently at the root of most politics in these days. There has been attempts to introduce into the CC scenes alternatives to the liberal belief that dominate and these have been made without the usual denounce-all generalisations that were coming out around the time of Kingsnorth CC. I hope these comradely criticisms continue so that instead of the flight to behind-the-scenes hierarchies and the abandonment of autonomy and consensus that CC is making, something more inspiring, more critical and more useful will develop.

A good intro to the tensions around class, coal, climate change and radical ideas is:
 http://www.metamute.org/en/content/a_climatic_disorder_class_and_climate_change_in_newcastle