Climate Camp Have Done It!

Against the backdrop of a poor choice of location, expected hostility from the local residents and some quite frankly autumnal weather the Camp for Climate Action have just finished holding their summer camp on Blackheath South East London.

The week of events began on Wednesday August 26th when around 1000 environmental activists met up at several locations around central London before snaking through the city to swoop on the Blackheath campsite. Over the next two days they built a small tented village, played wide games, enjoyed entertainments and engaged with the local residents in workshops on the worlds environmental problems and how to solve them. On Friday 28th a group of around 100 protesters left the camp and headed off to stage a small protests outside the head office of Barclay's Bank. In their role as the British Government's dirty bank Barclay's are engaged in all sorts of unpleasant things that need protesting against but on this occasion the demonstrators were concerned with Barclay's involvement in the Canadian Tar Sands industry. This business involves stripping vast swathes of the Canadian wilderness of its tar sands through massive open cast mines. Once the tar has been mined it is taken to factories where huge amounts of energy are used crushing and squeezing it to extract a few drops of an oil that is far too dirty to be used to power automobiles. In short tar sands oil is one of the most environmentally damaging fossil fuels even before you get round to burning the stuff.

On Monday 31st another two small groups of campers left to stage two small, photogenic protests. The first of these involved protesters in overalls dusting and polishing the outside of the HM Treasury building to highlight the dirty little secret that for all it's claims of being a world leader on environmental issues the British Government actually spends large amounts of taxpayers money funding a range of environmentally damaging industries including the Canadian tar sands. The second group headed to London City Airport where they staged a small but noisy picket at the entrance in order to draw attention to the fact that most of the private jets that operate out of the airport often pump out huge amounts of greenhouses gases in order to fly planes with more crew then passengers on board.

Tuesday September 1st was the camps day of mass direct action and it started early. At around 9AM 12 activists blockaded the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland and got the building shut down for the day while they carried out an "ethical renovation". At around the same time another group staged an always courageous naked protest at Edelman PR who represent E-on the energy company that operates the Kingsnorth and Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal fired power stations. Throughout the day these demonstrations were visited by a roaming group of protesters who also took in the Canadian Embassy and the head office of oil company BP before converging on the head office of Shell Oil who are heavily involved in the production of Canadian Tar Sands.

Although this wasn't the most spectacular camp in it's history this years Climate Camp has probably given the new environmental movement it's greatest victory. You see this year the Climate Camp was meant to be robbed, raped, beaten and abused to such an extent that it collapsed into a quivering, paranoid mess of infighting leaving it too busy to dare challenge the status quo ever again. That would mean that just 94 days ahead of the Copenhagen Summit Britain would be able to send the message to the world that the movement was broken so there's no need to sign up to a deal that would stop the Queen profiting from her large portfolio of mining and energy investments.

In the end that car crashed before it even got going http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/lewgreen/4561358.SHOOTERS_HILL__Man_seriously_hurt_in_crash_with_police_car/ because the camp was better defended and enjoyed more local support then was expected so you only need to read the hundreds of, ever more desperate, anonymous comments posted on the Internet while the Climate Campers were keeping their heads down to see that the movement's hardly even been dented.