         
My stay at the Camp for Climate Action On Tuesday 14th August I headed down to Heathrow for the Camp for Climate Action near Heathrow. On arriving at Sipson village, nobody was being allowed into the camp down Sipson Lane because of what the police described as an “incident” there. It turned out that a large group of policemen had tried to enter the legally squatted camp and had been forced back peacefully by a number of people in the camp who pushed them out with their hands in the air chanting “out, out, out!” Later when riot police were gathering to enter the site they were stopped by one lady who, feeling a power surge rising up within her to prevent problems (as she described it) went to the only gate that they could enter and superglued her hands to either sides of the gate, while haranguing the policemen there about climate change, thereby heading off any further “incident”. By the time we were allowed in 3 hours later, all seemed very peaceful, calm and very well organised. Before the camp had begun, volunteers had staked out the area for the camp at night and ringed it with a string fence to indicate where it would take place – a piece of farmland intended for Heathrow's third runway. The area was set out on a grid system of different camps for different regions of the UK with a large marquee in the centre where workshops were held on climate Change topics in the mornings and afternoons. In the evenings this was used for large meetings which were generally followed by some kind of entertainment. There were so many interesting workshops and talks that it was impossible to got to all of them. I managed to attend talks on the Destruction of the Amazon, Denial in the media and personal denial, China and climate change, The Failures of Carbon Trading in the EU amongst others. All of them were instructive and well researched. The camp had an incredible infrastructure. each area had it's kitchen which was provided for by a central kitchen area and subsidized by ourselves. Despite what is often suspected of such camps, there were a number of solar showers and all the compost toilets were ready to be taken on by local farmers and used for non-food crops. We all took turns cooking and washing up. Not all the vegan food was delicious but some of it was and while I confess to sneaking off camp for fish n chips and a packet of mini pork pies, it was very healthy eating that way for a while. Action Diary The main focus of the week was 24 hours of action to highlight the problems of climate change that would point fingers at the biggest contributors to Climate Change: big businesses that profit from increased contamination of our skies. I was in an affinity group from Oxford camp – an affinity group being a small group of people you trust enough to go on an action with. Our mission was simple in idea but trickier than you might expect on the day: to make our way to an area on the proposed runway for 12pm and then on to the BAA offices for 3pm that day. We achieved both and stayed outside BAA offices all night chanting and singing, achieving headline news in newspapers and news programmes around the world. And guess what: it was great fun. To begin with we dressed up before leaving the camp. 3 of our group had monks' habits on and I had a green djellaba from Morocco that was perfect to accompany them with. People turned up ina whole range of costumes: there were polar bears suits alongside people (yes, men too) in stewardess costumes and having left the camp early in a small, fancy-dressed group, we easily made our way to our stretch of the proposed runway at the elected time. Once there we sang and danced despite the fact that the world media had been refused aerial coverage of the area to allow for the police helicopters to roam the skies at will and treat the whole protest as a training ground. We saw two police motorbikes, sirens blaring, bump up a kerb to barely avoid colliding with three police vans coming screaming the other way. Meanwhile we bimbled our way down to the protest, stopping at a pub to be questioned by police while sat sipping drinkss in the pub garden. Sirens blared all around us as we weaved our way down past police vans and gawping passers-by. Arrests were being made left right and centre. which one of us would they take? The polar bear? The stewardess? One of the monks? Our key was to keep moving unhurriedly towards the British Aviation Authorities offices and it must have worked because we reached our destination early, unopposed. In the car park we said our prayers and responses from the bible of BAA. “We have erred and strayed from your ways like lost polar bears. We have not taken weekend breaks to Rome or supported your blessing of the third runway etc”. Somehow this made it onto the news. Then we had a huddled meeting of our affinity group in the car park, lying down with our heads together to decide what to do next. Some of us decided to join those who had sat down in front of the BAA car park gates. Once we'd made the decision to do this and risk arrest, things started to get a little strange.. To begin with I didn't think the police would let us stay there long. After all there were about 2 of them to every one of us and they had shields and truncheons that made me put a t-shirt as padding under my hood. But we sat down and locked arms and an attractive girl behind me asked if she could lock her legs around me. I politely acquiesced. As we sat there on the tarmac there were lots of others milling around us on the kerb sides. We started to get hungry. Food started appearing: pint mugs full of couscous, lentil burger sandwiches, bags of peanuts, fruit, chocolate! Where was this all coming from? Gradually it dawned on us that as we were the ones who had made it to the car park and were committing to staying, the main camp had the home cookers on and were determined to feed us through the night. this made us feel good. So we started singing. The most powerful of the songs was led by Kevin who was sat beside me. It must have been an old protest and it sounded like it had come out of the anti-slavery movement; each line was repeated in a swinging bellow: Power! Power! Power to the people! Power to the people! Coz the people got the power. Coz the people got the power. Tell me can you feel it? Tell me can you feel it? Getting stronger by the hour. Getting stronger by the hour.Then it would go up a note or two and repeat. We belted it out and it didn't half warm us up as we sat there on the tarmac. We sang various other songs as people arrived with guitars and accompaniment. Then some smart alec came up with a variation on the first song that went : Shower! Shower! Shower for the people! Shower for the people! Coz the people need a shower. Coz the people need a shower. Tell me can you smell it? Tell me can you smell it? Getting stronger by the hour. Getting stronger by the hour. Well maybe you had to be there. It started drizzling and no sooner than it did but three massive tarpaulins appeared which were spread out over the heads of everybody. We held them up above us for a time but then thought we'd push our luck by asking for string and masking tape and poles. they all appeared and soon we had not three tarps but one, not a bedraggled band sat out in the rain in a car park but choruses of tuneful voices under a low marquee. The idea of all this singing would have made me squirm if I hadn't been there but it was one of those situations in which you felt the freedom to really sing, unfettered by the qualms you might have in everyday life. And the singing was in tune, honestly. We were a tuneful bunch. The fact that we were all squeezed together, arms and legs splayed across each other meant that we weren't cold and the plastic marquee filtered the street-lamp to a warm glow. All of a sudden I found myself sharing poetry that I would rarely have done in a pub with my mates. Coorespondingly, people around me were sharing poetry back. A guitar arrived and Kevin started coming out with every number that we could sing. The originally cold huddle became enlivened and people were harmonizing over the choruses. We made up songs on the spot. We played rounds of creative rhythms that singing groups would have been jealous of and EMI would have snapped up and given us a pittance for. We were in a mini festival and people who, hours before had been strangers were speaking and singing right from their hearts. And it felt like their hearts were growing under there as we realised where we were and what we'd achieved and that we were going to be there all night with these same amazing people, many of whom we'd just met. We did carry on joking and singing and if there had been more room we would have danced. Every so often a gust of wind would blow up one of the tarpaulins and we would see a line of policemen – quite often smiling ones – in front of the BAA offices and then it would flop down again and we'd be back under our marquee in a mini festival of our own making. As if all of this wasn't weird enough, at around midnight a white rabbit appeared. Who pulled that one out of the hat? Nobody knew. We christened it our “elder” as one of the papers had run a ridiculous story about the camp being run by a group of “elders”. Our fat, floppy-eared elder ran with impunity at police lines and they were too baffled to do anything about him. I think he ran right round the offices. I think he ran right inside the offices, dammit, and took photographs of everything he saw but I can't be a hundred per cent sure of this because at times he was invisible even to me. Most people could cope with where we were singing, being in the BAA car park, having achieved our mission. But there was quite a bit of counselling needed once the rabbit appeared. It was felt that whoever was conjuring up all the magic may have gone a little too far. The Issues It's been twelve years since I've been involved in protests like these. On that occasion hundreds of people descended on Madrid in 1995, where I was living at the time, to take part in a 10-day protest against the World Bank and IMF. That was my awakening to the Green movement as there was an alternative forum for those opposed to the WB and IMF's structural adjustment programmes that were further enslaving developing countries to the whims of western businesses. Inspiring speakers like Vandana Shiva told us how it was. The basic programme always seemed to be: lend 3rd-world governments money at outrageous interest rates of around 14% and then get them to withdraw money from education and welfare to help pay these debts back. Often the debts were accrued by former WB and IMF trainees now working in these foreign governments who applied for dams or similar projects on behalf of their countries. These projects would help big businesses in these countries while ignoring the fact that tens of thousands of poor families would be relocated to areas that didn't support their largely fishing/foraging/hunting lifestyles. The money for relocation would often be hijacked by government officials and the suffering families were split up and relocated to slums or corrugated iron huts. Similarly to this last week at Heathrow, the press started out by damning the protesters as a bunch of errant hippies but finally got the truth towards the end of the ten days, hailing the protesters as heroes and criticising big business and governments for their enslavement of the developing countries. During the Camp the press began by focussing on accusing the protesters of being about to disrupt flights taken by the general public, using terrorist or other means. This was patently ridiculous and ignored our stated aims of focussing protests on big business that profits from increasing our impacts upon our already changing climate. Right from the start it should be pointed out that Heathrow's allocated flights by the EU are 480,000 a year. Heathrow already provides for 470,000 flights with the 2 runways already there and a third runway would take them well over their allocation to 720,000 flights a year with the extra runway being used for mostly short-haul flights per distance flown, which are by far the most damaging. Government figures show that aeroplane fights make up at least 13% of UK greenhouse gas emissions and that flights are by far the fastest growing polluting area of our overall emissions. Add to this the fact that emissions up in the atmosphere are 3 times as damaging as gases released at ground level and the scale of the problem caused by our flying around at the drop of a hat becomes even more apparent. A further runway - any further runways – constitutes an absolute environmental disaster, If you look at the government's new Climate Change Bill, you will see that it fails to make mention of the contribution of flying to our country's emissions at all! So it is hardly surprising that 1,400 protesters descended on the site of the proposed third runway to largely take part in a symbolic protest against such a suicidal idea. Actually, the number of people that turned up was disappointing considering the scale of the problem we are facing. How is it that so few people are motivated to do anything about the most serious problem mankind has faced up till now? George Marshall's talk on public denial outlined some of the reasons for this: a) It is inconvenient for us to have to think that we are part of the climate problem, we never want to think of ourselves as the problem b) There is no self-evident link between out humble car or holiday to climate change on a world scale. we can't actually see our impacts. c) No one else is doing anything about it so why should I? d) The government should be doing something about it, isn't that what we elect them for? e) Even if our government does do something, the fact that China is industrializing at the rate it is makes a mockery of our attempts to do anything about it.. etc etc Ten years ago we were all happy with the occasional flight abroad. There were no cheap 'bucket flights' and when we did travel abroad it was for a special holiday. Now we see weekend breaks as our inviolable right as part of our worth in the modern world. But pit this argument against the statistics I've given you above – and they are probably conservative estimates – and you can see that we are headed for disaster. Now think about this: if the world heats up a further 0.4 degrees it will take us to 2 degrees over where we should be. Once we reach this 2 degrees the we are looking at runaway climate change, whereby feedback systems such as methane and CO2 being released from peat bogs or permafrost add so many extra greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere that there will be nothing we can do to prevent further heating up of the planet and the ensuing climate chaos. It is estimated by Human Rights Watch that if we go over that 2 degree threshold then 180 million people are likely to die from climate-fed disasters such as further desertification in dry areas, floods and mudslides in low lying countries like Bangladesh, more hurricane disasters as the warming oceans increase the number and intensity of the hurricanes that occur. I have even read that there is a historical correlation between sea-level rises and increased volcanic activity as the extra water pressure on the sea floor encourages the lava up and out. But as Richard off Richard and Judy says: “the man in the street has a right to his holidays abroad”, right? So that was why we were all there and the workshops put on during the week by scientists and environmental crusaders were like a mini-university of what's going on. One of the main complaints from the press was that the media were controlled in a Stalinesque-like manner. In fact one of the most credit-worthy things about the camp is that it was run entirely democratically. There were no elders, no leaders. This made for an awful number of , at times, tedious meetings where consensus was painstakingly arrived at. There were a number of different “barrios” that you could be associated with. Mine was Oxford camp and there were: Yorkshire, East Midlands, Scotland, South West, South East, London. all of these camps sent back their individual votes to a a central meeting where it was decided that we didn't want the press running round willy nilly taking photos of our children in the toilets. Do the press get free entrance to the board meetings of BP, Shell, BAA, BA, Virgin airlines? I don't think so. Are they allowed free entrance into these people's homes? I somehow think this even less likely. So the press were escorted around by reps who prevented them from taking photos of people in the showers or their children in order to avoid scandal-mongering stories that detracted from the important issues we were there to highlight. Those journalists that came into the camp under cover would have been obliged to take part in meetings and use the solar showers and compost toilets along with the rest of us and could only be impressed by the organization and forbearance of the rest of us that were there on our mission. So what was the mission? Our mission was to highlight what I've already told you: that more flights means increased climate change and unfortunately our government is doing nothing about it, in fact this is not quite true: Our government is rubber-stamping BAA's attempts to put in further runways all over Britain and more than double the number of emissions made from flights to and from the UK. Why? Because despite ours being a labour government, it walks hand in hand with big business and big business is hell-bent on making money whatever the impacts on our climate and the future lives of those resident on Earth. Problem? Hmm, just a weeny one. Blog post by jack_indergreen on Sept. 06, 2007 at 10:31 a.m.
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