RIP Climate Camp

An announcement has now been made on the results of the Climate Camp retreat late last month. The gathering was designed to allow longer thinking times with less pressure. The decision: to formally end Climate Camp.

Forgiving Mark Stone

Much has already been written about the revelations of under cover police officers at work within the Climate Camp movement and others. I did vaguely know who Mark Stone was, though its difficult to imagine what it must be like for others who knew him much closer. An article appeared recently entitled “Why I’ll never forgive Mark Stone”, and whilst I’m not going to dispute anything given as a reason for not forgiving him, I want to suggest that the language was unhelpful.

Climate Camp in Review

So now comes the time for the Climate Camp post-mortems. As ever, I shall remain upbeat, whilst perhaps pointing a few failures here and there, which is pretty much how I feel about the whole mobilisation. I spent 4 days and 3 nights on site, and really enjoyed myself, but to fail to critique would be a mistake – the movement lives on because it critiques itself.

The Green League: Policy and Performance

This week saw the release of People and Planet’s annual “Green League”, a very handy and well-researched table of all the Universities in Britain and their impact on the environment. It makes interesting reading; the differentiation between the top and bottom University are enormous (though this is largely the scoring system), though they both happen to be in the same place: Plymouth.

Who cares about “the argument” anyway?

One of the worst trends I’m seeing in politics right now is a complete disconnect between any sort of debate and the actual, practical outcome. Take for instance Climate Change; major companies are admitting they should be doing something, but doing worse than nothing. Or the Robin Hood Tax campaign, where party leaders are sure its the right thing to do, but cannot bring themselves to place it in their manifestos. Have we reached a point where debate is meaningless?

After Vancouver’s Green Olympics

Russia’s Winter Olympic plans for 2014 seem to be following the trend of tediously Greenwashed Games. Vancouver saw a games that claimed to be the Greenest on record, whilst funded in no small part by the environmental devastation that is the Tar Sands project. So is it perhaps unsurprising that the Russians are already embroiled in a row with environmentalists over the next Winter Olympics?

Environmentalism is destroying the planet

There is a lot wrong with the Climate Movement at this particular point in its history. One of the areas that has begun to draw attention are the closening relationships between several of the biggest names, both individuals and organisations, in the Green world and the business world. Two articles appeared earlier this month that pointed out the Elephant in the room for environmentalism in 2010, but still little is being done to ensure wider understanding of this issue.

Election Issues: Education or Climate Change?

Its interesting looking at your average campaigner-type’s priorities for a General Election and comparing them to the issues that “normal” people worry about. By “campaigner-type”, I suspect I’m being biased towards those campaigning on global issues, but its a big area of difference between the issues political parties are dealing with and the campaigns some of us devote most of our time to.

Stuff what I’ve been reading

Being in Canada this last week has enabled me to sweep out all the saved posts from my RSS feed, so I thought I’d give you some of the best to chew on. From a radical-theological systemic analysis of Climate Change (ok, there has to be a better way to say that) to the writings of a Leftist Feminist Christian I came across recently, its been an interesting time catching up.

Analysis, Action and Climate Camp

I think everyone who knows me gets that I love Climate Camp. I haven’t been as involved as I might have been lately, but there’s a lot gone on during my time away that I want to celebrate. But right now, Climate Camp is essentially on hiatus, figuring out what it wants to do with itself; a great idea, but one that could soon lead to tragic naval gazing.