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.

Global Justice in a time of Austerity

in just 6 weeks time, I’m running an event of a fairly unprecedented scale at York Friend’s Meeting House, drawing together over a dozen local campaign groups for an afternoon of talks and discussions spanning the length and width of “Global Justice”. All this seemed so much more urgent before the cuts became the defining issue of the moment, and now its hard to even feel excited about the range of issues beyond our doorstep.

Train tickets rise, but what about the roads?

It may have come to your attention that train ticket prices are rising by something like 6%, or more like 12% for some in the South East. The easiest complaints to make centre around the effect of vampiric companies drawing profits from government subsidy. But these rises are based largely on the assumption that passengers should pay more and the government, i.e. the taxpayers, i.e. the passengers, should pay less. Privatisation/Nationalisation aside, this logic needs examining.

And now for the weather… (Public Service Post)

Hello Britain. I’m having a bit of a day off from trying to make the world a better place, as my brain isn’t handling it too well and a little preservation now will go a long way down the line. This is an excellent moment to write the blog I’ve wanted to write all week, but haven’t stopped long enough to type out. Hopefully this means I’ve had time to work out better advice for you all.

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.

Amoral Conservatism

I’ve been pondering some of the motives for Cameron’s exuberant welcoming of the Lib Dems into coalition with his party. Apart from the obvious (who couldn’t really govern without them), I’m left wondering whether he hasn’t in part played a very shrewd move when it comes to the socially and morally conservative elements in his party.

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.

Globalised Civilisation Grounded

I’ve been a little out of the loop lately, but the one story that hasn’t failed to reach my ears and eyes is this beautiful and infuriating volcanic eruption taking in Iceland. It is perhaps, above all, a reminder that the Earth beneath our feet is less docile than we seem to take for granted. Suddenly, this wonderful civilisation we’ve built, full of convenience and stability, is being rendered unworkable by a small and relatively common incidence of nature.

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?