Camp for Climate Action 2010 – What’s Hot and What’s Not
Please note: This hot/not list is compiled by an arbitrary, self-selected group of random taste-mongers rather than any sort of official camp representative body. As such, it is intended as a light-hearted, subjective interpretation of what the camp was about. No knicker twisting, please.
HOT
• Location, location, location – In their backyard – best campsite yet – within a molassapult’s throw of the RBS HQ. Beautiful location and wonderful narrative of us and them. At one point at the national gathering at Lewes when RBS was decided on as the target, someone googled the HQ location and read out a lush description of the waterways and leafy surroundings. And everyone went ‘wahey!’ Wahey indeed.
• The molassapult – a giant three-person catapult – Great for smearing oil-like substances high up on the walls of corporate bad guys. And very much in keeping with the medieval siege motifs. Although someone from the media team got asked in a radio interview ‘what did we hope to achieve by flinging faeces on the side of the building’s walls?’
• Molasses in general – It has quickly become a de rigeur objet in the tool box of any climate agitator. Used to great effect in the Trojan pig dumped on the doorstop of arctic-defilers, Cairn Energy, and great to see their reach and impact amplified through the medium of fire-extinguishers.
• The Sunday Herald expose of RBS fossil fuel investments – Front page, three full pages inside, some great camp quotes and a thorough piece that was all about the ishoos. Great stuff.
• De-awrestling – Dearresting your mates is always sizzlingly hot. This year there seemed to be an extra dash of wrestling involved. Well done to the Hulk Hogans and Hoganettes out there who made this possible.
• Difficult discussions dealt with in a respectful and politically mature fashion – The plenary to discuss the disruption of the tar sands workshop started off feeling like it could have been an utter disaster of entrenched positions and ill-feeling, but in the end felt like it was resolved with a lot of understanding and respectful communication.
• The rhino and the siege tower –Why we don’t know, but they were hot. This medieval madness sapped a lot of energy on the day of action, but at least it seems to have provided a lot of hysterically-tinged mirth to an awful lot of people. And dealing with a slowly inching forward, rhino-fronted siege tower was obviously something that had not cropped up in any of the police training manuals.
• Rousers – Technically the whipping-up of a crowd from nowhere, using a sound system, coupled with the distribution of anonymising white biohazard suits. Used to great effect on the oh-so-near mass break-in to RBS HQ the day before the mass action day.
• Not a single shout of ‘Cops on Site’. Joyous.
• “Kent police paid for this” stickers – A light-hearted reference to the inspiring, on-going work by the legal team. What is even scorchingly hotter, is all the people who have received cash for illegal stop and searches at Kingsnorth, who are donating the money to cover the legal costs of people with ongoing, action-related court cases.
NOT HOT
• Cops in jeans – Creepily respectful, lurking in the woods, all evangelical smileyness with their ‘police liason’ jackets and desire ‘not to invade your personal space’. Totes ick.
• Severin Carell – The Guardian Scotland correspondent who was on a one-man mission to make out that poor RBS had been grossly misrepresented and is actually a bastion of renewables finance. People from the Rainforest Action Network did some number crunching to expose the lies that Sevie uncritically regurgitated.
• Lack of cosey dry spaces on site – On the one or two soggier days, it felt like ‘trench-cheeks’ was setting in. It was good to pare down the site structures a bit, but can we have somewhere warm and cosey to recover?
• Critiques of Climate Camp having ‘gone mainstream’. They clearly never saw the day of action, or the rouser the day before.
• 10.30 pm power curfew on the night after the mass action. Many needed to let off steam. Many did so in the shape of a Guns n’ Roses induced moshpit.
• Police lies about the ‘oil slick’ on the road – At Heathrow it was the supposed plans to make bomb threats, at Kingsnorth it was the ‘discovery’ of the weapons cache in the woods. The mystery oil slick that no one actually seems to have seen, nor have any details about, is the latest attempt to discredit the camp. A pity the media seemed to jump all over it too. People are on it with making the necessary challenges and enquiries about this very fishy business.
• EDL twitter stalkers – Lord knows why the Guardian wants to give them a platform.
Letter to the Lothian & Borders Police
Climate Camp wishes to file a formal complaint against the Lothian & Borders Gold Command of Operation Octave.
We believe that the Lothian & Borders Police have acted in contravention of the committment in their Policing Charter (1) to ‘treat each member of our community with courtesy, fairness and impartiality whether you are a victim of crime, accused of a crime or seeking our assistance’ with regards to the press strategy around the environmental protests at the Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters, 19-25 August. Moreover, we believe they did not act with integrity and impartiality, as recommended by the Scottish Police Service’s Code of Ethical Practice (2). The Code of Ethical Practice states that the interactions between the police and the media shall be guided by protocols and procedures- we question the effectiveness of these procedures, and therefore request that they be publicly disclosed and reviewed.
This complaint is brought with particular reference to the allegation that ‘substance similar to diesel or vegetable oil was poured’ by ‘protesters’ onto the A8 and A720 on 23 August 2010.
On Monday 23 August, the Lothian & Borders Police Press Office at Fettes issued two press releases (3) which accused the ‘protesters’ of spilling an oil-like substance on the A720 and the A8. A descriptive account of the alleged oil slick was followed by a condemnation of protesters for this ‘extremely reckless and dangerous act’ in a quotation from a police spokesperson. This condemnation was echoed in verbal statements to the press.(4)
No evidence was given in either of the press releases to justify this link and the Lothian & Borders Police have still not demonstrated that this incident was related to the activities of protesters. However, the Lothian & Borders Police saw fit to publically condemn ‘protesters’ without evidence, suspects, arrests or a trial.
This press strategy has both criminalised people attending the Climate Camp at Gogarburn based on conjecture, and irresponsibly publicised these allegations to the press. This has amounted to a smear campaign against Climate Camp on the grounds of an unsubstantiated implication that ‘many members of the public (were put) at risk’ by ‘protesters’. The lack of due process and evidence behind these public accusations represents a violation of the responsibility of the police to behave with fairness, integrity and impartiality toward the public.
The inappropriate conduct of Lothian & Border Police in these press releases and in statements to the press has caused reputation damage and distress to both the Climate Camp and to those attending the camp by implicating the organisation in activity which endangers the public. This has been further amplified by the press coverage generated by the Lothian & Borders Police’s press releases. A selection of press stories which reported on the police’s association of the alleged oil spill with climate activists can be found below (5).
Climate Camp therefore demands an apology from the Lothian and Borders Police Gold Command of Operation Octave regarding the public condemnation of ‘protesters’ linked with the Camp for Climate Action for the alleged incident on the A8 and A720 in press releases and press statements on the 23 August 2010, pre-empting any arrest, charge or conviction.
We further are requesting full disclosure of any information regarding this incident and its connection with protesters, including draft police press releases, gold command logs, silver command logs, bronze command logs, police notebooks/PDAs of officers at the scene, communication between Lothian and Borders Police (including the police press office) and City of Edinburgh council, communication between Lothian and Borders Police (including the police press office) and Lothian buses and any lab reports conducted on the oil-like substance. We will be submitting a Freedom of Information request to this effect under the Freedom of Information Act.
We look forward to your response,
(3) Climate Camp Update, Lothian and Borders Police 1200hrs, 23/08/10
Climate Camp – round up of today’s activity, Lothian and Borders Police, 23/08/10
(4) ‘Worrying escalation’ in activities of RBS climate protesters
Scotsman, 24 August 2010, Police face picking up the tab for protests
Daily Record, 23 August 2010, Climate change protesters slammed for pouring oil
Herald, 24 August 2010, Police boss hits out as bill for RBS protests set to top £100,000
Herald, 25 August 2010, Charges against nine of 14 climate change protesters are droppedThe Sun, 24 August 2010, RBS Rioters Battle Cops
STV, 24 August 2010, RBS staff stay away as Gogarburn clear up begins
Evening Standard, 24 August 2010, 12 arrested after bank climate demo
A direct response to Alan Cochrane
This article is written as a direct response to Alan Cochrane’s piece titled “Supporters of Climate Camp action are ‘useful idiots’” which appeared in The Daily Telegraph on 23 August.
Alan begins his charmingly reactionary article by taking the liberty of renaming ‘activists’ as ‘useful idiots’, and later adapting the more politically correct term, ‘nutters’. I must concede to being a Climate Camp-supporting ‘nutter’ myself: I love to camp, I want to help prevent runaway climate change from occurring, and as someone who enjoys foraging for food all year round, nuts are certainly a rare and welcome find this time of year.
Alan’s scathing tone should provide a pleasing experience for any activist in the green movement. The Suffragettes were female activists for equal rights who were initially labelled ‘Suffragettes’ by the Daily Mail newspaper as a way of belittling them, and I wouldn’t repeat the use of lexicon applied to black activists in America used during and post slavery. Such earnestly derisive opposition across the mainstream media of a necessary and non-violent movement only reminds me that Climate Camp – ‘so-called’, Alan says, as he further struggles to distinguish fact from hearsay- is on the right path.
However, I do have a bone to pick with Alan’s claim that Climate Camp’s campaign-focus on RBS does not show ‘common sense’. If we are ‘useful idiots’ for responding to potentially catastrophic climate change, then what should we call the main perpetrators of the damage?
Tar sands are deposits of sand and clay that are saturated with bitumen and require large amounts of energy and water to extract and process them into useable oil. Many environmental organisations, as well as Climate Camp, argue that by funding tar sands extraction, the Royal Bank of Scotland invests in environmental destruction on a mass scale. No less than five reports have been written on the impact of tar sands extraction on the environment in the last five years.
The cost of the current tar sands extraction in Canada is immense. The process produces ‘tailings’, which are a mixture of sand, water, clay, silt, hydrocarbons and toxic chemicals that are left as massive lake deposits, as there is no way of disposing of the toxic mix they hold. These lakes are so large that they can be seen from space by the naked eye: the Environmental Defence report The Report contains some striking images demonstrating this, as well as detailed information on toxic aquatic pollution, unexplained cancer clusters in local populations, and increasing problems of air pollution in Canada.
In addition to this, tar extraction has led to the displacement of indigenous people and deforestation on a mass scale: tar sands deposits currently stretch over 138,000 square km of primary boreal forest.
A detailed review by Friends of the Earth titled Tar sands – fuelling the energy crisis reports that:
- ‘Tar sands production in Canada has resulted in serious damage to local communities and the environment, including destruction of the boreal forest and increased pollution that has impacted on the health and livelihoods of the First nations communities’
- ‘Tar sands generates on average 3 to 5 times more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than conventional oil’
- ‘Canada is currently the only country where tar sands are being commercially exploited, but expansion is underway, with…exploration or planned in Jordan (Shell), Russia (Shell), Republic of Congo (Eni), Venezuela (Repsol), and Madagascar (Total). A bitumen licensing round has also been mooted recently for Nigeria’
- ‘Open cast mining techniques used to extract shallower resources have led to creation of huge lakes or “tailings ponds” for storing toxic waste matter, for which there is no long term solution’.
Page 7 of the review also shows a striking photograph of tailings ‘seeping into the surrounding watershed’, which is one of the many problems with attempting to store them indefinitely in large quantities.
A report by several environmental groups including Greenpeace and People & Planet called Cashing in on Tar Sands: RBS, UK banks and Canada’s “blood oil” explains why tar sands extraction is so expensive, and that the perpetrators are dependent on project or corporate finance which currently comes from ‘the three main high street banks in the UK (Barclays, HSBC, and the Royal Bank of Scotland)’.
Cashing in on Tar Sands reveals that RBS loaned more than $7.5 billion to extraction companies between 2007 and 2009, and has underwritten corporate debt and equity worth nearly $2.5 billion with tar sands related companies. The report goes on to outline a detailed request to reduce the escalating environmental problems in Canada, including practical measures that can be taken such as calling for a moratorium on finance for ‘unconventional oil’.
Although the Royal Bank of Scotland is not the only investor in tar sands extraction, the reason for Climate Camp’s focus on RBS this year has is due to the fact that 84% of the bank is owned by the UK taxpayer, which means that the general public has (or should have) a say in what RBS does- this is known as public accountability.
Cashing in on Tar Sands exposes complex details of the loans; the report contains tables showing finance made to companies engaged in tar sands between 2007-09, corporate debt, underwriting and equity underwriting: ‘The data shows that RBS led underwriting for over $7.5 billion in loans to tar sands related companies, over five times more than Barclays and over eleven times more than HSBC.’
Alan claims that people who support Climate Camp’s actions are ‘supporting a malign cause in the mistaken belief’, but he fails to reveal what this ‘cause’ and ‘belief’ entails. From where I’m sitting, it is common sense to target RBS to me. Indeed, a cinching point for the general public may be the fact that RBS is the UK bank that received the most public money during the financial crisis of 2008, meaning that the public owns 84% of the bank’s shares, and yet Alan does not seem to be aware of this.
Part of the reason for Climate Camp and other environmental groups zoning in on RBS’s actions in recent years is due to the fact that RBS has repeatedly failed to respond to criticism from the public. In May 2009 RBS came last in a league table of consumer banks in Ethical Consumer magazine, and ‘in September 2009, in conjunction with Oil and Gas UK, RBS sponsored, and provided a key speaker for seminars on how to revitalise the oil and gas industry in wake of the financial crisis.’ In December 2009 thirty public figures, including Andrew Smith MP, called on Alistair Darling to clean up RBS, which we have yet to see take place.
Other publications detailing the local and global impact of tar sands extraction include Unconventional Oil – Scraping the bottom of the barrel? by WWF and Dirty Oil – how the tar sands are fuelling the global climate crisis by Greenpeace Canada.
Back to Alan Cochrane the so-called reporter (to replicate his own use of lexicon), then, his argument that it is against comment sense to put pressure on RBS, the people’s bank, lacks understanding of the fundamental issues underlying RBSs actions, and the environmental impact of tar sands extraction.
Alan continues to defend RBS by vaguely suggesting that people cannot actually protest oil investment because, admittedly (and thanks for pointing this out, Mr Cochrane), we are all dependent on oil use. (I’ll leave that ‘complex argument’ as a treat for Monbiot to unravel). He also defends RBS because they will not be able to pay the UK taxpayer back without ‘making successful investments’. However, in late 2009 a group of investor organisations stated in a letter to the Senate that tar sands are a ‘risky investment’, and the Greenpeace report BP and Shell: Rising Risks in Tar Sands Investments states their concern that ‘the risks are significant for BP and Shell shareholders, and that investors should question the companies more deeply on their tar sands strategies and call for greater transparency regarding the assessment of the mid to long term viability of these projects. Investors should call for full disclosure of the risks involved in the tar sands strategy in a carbon constrained world and the development of new tar sands projects should be halted’.
Meanwhile, according to Cashing in on Tar Sands, ‘An investigation by The Guardian showed that in the first six months following the bank’s initial recapitalisation in October 2008, RBS has been involved in loans worth nearly £10 billion in oil, coal and gas companies – a quarter of the total amount of public funds put into RBS at that point’. Does this seem at all reckless to you?
Next, Alan asks in his article why police didn’t leave protesters glued to a bridge over the A8. This is possibly the best idea he has offered us yet (albeit unintentionally), as in my own opinion protestors left glued to the bridge for a long period of time in self-deprecating celebrity style might have actually been able to harness the short-term memory of the mainstream media, and cultivated some actual interest in what the protesters were protesting (note to Alan: RBS and tar sands investment).
Regarding Alan’s accusation that protesters fail to ‘mention’ certain points that he has actually thought up himself as being important, perhaps there would be evidence of these points if Mr Cochrane has actually visited Climate Camp himself and spoken to some of protesters there, instead of lifting a little information from the statement about RBS on the Climate Camp website, and failing to pick it apart successfully. Alan continues his rant against these supposed unnamed points that Climate Camp have apparently not considered by suggesting that another reporter’s ‘detailed account of how ordered everything is’ in the Climate Camp amounts to nothing- unlike the very organised and well-prepared nature of his article, evidently.
Choose not to marvel at it if you will, but if you did actually visit the camp yourself and see the organic site come together, with people communally erecting marquees and kitchens, assembling compost loos, scribbling last-minute signs regarding last-minute alterations, dealing with plumbing issues, organising tents for Media and for Legal business, erecting workshop spaces and a space for music and a Tranquillity tent for people to rejuvenate in (and for anyone who might have taken Cochrane too seriously), as well as people preparing and serving meals together, cleaning up together, and camping without conflict in an occasionally-wet and constantly police-surrounded field for a week, making decisions concerning Camp matters via consensus (which is more than our politicians are able to achieve) – if you have seen this and really not appreciated the coming-together and self-governing of people of all ages, including children and office workers, teachers and builders, artists and families, then fine. But I concede to differ, and I ask that you at least visit the welcoming Camp first, before passing judgement on it.
And I certainly wouldn’t recommend writing a snide article about Climate Camp prior to doing so.
Alan attempts to twist his twisted tale into a defence for the general public in relation to ‘taxpayer-funded policemen’ who are apparently ‘caught in the middle’ of the conflict he wishes to create. However if he had actually approached the site himself he would have in fact found the police to be overall smiling, friendly, talkative and happy. Not only did we share hugs with various policemen and women surrounding the Camp and at some of the direct actions that took place in Edinburgh, I was actually told more than once and unprompted by several policemen that they enjoyed policing the Climate Camp because it was a nice break for them from the regular policing of the streets – and I witnessed this myself in the form of two angry locals who shouted abuse at us including that age-old statement, ‘go home’- the police present immediately assured us protesters to ‘take no notice’ of the two men, and then took them aside to explain that we had a right to be here. One local newspaper (I failed to note the name, having already looked away in disgust) actually ran the front page headline ‘protestors: go home’, so it seems to me that the local tabloids caused more trouble for the police than us protesters.
Camp for Climate Action is a non-violent protest movement, and the 2010 Edinburgh camp was the 5th of its kind, however there have been no cases of violence by protesters in its history. Alan seems keen to dub this growing peaceful movement as ‘violent’ in view of police who are supposedly ‘vilified if they act against law-breakers’, as if police violence at the Kingsnorth Climate Camp in Kent in 2009 was acceptable- and I won’t even mention Ian Tomlinson. Also, much of what was reported by the media regarding the Kingsnorth Camp at the time turned out to be lies.
Alan’s high-profile attack goes on to state that RBS investment and all that it entails ‘is not the UK’s most popular concern at the moment’. However the Kingsnorth Six changed government policy with their activism, which seems to suggest that the UK needs more radial action in order to help keep the legal system up to date in regards to climate change.
I’d like to thank Alan for pointing out that the Edinburgh-based direct actions were not already about high-profile issues. The protesters had clearly worked hard to create a high profile surrounding RBS and tar sands investment because they thought that it receives enough media attention already. I think a certain commentator may lack understanding of the fundamental reasons for any protest or media campaign.
Cochrane does, however, concede on one point. RBS, he writes, have been very naughty boys: ‘banks such as RBS have not exactly been innocent in helping to deepen this country’s economic doom’. In reality, the real effects of the current cuts that are taking place have yet to really reach the general public, yet Alan seems to think that the £20 billion of UK taxpayer money that went to RBS in 2008 is ‘nothing of which they should be ashamed’?
Alan concludes that supporters of Climate Camp should hang their heads in shame. He argues that the Campers are outside of the law because they have no effect on in what happens in the UK, and also that they should be ignored by the law- he cannot fathom why ‘the police bothered to remove them’, while also condemning the protestors for speaking out about an issue that he admits has little attention and concern in the UK ‘at the moment’.
There’s only one conclusion I can draw from his confusion. Alan Cochrane, Telegraph commentator, promotes protecting banks that we the UK public own, from our own scrutiny. He is happy for the immense environmental destruction to continue in Canada because people drive cars and read newspapers that have been delivered by cars, which apparently means that we should never criticise anything, lest we realise our own hypocrisy. I could adopt more of Alan’s lingo and call his arguments daft and deluded, his agenda a ‘malign cause’ based on a ‘mistaken belief’, but as I have provided a breakdown of a complex issue due to the need to clarify the other side to Alan’s arguments, there is really only one word left to respond to Mr Cochrane.. He is the real idiot in this discussion- though he has, admittedly, been useful with his contributions to this article, which is a direct response to his phenomenal idiocy.
Zion Lights
Good, bad and simply ridiculous: post-camp commentary around the web
As Climate Camp 2010 winds down, there’s been plenty of debate happening online. So here’s a quick tour of some of the articles which are doing the rounds.
Starting with some light amusement, we have Alan Cochrane in the Telegraph calling us ‘useful idiots’. He blunders past the reality of climate change and the role fossil fuel companies take in perpetuating it, preferring to brand us ‘nutters’, ‘arrogant’ and ‘unashamed apologists for illegality’. (That last one at least is true!) Sadly Alan doesn’t really contribute anything useful, but it makes for some entertaining reading if you try to ignore the fact that we are talking about the biggest threat humanity has ever faced.
Staying with the mainstream media, well known protest photojournalist Marc Vallée says Climate Camp is restricting freedom of speech through our policies on press access to our working camp. This may ring bells with those who remember the Heathrow days; John Vidal came out with a similar article back in 2007. While we understand photojournalists have a job to do and access policies are a frustration to them, it’s really not that hard to see the reasons for them.
During the camp, it is our home. Yes, the land legally belongs to RBS but for a week we took it from them. On it we cooked, worked, debated, socialised, lived out our personal lives, and of course planned actions. We understand the camp is of interest to the press and want to provide access for them, but they have to understand it is also our home for a week. RBS were not inviting journalists into their boardrooms or staff kitchens, either.
In the ‘blogosphere’ a number of campers have been sharing their personal reactions to the camp. Sophie Lewis makes ‘a case for the Camp for climate action‘, Jack writes a huge article titled ‘The Mighty Mighty Climate Camp‘ and Dominic Rowland chips in with ‘Homage to Caledonia‘. These articles cover a wide range of areas so I won’t try to summarise, but whilst they are written from the perspective of supporting Climate Camp, they also contain insightful critique about how we could be better and more effective as a movement.
Over at Indymedia Scotland, camper Harry Giles posted an article called ‘Climate Camp Criticism: Onwards!‘ Again he makes a number of important points about how we need to improve, but explains how this year’s camp changed him from feeling ‘cynical and disillusioned’ to ‘inspired and optimistic’.
At A Daisy Through Concrete, Danny Chivers is writing a series titled ‘Five things you didn’t know about the Edinburgh Climate Camp‘. We’ve already talked about the supposed ‘oil spill’ here, but Danny gives a thorough analysis on why it’s a ridiculous slur. (Also check out our article, published today on the Guardian Environment Blog.)
Finishing as we started on a light note, Guardian journalist James Randerson published an absolute hatchet job with ‘Twitter backfires for Climate Camp‘. In it he wrangled a melodramatic article out of three Twitter users who posted abusive comments about the camp. James even managed to find one with links to far-right fascist group, the English Defence League. Amelia, one of our tweeters, gives a perspective on her blog.
Have you read any interesting and/or laughable articles about the camp? Let us know in the comments!
Update on yesterday’s actions and *that* oil spill
So the day of mass actions has passed and there’s a useful list of what happened in this round-up blog post as well as loads of inspring and informative films over at climate camp tv.
There’s been plenty of debate (and mud-slinging) on the blog with the passionate arguments of outraged “law abiding taxpayers” being tackled by those who believe the protection of the planet is paramount and that the usual suspects of capitalism and the government are part of the problem, rather than the solution.
One particular issue that has caused outrage has the been ‘oil on the road’ story that appeared yesterday morning so it’s probably worth setting out Climate Camp’s position on this to hopefully clarify the situation.
The long and short of it is that having asked around, the Climate Camp media team don’t know anything about it and as of yet no one has taken responsibility for it. Furthermore, Lothian and Borders Police’s new release regarding yesterday’s actions does not directly connect the oil spill with Climate Camp. Read carefully and you’ll see that the paragraph about the oil spill makes no connection to the Camp, but rather passively states the Police’s involvement in dealing with a spill. The connection is implied with it being in a press release about the Camp but there’s no actual evidence presented to support this.
While some of the comments to the blog have suggested that the police claimed they traced the oil back to the Camp there has yet to be an official statement from the police on this and again no evidence presented.
People familiar with the way the police have handled Climate Camp and movements for social change in the past will be aware that a tactic often used by the police is to try to discredit us.
For example, ahead of the Climate Camp at Heathrow in 2007 police told the media that activists were planning on issuing bomb hoaxes to disrupt travel which wasn’t true.
Similarly the police told media that weapons were being confiscated from activists at Kingsnorth power station in 2009. Of course, these “weapons” included dangerous items such as toothbrushes, bike locks, solar charger cables and other every-day items (see the video above for more).
As ever, the media can be used to reveal the truth as well as conceal it.
More great content from climatecamptv
If you want to get a flavour of the kind of things that go on at Climate Camp, meet some of the people taking part and find out more about the real issues that don;t get reported in the corporate media then you should definitely check out climatecamptv.
You can find them by clicking here.
Monday 23rd August: Action round-up
The Climate Camp media team have issued a press release providing an overview of the main actions that have taken place today.
Importantly, the media team have expressed bewilderment as to police claims of oil being spilled on a main road, and have no knowledge who was responsible for it if the incident did take place.
The Trojan Pig challenges RBS and Cairn Energy
More action from today… the Trojan Pig challenges RBS and Cairn Energy
Climate Camp 2010 Day 1: VIDEO
Nice video round-up of Climate Camp Day 1 courtesy of You and I Films.
Leading journalist speaks out against RBS’s “environmental vandalism”
Ian Fraser is an award-winning and financially-savvy journalist who has reported on the economic turmoil in The Sunday Times, Financial Times, BBC News, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Independent on Sunday, the Herald and the Sunday Herald.
In a post on his personal blog Fraser writes eloquently and insightfully about the destruction caused by RBS and highlights the bank’s lies it has been using to try to hide its involvement in scandalous and destructive fossil fuel projects around the globe.
Specifically, Fraser links to the US-based charity Rainforest Action Network that has shown that “of the $15 billion of funding provided by RBS to the energy sector since its October 2008 bailout, only $83m went to alternative energy – that’s less than one per cent.“
Fraser also blogs that while some people “resent the climate camp, dismissing the protestors as a bunch of misdirected middle-class students and wastrels with too much time on their hands [...]Much of this knitpicking misses the bigger picture.”
We think so too and Fraser goes on to tell those who aren’t Climate Camp supporters why. He writes:
“I admire the climate campers for having the balls to challenge the (almost certainly unsustainable) economic and environmental status quo – and believe they have picked a good target in RBS. As well as becoming the world’s biggest purveyor of subprime-infected timebombs (CDOs etc) under chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin, the bank also became the world’s leading funders of fossil fuels and carbon-intensive industries including Albertan tar sands.”
Good on yer Ian. Hopefully see you down at Gogarburn tomorrow for the mass action.