We are reaching a turning point on climate change. Activists in many countries have begun to say we need a “Climate Seattle” – something to kick start a global climate movement the way the Seattle protests in December 1999 inspired a new resistance across the world.
But how do we do that? We have a new idea.
The COP (UN climate talks) in Paris in December 2015 is supposed to produce a global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The agreement will start in 2020, and last until at least 2030, and probably until 2035. All the indications are that the agreement will allow for increased emissions, and set the world on course for 4 degrees centigrade of warming. The result will be catastrophes, famines, refugees, and widespread death and killing. The danger is that the climate movement will give up hope after Paris. There is a precedent for this. The Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 were supposed to reach a global agreement. In the run up, most environmental organisations concentrated on lobbying governments for a decent agreement. We had a demonstration of 80,000 people in Copenhagen, and repeated attempts at direct action.
But on the last day of the talks the leaders of the United States, China, South Africa, Brazil and India came up with an agreement that was far worse than the one already in place. Climate activists and environmental organisations were deeply demoralised, and that affected the movement for years. If Paris is Copenhagen Mark II, we will be locked into destructive climate change.
We will have a massive demonstration in Paris.
That will not be enough.
We will have direct action.
That will not be enough.
We need something bigger.
Something that says to the world:
Paris does not accept this. The world does not accept this. We fight on.
We need to make it clear that the people simply cannot and will not allow an agreement that would spell climate catastrophe for humankind. We would prefer by far that the Governments reach an adequate agreement of their own accord in Paris, and fervently hope that they will. But if they do not, then we need to be ready to take whatever action is necessary to ensure that climate catastrophe is avoided. For this reason we hope that at the time of the summit the people of Paris and beyond will be ready to rise up and demonstrate their overwhelming opposition to any agreement which fails to address the problem and avoid climate catastrophe.
We have an idea how to do that. In Bangladesh and India, they have a form of protest called a bandh. The people stop the city for a day. They stop work, they close the shops, they stop the universities and schools, they stop the buses and trains and cars. When they do this in Calcutta, children play cricket in the great avenues of the city. We are not suggesting an occupation of Paris by protestors. We want the people of Paris to take over their own city, for the sake of the planet. We want local street parties in every neighbourhood. If the people of Paris do that, all the world will take note. It could be the beginning of years of climate action, not the end of hope.
It will not be easy to make this happen. The leaders of the big NGOs and unions are unlikely to agree with this strategy immediately. In their hearts they may
want to. But it will seem too radical, and too dangerous. To many people it will seem impossible.
So we have another suggestion: let’s begin with students. Over the next year, we can campaign for the idea in universities. By the summer of 2015 we want everyone to know that the students in Paris will be occupying their universities on Monday 7 December, and on Tuesday they will be dancing out of the colleges onto the streets and asking everyone to join them. With that knowledge by September 2015, we can go to the unions and ask them to join in. But we cannot simply leave that to French students. They will be far more likely to act if they know they are part of action in many countries. So we want to begin now campaigning for university and college occupations in our own countries. We will be doing that in the UK. We invite you to join us in your country.
These are ambitious plans. They may well not work. But climate change is serious, and the leaders of the world are not acting. We must come out of Paris in a spirit ready to carry on the fight for the Earth. The wider and more radical the action we organise in December 2015, the stronger all our spirits will be.
