The centre point of the camp and the power station eyesore of Kingsnorth
Greeted by a friendly Climate Camp chap who stopped me to remind me not to give my name to the police I couldn’t help but feel a bit like a spy. Marching towards the police check point, caught a little off guard, “do you need to check my bits?” I asked the policeman. Met with a rather shocked expression, “er my bag,” I muttered. I watched in discomfort as my perfectly squashed belongings in my rucksack were fished through and my tactically packed tent was unravelled. After a touch of small talk and a pink form filled out with my pretend signature to prove I had been searched we were all done and off I went.
The London camp entrance
I struggled up the hill, stumbled over a sty and I had made my mission. The sun was out and people were cheerfully frolicking in the long grass. With the site being divided into districts, I made my way to meet the rest of Amelia’s troops in the London campsite. I arrived in good timing, dinner was on the way and the Londoners were gathered in the main tent. Sparkly fairy lights, sofas and even a few posters up on the walls, I was really impressed by the homely, civilised feel of the place. A vegan meal was served, we gobbled our spicy feast under the clear nights sky, gazed at the stars with a bottle of wine and chewed the cud with some fellow campers.
The tent which kept it all running smoothly
One of the neighbourhood tents
Scotland and Newcastle’s patch
The Animal Rights tent providing workshops and advice throughout the day
My fellow interns Charles and Derv striking a pose in front of something pretty
The entrance to the London tent
Dinner time outside the London tent
An early rise on Tuesday, we were up and ready by 8.30am for our muesli feast served on a plate with a fork (slightly out of camping practice, we didn’t think to bring our own tableware). Kited out with the timetable of events we headed our chosen workshops. Terms such as Capitalism take me back to my days of GCSE history, my teacher dear Mr Mcqueen, a chirpy Scottish chap he may have been, but he always filled me with little inspiration. As Derv reveals in her blog, this was far different and a great introduction to understand the state of affairs which block our ability to alter the state of global warming.
Inside a workshop space
This stood me in good stead for the Plan B workshop on Development Aid and Big Oil. Entitled Robin Hood in reverse, we were exposed to the unquestioned on goings of our UK governments Department for International Development (DFID) and the World Bank, querying where exactly our tax money goes within development aid. A misleading tag indeed as Plan B speaker Mel reveals, this funding is in fact filling the pockets of large corporate oil companies, which already make steaming profits.
Oil extraction, not only damages the environment with increasing carbon emissions and contaminating local water supplies, but is also creating regional wars concerning oil sources. The pipeline which runs from Kazakhstan to Georgia put forward by BP in 1999 is a prime example; small countries receive no benefits and are being forced to become more dependant on the North.
With many criticisms of human rights from across the globe concerning the Chad-Cameroon extraction responsible by Exxon (USA) and Esso (UK), the World Bank and DFID were finally investigated as to their source of money and where it ends up. DFID and the World Bank shrugged off any claims of violations, no recommendations have been accepted, despite the fact that the Extractive Industries Review 2004 recommended oil and gas extraction was to be phased out and to build more reliance on coal. Needless to say, this funding is ongoing despite Plan B’s current efforts of petitions and lobbying with MP’s to stop using our money for this cause.
Similar concerns were raised from Richard Whittell with his Wednesday workshop Dodgy Development: the UK government and India. Having joined climate camp straight after a two month research trip around the poorest states of India, Whittell had been collaborating with a filmmaker to research an informative film on DFID’s funding in India, in terms of where it is, or isn’t going. Our government has pumped £1 billion of development aid into India in the last five years, with an estimated further £850 million in the next three. Although the purpose of this money is to help the Indian government, £60 million has been funded under the tag ‘rural livelihoods’ programs, which promote the cultivation of biofuels in villages such as Orissa. The schemes funded by DFID target poor farmers, encouraging villages to use their common and degraded land to make jatropha.
Furthermore, it is DFID that are responsible for the privatisation of India by bribing them with money. Services such as public transport now have a major restriction on business freedom. From this point onwards as the documentary film insights, many more poverty stricken villages are living with extremely unstable and unsafe electricity sources. Worse still, some can no longer afford access to electricity as foreign private companies have dramatically raised their charges (some slums have received bills of up to £300 when their earning for a day is £1). Similarly, the resettlement policy within which money is offered to landowners to make space for fossil fuel extraction leaves very little hope for a large proportion of those living in the poorest villages as many do not own their land. With future plans to target West Mengal and Behar, questions need to be asked on an international level. Within the film, when asked how to move on from this severe deterioration, the people of India simply ask to leave it to them: to stop accessing their fossil fuels and allow them to govern their own country. We need to put public pressure on the DFID to make change happen. Not only is this hugely damaging to India but also, globally, more extraction means more carbon emissions and thus a heightened chance of dramatic global warming effects.
The recycled boat was not just a great place for the younger campers to play, but a meeting point for the proficiently planned protest route by raft to Kingsnorth on Saturday
A water filtration unit
Renewable energy sources at the camp
Rocket stoves cooking London’s dinner
An inspirational (if not slightly intellectual) workshop with Oliver Tickell (author of Kyoto 2) detailed the realism of our changing world. Introducing his talk with the idea that Kyoto agreement will cease to exist in 2012, the truth of our effects on the environment hit home hard. With regulations currently set on carbon emissions on a global scale, what will be put into place and agreed post 2012? As his talk, together with the practice of sustainable living at the camp demonstrated, we are more than capable of realistically changing the way we live and the effects. Funding needs to be put into renewable energy, which is more than achievable as the array of wind turbines and solar panels at the camp portrays. Together with this, we need to conserve our forestry and biodiversity.
A young lady outside the Bicycology tent where you can borrow bikes to nip to the shop off the camp site
A young lad shows me the art of playing a Gameboy powered by a bicycle
From lawn tango to graffiti workshops to a vegan bakery and cinema, there was much to do and see at the camp. A keen bicyclist in my college days, I dipped into a spot of reading up at the Bicycology tent. A collective of cyclists which deal with environmental and social responsibility, Bicycology work to make change through the use of push bikes. Recycling tetra packs to make wallets, advice on how to adapt your two wheels to suit commuting needs and ideas as to how to use cycling to support climate awareness; these guys have even cycled to protested at the 2005 G8 meeting. Utilising our bikes is just one of the ways we can really reduce carbon emissions. As Amelia will tell all us Londoners, the tubes take far longer than her on her wheels!
Crowds gather round the vegan bakery for some free cakes
Amelia, Sarah, Emma, Mel and Michelle resting in the sun after lunch
Our eyes were certainly opened during our week at Climate Camp. From rocket stoves to cook our vegan meals to bicycles generating power; we are easily capable to adapt our comfortable way of life to be more beneficial to the environment. We as a society desperate to keep up with fast paced unnecessary consumerist developments from mobile phone upgrades to TV dinners have created a disaster and it will not fade away. All we need to do on an individual basis is take responsibility and a few steps backwards.
There was a great sense of morale and unity at the camp. Indifference to the coverage depicted by some mainstream media and the police, the campers there are self sacrificing individuals who have taken the initiation themselves to alter our state of affairs, for the benefit of you, me and our planet. Renewable energy and sustainable living are well within our grasp. We will be there next year, and so should you!
The completely unnecessary police force on Thursday
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