Comments on: Direct action against climate change

By: Lawrence MacDonald

Lawrence MacDonald — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:10:56 +0000

Thanks to It’s Getting Hot in Here for bringing us this excellent account of direct action in the U.K.– and for your continued excellent reporting on such efforts in the U.S. I have a feeling we in the U.S. could learn a lot from our cousins across the pond.

By: Tony Faber

Tony Faber — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:49:14 +0000

In addition to showy demonstrations, I hope youth activists focus on town meetings and local politics to cut through red tape and get green energy projects moving again. While it’s bad that those in the Vestas plant lost their jobs, the real tragedy there was that there wasn’t an abundance of wind projects ready to go.

By: fling

fling — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:47:35 +0000

We need to adapt. Take a look at this article The Great Transition: http://www.scribd.com/doc/21656220/The-Great-Transition-Navigating-Social-Economic-Ecological-Change-in-Turbulent-Times

By: Bert

Bert — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:51:33 +0000

As a Britisher and close follower of climate activism in the UK, I think “thousands” is a bit high in terms of numbers of people engaged on the issue. It is true that many NGOs, small and large, are very vocal, but for the few direct actions, the rollcall is in the hundreds, and well under a hundred counting full participants. This compares with the several hundred thousand that turned out for marches against the Second Iraq War and Make Poverty History. Moreover, none of these direct actions actually succeeded. Kingsnorth and the Heathrow runway projects were clearly victims of the recession, while the stormings of working coal-fired power stations failed to stop them working even for just an hour.

Meanwhile public opinion polls show concern over climate change falling, the wind power sector has virtually given up building new schemes because so many get rejected by local residents, and the government has twice had to reverse plans for higher taxes on gasoline because of public opposition and street protests.

By: Morgan

Morgan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:48:05 +0000

This is a great piece.

A British film crew followed the Action Factory around for a day as we made our astroturf suits to go to the Bonner and Associates hearing in congress. They thought the whole thing was really funny, but they kept asking questions about why we weren’t trying to ‘tear down the system’ like UK activists.

I tried multiple times to point him to the amazing work of Mountain Justice and Climate Ground Zero, but I think his underlying point rings true: Britain’s very large, broad-based movement is engaging thousands of people in using very ambitious tactics to get right at the heart of dirty energy. Its inspiring.