If a successful campaign needs a story, then since 2009 the global climate movement has been in deep trouble.

We certainly started off with a great story. I love to tell it to people all the time. Gather round kids, I say to fresh-faced activists and strangers in pubs, listen up – here’s how we changed the world. In the early noughties the UK and Scottish Governments were somewhat interested in climate change, but they were pretty convinced that we didn’t need new legislation to tackle it. “Leave it to me”, said Tony Blair, “the climate is safe as long as we’re in charge”. We didn’t agree, and after a monumental protest, lobby, and direct action campaign the Climate Change Change Act and Climate Change (Scotland) Act were passed with cross-party support in both legislatures. Onwards and upwards. Gordon Brown then created a cabinet level position for Climate Change, a move which remains somewhat unique internationally. With our climate bills in hand, the then minister for Energy & Climate Change Ed Milliband, went to the UN Climate Change Summit at Copenhagen. We’d set the course for the UK, and now we were going to lead the world! (more…)

The laboratory is political - say Mitchell and Webb...

People & Planet volunteers are starting to uncover the hidden connections between research and corporations at our Universities.

Freedom of information requests sent to 17 universities shed light on £50.7 million of funding from the UK’s five biggest oil, weapons, and pharmaceutical companies.

This includes research grants of £5.2 m from oil company BP and £2.7 m from weapons manufacturer BAE Systems. (Reclaim Research study, June 2010)

Interviews with PhD students and academics at Birmingham and Edinburgh tell a story about how this funding is influencing research. One participant said “funding bodies are increasingly looking for immediate, tangible benefits from research”, and another:

“We are being asked to justify the benefit to society [prioritising] more applied research [...] which will tend to be more commercial.” (Reclaim Research study, June 2010)

The increased pressure on researchers to produce marketable research comes at a time when the Government is planning to make historic cuts to University funding. The Government is depending on corporations to fill the funding gap.

This research forms part of the Reclaim Research project which aims to uncover, challenge, and change the ways in which our Universities are working to create profit, instead of striving for truth.

People & Planet started the Reclaim Research project after students voted to “Reclaim Education” at the Forum in Cardiff, 2009.  It’s now entirely run by volunteers in the Reclaim Research Working Group.

What can you do?

• Interested in research and corporate power? You can get the conversation going in your group by showing this brilliant Mitchell and Webb comedy sketch.

• Want to do stuff on research at your uni? Want help or have some ideas? Why not come along to the second Reclaim Research skype chat, 8pm on Sunday 21 November. You’ll need a cheapo microphone and to download Skype (for free) at www.skype.com. Then just add ricjameslander to your contacts.

• If you’re one of the Universities listed, Reclaim Research already has some info about research funding at your Uni. You can discuss this in your local groups by downloading it from here (files correspond with two letter codes in brackets below).  University of Wales, Aberystwyth (Ab); University of St. Andrews (An); University of Bath (Ba); University of Birmingham (Bh); University of Bristol (Br); Cardiff University (Cd); University of Cambridge (Cm); University of Derby (Db); University of Durham (Dh); University of Edinburgh (Ed); Lancaster University (La); University of Loughborough (Lb); University of Leeds (Ld); Oxford Brookes University (Ob); University of Oxford (Ox); University of Sheffield (Sh); University College London (Ul).

Neus Giner Garcia attended the official Transition Network training in North Howe in February. Read about how she got on.

From my own experience, it is not only knowledge that you gain through trainings and gatherings.

I did gain a lot though, the Transition Training at North Howe increased my knowledge in Peak Oil and Climate Change but, most important, the skills in spreading that knowledge. As they say, the knowledge has been there for ages, and so far it is obvious that catastrophic messages do not have the needed impact in terms of behavioural change. The key issue, they say, is to sell the sizzle, not the sausage. The issues of Climate Change and Peak Oil are already dangerous and sad enough for us to keep embittering our lives; the fight back should be, at least, of some fun. How else will be bring people on board?

In this sense, in the training we did look at how to engage people. It is no secret that building a conscious community is at the core of the transition empowering ideas. However, talking about the different techniques and ideas to attract people’s attention and bring them in raised some moral issue: where do the blurred boundaries of manipulation lay? We might want to be wary of behaving as if we had the ultimate truly solution for the dynamics of this world.

Not that I think we are doing this, I think transition gets across, very well indeed, the message that it is an open movement for each community to apply, change and challenge to fit their needs. Nevertheless, I feel in my own behaviour how easy it is to fall off in a patronizing discourse due to the urgency I see in climate action.

But, as I started saying, there is something else beyond all these knowledge and discussions that you get out of any training or gathering…

… you get hope, strength, will; you get this magic sensation of knowing that it is indeed going to work, sooner or later. After some psychological exercises of thanking each other’s presence, visioning the future… I felt an extraordinary good vibration that ensured me that it could not be otherwise: there is no way to stop this positive energy from spreading around and fill even every single speck.

And it is quite funny, because in my rebellious teenager thoughts I always believed that adults were too comfortable in their lives to care about anything at all nor have the energy for it. It is quite comforting to keep being proved wrong.

On the overall, the training did not only fill me with fresh knowledge and skills but with a renewed desire to apply it.

Neus Giner Garcia is Co-convener of Edinburgh University People & Planet Society.

In 2007 People & Planet and Platform launched a campaign for the Royal Bank of Scotland to stop funding fossil fuel extraction and “ditch dirty development”, with groups across the country putting on talks, asking difficult questions at careers fairs, protesting at branches. Various activists including those from the Rising Tide network held a day of action that autumn hitting local press, plastering cash machines, and shutting down several branches. Back then, climate denial was a still valid currency for the bank and that familiar green-wash sheen was only just being cooked up.

Within months they has closed their website “www.oilandgasbank.com”, changed their stance on global warming, signs went up in their branches proclaiming their sustainable policies, and careers fair staff were given lines to say to respond to criticism.

The campaign gathered steam at the 2008 RBS AGM, as Student Unions started changing bank accounts, removing RBS advertising from their premises, and calling for disinvestment.

When the Government bailed out the bank in late 2008 they asked no questions about their investments, and Westminster MPs, prompted by constituent People & Planet and World Development Movement members, started to ask why Government money was going into a bank that was directly eroding Government policies. The UK Treasury was now under the spotlight. A legal challenge was launched about their takeover with backing from Leigh Day & Co solicitors, and during the aftermath of the G20 meeting in London, Pandas made national news “cleaning up” the 2009 AGM, and later the Treasury during the London Climate Camp.

By then, the primarily public owned bank had poured billions into coal and tar sands exploitation, and the campaign was growing. The World Development Movement, Platform and People & Planet were still asking questions about front-line fossil fuel extraction, but Amnesty International was also was calling on the bank to own up to investing in companies causing human rights abuses, and Friends of the Earth Scotland wanted an explanation for its links with companies like Conoco Phillips, poisoning First Nation communities in Canada.

People & Planet joined by scores of others at the RBS Week of Action

This week, standing together with indigenous people of Athabasca, that coalition has become a truly powerful force for change.

Everyone can be proud of their part in this campaign which has taken finance from being a disregarded industry into the spotlight as a true root cause of social and environmental injustice. We look to the summer, with a Climate Camp focused on the bank’s activities, with eager anticipation. This aint over yet.

My last Activist Winds post told of the Edinburgh uni Occupation for Gaza. Well since then the hurricane has continued to spread like that hilarious super-storm in the Day After Tomorrow, with further occupations and protests in St. Andrews, York and Aberdeen.  So we can see which way the wind is blowing: a lot of students are p*ssed off and want militancy and corporate power off campus. (more…)

…to know which way the wind blows (so said Mr. Dylan).  That’s right, you don’t need a weatherman, you need me: this is my first post of Activist Winds, my point source emission-contribution to the activist babble.  And the title of this post (a reference to the militant off-shoot of the 60s US student peace movement) is apt, because we’re told that student unrest is back (The Times).

(more…)

So you’re reading the *new* People & Planet blog huh? Presumably that must mean you’re interested to listen to the ideas and opinions of people around you. Well, perhaps you should give yourself a pat on the back then - because that puts you one step ahead of our beloved Mayor of London. (more…)