The Climate Column

Win, lose and draw

Patrick Dunne

It has been a very strange couple of months. November began in rain and hope on the streets of Glasgow. 120,000 people marching, singing and making a good nuisance of themselves in an effort to draw attention to and action from world leaders and their meagre agreements at COP26. Make no mistake— as I said in my last column, the agreements from Glasgow do little to address the economic factors driving the extraction of fossil fuels and the destruction of the natural world. They do even less to address the gross inequities and injustices that are essential to our destructive global economic and energy systems. The agreements failed to make meaningful progress; in fact, they were shameful in their omissions regarding the losses and damaged finances of developing countries. It was, as expected, a disaster for global frontline communities and a talking shop, a festival of blah, blah, blah (as Greta termed it) for the rich countries to agree to business as usual, as usual.

But amid it all there was inspiration, community, leadership, joy, beauty and courage— just not in the Blue Zone. Elsewhere, networks were built and friendships were made among activists from all over the world that will outlast governmental commitments worth less than the paper they were written on. The COP26 Coalition events were outstanding, and many groups gathered to put on brilliant workshops in genuine community spaces across the city, from animal lantern parades to teach-ins and everything else in between. All was not dark and grey, but much was sad as we saw fragile and limited opportunities disappear down the Clyde with the winter rains.

I was at the Stop Cambo event on Sunday the 7th November. Along with many others, I painted an oil barrel, cheered speeches and hoped against hope that my tiny contribution would join those of many others and create enough pressure somewhere to tease someone away from supporting the terrible proposed Cambo oilfield. Well, bloody hell if it didn’t work! Was it my message to Shell, scrawled on the side of an oil barrel that tipped the scale? Probably not, but the scale was tipped regardless, and on 2nd December Shell pulled out of Cambo. As I write this, on the 10th December, the project has been put on hold (Mathers, 2021). I have never seen a policy put in place that has meaningfully restricted the profits or business of the fossil fuel industry— and this is certainly not that, I'm afraid —but I had also never seen a company like Shell take a step away from a big project such as this before. Shell said: the economic case for investment in the North Atlantic project was “not strong enough” (BBC News). We say: protest works, that people power creates change, and that the edifice of an outdated and terribly destructive industry is beginning to crack. Either way, their backpedalling is a real cause for celebration. But it is not over. Shell has not fallen. In fact, the rotters have just been given permission to begin ‘seismic blasting’ in whale breeding grounds off the coast of South Africa (Wilkins, 2021). So we continue, and stand in solidarity with our friends in South Africa against that project.

Now the British Government is passing laws that will restrict and criminalise protests and threaten the very democratic rights that we are fortunate to be able to wield in the face of corrupt politicians and ecological criminals such as Shell (Monbiot, 2021). The Home Secretary has launched a barrage of laws to outlaw the sort of mass protests that have so energised environmental activist communities, and that have produced XR, Fridays for Future and Black Lives Matter. These laws will limit and attack the same sorts of protests and resultant movements that we have seen rise up against institutional racism and misogyny. Hopefully, people will not be too deterred, and further protests will erupt in support of migrants, refugees and those stripped of their citizenship as a result of the Home Secretary’s other sweeping new legislation on immigration and borders (Dunt, 2021). Mass protests are annoying and disruptive. They also work. If they didn’t, the government wouldn't be making them illegal.

References

BBC News. ‘Shell pulls out of Cambo oil field development.’ 2nd December 2021. bbc.co.uk/news

Dunt, I. (2021) ‘Opinion: Priti Patel’s new powers in the Borders Bill will create a secondtier category of British citizenship’ in i, 7th December 2021. inews.co.uk/opinion

Monbiot, G. (2021) ‘Opinion: As we turn away, Boris Johnson is grabbing more power. Where is the opposition?’ in The Guardian, 8th December 2021. theguardian.com/commentisfree

Mathers, M. (2021) ‘Cambo oilfield: Work on controversial site paused after Shell pulls out’ in The Independent, 10th December 2021. independent.co.uk/climate-change/news

Wilkins, B. (2021) ‘'We Won't Stop Fighting,' Vow South African Activists After Judge OKs Shell Seismic Blasting at Sea Common Dreams’ in Common Dreams, 6th December 2021. commondreams.org/news