Tonight:
4°c
Climate change protest in City
Benedict Moore-Bridger20 Mar 2009
CLIMATE change activists who are planning a protest in the City at next month's G20 summit are to begin their demonstration tonight.
More than 1,000 activists are expected to arrive in Bishopsgate for a "weekend of activity" ahead of a plan to camp out for the duration of the convention of world leaders.
The group Climate Camp will spend this evening playing hunting games to familiarise themselves with the area and tomorrow there will be a day-long seminar discussing the problems of carbon trading.
On Sunday, the protesters will hold action-planning meetings involving legal training, direct action training and other planning for 1 April.
At exactly 12.30pm that day - the day before the summit - the group will descend on the European Climate Exchange in Bishopsgate, setting up camp outside the offices for 24 hours of "flashcamping" protest and demonstration.
Their aim is to "transform the financial district, both symbolically and visually, into a physical manifestation of our desired worlds, with wind turbines, tents, and action plans".
It is believed it will be one of the biggest demonstrations yet by the group, which has become notorious for carrying out direct action campaigns protesting against the expansion of Heathrow airport and Kingsnorth power station.
Climate camper Gary Still said: "The Climate Camp is about action, education and sustainability, and that's exactly what we'll be doing in the Square Mile on 1 April.
"The G20 want to get the world back onto the track of endless economic growth, and that will take us careering into the face of runaway climate change."
The protesters blame carbon traders for being complicit in causing environmental problems. The activists' recruitment advert says that "by creating a brain-bending system of carbon pollution licenses, fossil fuel companies and trading firms have found a way to keep on churning out global warming gases and to reap huge windfall profits at the same time".
It adds: "They are speculating with our climate and the very future of life on earth - and our governments are cheering them on. Don't let them get away with it."
On 2 April, as world leaders meet at the ExCel centre in Docklands, tens of thousands of protesters are expected to descend on the City with police planning the biggest street security operation since the May Day riots nine years ago.
More than 5,000 Met and City of London police officers will be deployed to maintain order and protect foreign leaders.
Climate camper Rachel Greenthorpe said: "We're going to be in Bishopsgate rather than the site of the actual G20, because we have a different agenda."
On 28 March, thousands will march through London on the Put People First campaign challenging the G20 on the global financial crisis.
Reader views (19)
I'm all right Jack!!!
That's the attitude that got us in this mess in the first place. Are we in a state of global warming? Is that even the question that needs answering... May be the question we all need to ask ourselves is do we individually put into the planet what we take out of it, the answer to that is surely no. We don't need to live and share a planet based on greed, we all need to make an effort to make this place better for everyone and our future generations.
I'm no scientist and I don't belive any of the press but surely as an individual you cannot deny that recylcling works, that the use of oil is bad and that free energy is a good thing. it's a shame that the most intelligent species on this planet is also the parasite using up all it's resources... they will run out one day... then what?
DON'T BE STUPID.
X
- Tim, London, 27/03/2009 12:45
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It is obvious the world must reduce hydrocarbon consumtion to survive but filling Britain with wind turbines, banning patio heaters, asking us to make a 3 hour journey to work when it takes 25 minutes by car is not the answer. The worlds climate has continually changed for million's of years. The two main issues which need to be addressed if the world is to be saved are to stop the destuction of the rain forests and birth control. However, these issues are to big for the greenies as they find easier to enlist support from the likes of the PC brigade
- Trevn, Abu Dhabi, 21/03/2009 10:38
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Help for Bob - London. Dont trust me, look them up:
“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, who has been called “among the most pre-eminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA..
- Dave Davies, Basingstoke, Hants, 20/03/2009 21:52
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Nice one - I can't wait for this Camp in the city.
These comments are so predicatable...
nah, climate change isn't true
nah, they are middle class
nah, they should pay taxes
nah, my 149 bus is going to be redirected, i'll be late.
nah, it snowed in London - climate change is a con to raise tax.
Upper-crusties of the world unite!
- Jo - London, London, 20/03/2009 21:32
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Another completely pointless protest by Middle-class students who want to think they will make a difference. They do that the city is deserted on the weekend, and even more empty on a Sunday...?
- Jason Eddit, London, 20/03/2009 18:31
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I don't know whom to feel more mad about. The climate protesters who will be disrupting the City when I'm there next month? Or the government and its cronies, who are pushing up our taxes and electricity bills so we can pay for more ineffective wind turbines?
Maybe us ordinary people should organise a third protest against both sides.
- Jools, London, 20/03/2009 16:56
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"more and more respected scientists are backing away from the skewered and misleading date (sic) presented by the pro- Climate Changers."
What respected scientists are these? The IPCC has moved it's stance to 90% certainty that GW is anthropogenic.
The doubters are in the pay of the oil giants and polluters, scientifically illiterate or purely in denial.
- Bob, London, 20/03/2009 16:45
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Perhaps Stephen Rothbart and Nobby Clark should buy a dictionary and look up the difference between weather and climate.
- Paul Mccall, London, 20/03/2009 16:33
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These people are spoilt brats. China produces 25% of global CO2, the UK 2%.
- Michael C, london, 20/03/2009 16:13
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Direct action is all that's left to a population who have been robbed of nearly every freedom on the books. A violent demonstration will be the natural consequence of the treatment we have suffered at the hands of the G20 "leaders". They have brought this upon themselves and I fervently hope the summit is wrecked.
- Neil M., london uk,, 20/03/2009 16:03
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Just one more excuse to create mayhem for ordinary people trying to work. What really makes me angry is that these loafers are allowed to get away with it. Yet again, the minority rules and the majority of working, law abiding, tax paying people are the only ones made to suffer. Where are the police in all this?
- Pp, London, 20/03/2009 15:15
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and they will take away all their rubbish.....clean up the mess......and bottle all the hot air.......
- Martin, london, 20/03/2009 14:22
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The attention-seeking idiots couldn't care less who they inconvenience, or what damage gets done; look at Stansted and Kingsnorth.
Whatever concessions are made will never be enough. If the authorities introduce carbon permits to reduce emissions, they'll demand personal carbon credit cards. When they get carbon rationing, they will want flights and car travel to be banned, and will carry on hollering until they turn us into a deindustrialised third-world country.
- Brian, London, 20/03/2009 13:47
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Climate change protesters are to begin their demonstration 'tonight'.
Will somebody be leaving the lights on for them I wonder?!
- Frank, Home Counties, England., 20/03/2009 13:32
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Stephen from Prague - you took the words right out of my keyboard.
- Nobby Clark, Perth, Scotland, 20/03/2009 13:32
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I do hope that protests like this will stop climate change,had these people been around 20,000 years ago they could have stopped our part of the world turning from scorching arid dessert into a 20 mile thick block of ice over the following 10,000 years.
- Colin, Bristol, 20/03/2009 12:24
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Despite attaempts by the Media to portray the Climate Change as a man-made phenomona as fact, beyond discussion, more and more respected scientists are backing away from the skewered and misleading date presented by the pro- Climate Changers.
As I sit in a Prague that still had snow yesterday, and watched the UK have one if its coldest winters in decades, it seems starnge that no one seems to be organized to protest against the new laws and tax raising initiatives being fostered on us on the basis of flawed and misleading science by this and other Governments. Now that would be news!
- Stephen Rothbart, Prague Czech Republic, 20/03/2009 11:39
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Whatever next? First the greedy bankers and now these people!
- Ken Joralemon, london, UK, 20/03/2009 10:39
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You are climate legends and we here in australia are right up there with you on the dire climate issues.The governments of the world have no right to put future generations in peril just to make coal bucks.
- Robbo, Nimbin nsw AUSTRALIA, 20/03/2009 10:34
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