After receiving numerous e-mails about their “protest” marches and sending numerous responses (all unanswered) from the Campaign Against Climate Change saying I would like some dialogue about making their work more effective and explaining that symbolic action doesn’t work, I decided to phone them up.
Initially, I thought they would be willing to talk, but the guy in the office wouldn’t let me say anything useful, talking loudly over me every time I said something he didn’t feel comfortable with, then he cut me off. He then cut me off twice more, once after putting me on hold for 5 minutes, so I decided to record the call, which you can listen to here.
The identity of the person at CampaignCC is not revealed, but I know he was listening because when I told him my “jokes” (sorry, they were terrible) and said I was on mute, his typing stopped.
Link below: Enjoy and pass on.
No climate campaign so far has led politicians or the public to take appropriate action on climate change either by working inside or outside the system. If you have some solutions, why not share them on one of your sites.
Some people write emails, some go on demonstrations, some join transition movements, some close down power stations.
Jonathan Neale (a campaigncc volunteer) says often that demonstrations don’t change anything but they do change the people that go on them. And having read “Why The Public Can Change (Conditions Apply)”, i think you would probably agree that that is an important step.
John
another occasional volunteer for campaigncc
[posted on behalf of John Ackers]
John
There is nothing at all wrong with changing the public’s attitude to climate change — I have no issue with this at all, and I too have attended a number of marches in the past. Time has taught me, though, that marches are sublimation for the masses (as I describe in Chapter 14 of A Matter Of Scale) and end up making people feel they have achieved something when they haven’t. The attitude of Campaign CC is bizarre, to say the least: debate I welcome; but stonewalling is something approaching psychosis, with an issue this important.
If you want solutions, go to the A Matter Of Scale web site (http://www.amatterofscale.com) where you can find plenty – you might not like them, though.
Keith