gegenstromberlin

Solidarity message from gegenstromberlin to the UK climate camp in Scotland

When climate camp started a few years ago, it had an enormous ripple-effect: from one camp in one field against one coal-fired power plant in the UK, climate camps have now sprung up places as far away from the UK as Ghana, Canada, Russia, New Zealand, Australia, the US – not to forget  the ones closer to home: Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Catalunya, Finland, Sweden, and probably many that we’re forgetting right now. Wow. What an enormous achievement, to inspire so many people in so many countries around the world. Thank you all for that!

And this year, you’re going up against the banks – right on! There’s always the danger that the climate justice movement drifts off into being merely a ‘climate movement’, one that focuses too much on parts per million of some gas or another in the atmosphere, rather than the structural causes of climate chaos: capitalism, and its insane need for infinite growth on a finite planet (also a slogan we learned from folks in the UK!). The second danger is that concerns about climate would become detached from other struggles that are taking place in the context of the economic crisis – struggles against austerity, struggles against work, struggles against the overwhelming power of capital in our lives. By taking on a big bank, and highlighting the multiple interconnections between social crisis, climate crisis, and economic crisis, you’re once again taking the climate justice movement one step forward. For this, too, we send thanks.

So rock on ‘up there’, we’re sending you strength and support, and hope to meet you all soon on the barricades (for example on the 12th of October, the Day of Direct Action for Climate Justice). We also invite you to come to Germany in early November and help us stop a train with nuclear waste that’s supposed to be dumped in the North of Germany.

Solidarische Grüße, gegenstromberlin