Plane Stupid kick off Red Lines COP21 direct action

The main road entrance to Heathrow air­port, Lon­don, was blocked by cli­mate change activists for four hours ear­ly on Thurs­day morn­ing, caus­ing a traf­fic tail­back sev­er­al miles long. Three mem­bers of anti air­port expan­sion cam­paign group Plane Stu­pid parked a vehi­cle across both lanes of the inbound tun­nel and locked their bod­ies to it, unfurl­ing a red ban­ner quot­ing David Cameron’s elec­tion promise: “No Ifs, No Buts: No Third Run­way”. David Cameron has promised a deci­sion by the end of the year on whether to build anoth­er run­way at Heathrow.

This action rep­re­sents an ear­ly entry for the Cli­mate Games, send­ing a clear mes­sage to the UK gov­ern­ment that expand­ing avi­a­tion is a no-go for the cli­mate; were it to go ahead the UK would undoubt­ed­ly miss its emis­sions tar­gets as set out under the 2008 Cli­mate Change Act.

Nor will avi­a­tion expan­sion ben­e­fit the major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion or busi­ness­es, as is often claimed. The demand for air­port expan­sion is being dri­ven by rich fre­quent  fly­ers. Last year, less than half of peo­ple in Britain flew. Of those who did, a mere 15% of fly­ers took 70% of our flights. As well as noise and air pol­lu­tion, poor peo­ple are pay­ing the price in droughts, flood­ing and storms so that the rich can cook the plan­et with fre­quent leisure flights. Whilst we might hope that David Cameron might live up to his pre-elec­tion promise — “no ifs, no buts, no third run­way” — we can’t rely on it. Part­ly after being forced to take non-vio­lent dis­obe­di­ent action where all oth­er options were exhaust­ed, we stopped a third run­way before and we’ll stop it again this time too.

#Red­Lines

At the COP21 talks this year in Paris, the theme for the mass day of action on Decem­ber 12th (D12) is Red Lines. These block­ades will rep­re­sent lines that can­not be crossed if we are to stay with­in the 2C rise in glob­al tem­per­a­tures. Fail­ure to stay with­in this thresh­old will take us down a road where even if we reduce emis­sions to zero, feed­back loops will mean that emis­sions will con­tin­ue to rise: cli­mate chaos.

In real­i­ty there are many Red Lines we should not cross, but gov­ern­ments and cor­po­ra­tions seem intent to do so. In the UK this includes the avi­a­tion indus­try, which if it con­tin­ues to grow at its cur­rent rate will by 2050 emit all of the car­bon it is safe for the UK to emit. Beyond this, oth­er red lines that are close to being crossed nation­al­ly include increas­ing uncon­ven­tion­al fos­sil fuel extrac­tion through frack­ing and a government’s ‘dash for gas’ to build pow­er sta­tions rather than renew­ables. Inter­na­tion­al­ly, there are sim­i­lar con­cerns as well as a clear need to stop lig­nite coal min­ing in Ger­many and the Tar Sands in Alber­ta, Cana­da. Whilst there are many such exam­ples of indus­tries that can­not con­tin­ue, over­all the sci­ence dic­tates that the fos­sil fuel indus­try must tran­si­tion to renew­ables and most of the car­bon must be kept in the ground.

Beyond the Paris con­fer­ence

Unlike the cli­mate talks in Copen­hagen, many activists are going to Paris with low expec­ta­tions. We know that the heads of state and busi­ness lead­ers won’t come up with a sat­is­fac­to­ry deal to pre­vent cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe. Nao­mi Klein writes in ‘This Changes Every­thing’ that cli­mate deals always come in sec­ond place to trade deals as cor­po­rate prof­it and per­pet­u­al eco­nom­ic growth are ide­o­log­i­cal­ly untouch­able in our neolib­er­al era. With this in mind, the aim for many activists is to see the Paris talks as a way for us all to net­work between strug­gles and to show on day 12 that if our ‘lead­ers’ won’t do it, then we can stop cli­mate chaos  our­selves. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, with the recent events in Paris, march­es have been banned out of fears over safe­ty, which may mean that our mobil­i­sa­tions might not be as big or as effec­tive as we hoped.

How­ev­er, giv­en that we know that the solu­tions to the cli­mate cri­sis won’t come from the COP, let’s see this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty rather than a prob­lem. Let’s get out and take action wher­ev­er the real #Red­Lines are: the dirty fos­sil fuel indus­tries, the unsus­tain­able, unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic mega-projects. #Cli­mateGames starts tomor­row. In this game we have noth­ing to lose but our fears. We have our whole futures to win. Ask­ing our ‘lead­ers’ to solve our prob­lems has left us with the hottest years on record, year after year.  We are the solu­tion we’ve been wait­ing for.

We are not fight­ing for nature. We are nature defend­ing itself.