Happy days at Heathrow

Climate camp: next year we’ll go for longer

Samantha Weinberg

22 August 2007

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A family outing to the climate camp protest

The light was fading as we lugged our gear back and pitched the tent in the ‘Westside’ neighbourhood. The camp was peaceful. We listened to a bicycle-powered CD player, straight out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, before retreating from the rain into the London tent. A beautiful girl with ski goggles on her forehead was dancing on a straw bale to an impromptu band of clarinet and guitar. It was a far cry from the squalid and edgy scenes described in most papers by journalists who had ‘infiltrated’ the camp.

We joined a group sticking handles to the back of hundreds of copies of an extract from the Tyndall Centre’s report into climate change, which the next day we would hold high while marching under the slogan: ‘We are armed ...with peer-reviewed science.’ As I tore pieces of brown tape for a shaven-headed brickie named Andy, he explained that this was the primary aim of the camp: to persuade the wider population to listen to the science, and to make their decisions based upon it.

With the rain falling faster, we went back to our small tent. George Monbiot was brushing his teeth in the light from the runway while a baby cried quietly nearby. We zipped ourselves in, and lay on our thin mats listening to the planes.

Climate Camp for a day was fun, and in many ways inspiring. Next year, we’ll go for longer. But as a Mad Max vision of a future after climate change, I found it terrifying. Yet that’s what life could be like if we continue to block our ears to what the science tells us is happening as a result of our carbon profligacy.

I don’t want to leave ‘the system’ forever. I don’t want to give up hot baths and flushing loos and television and T-bone steak. But I am perfectly happy with recycled loo paper and low-energy light. I can do without that second holiday, without the tumble dryer and blueberries in winter. That’s what it’s going to take to prevent the system from crashing, and I’m doing it now. I’ve bought my season ticket for the train — and I’m enjoying the trip.