Prosperity without growth, in a tent on Blackheath

I attended David Fleming’s talk at the Climate Camp Is economics without growth possible?. The place was packed. It was really interesting to hear someone playing with big ideas, and asking difficult questions.

I’m the first to admit that I was out of my depth at this talk. The Wind Turbines talk was much more understandable to me. Nonetheless, here are my notes:

Those hooligans, they’re a menace!

Oh no, it’s ok, don’t panic Mayor Steve… They’re having a tidy up:
Climate campers clean up the Commons

Things to do at Climate Camp on Monday

Here are my suggestions if you fancy attending a workshop at the climate camp today.  More ideas here.

Future Scenarios: Science, Permaculture and Economics
London, 10:30-11:30
Exploring future scenarios in the context of climate change. Various futures as predicted through three lenses: science, permaculture and economics. Based on the work of Six Degrees author Mark Lynas, permaculturalist David Holmgren, eco-economist Herman Daly as illustrated by artists for the travelling exhibition: Futures Scenarios.

David Fleming: is economics without growth possible?
Space 9, 14:30-16:00
It is widely agreed that our economy cannot continue to grow indefinitely. Environmental damage and resource depletion will see to that. And yet, if growth were to be halted, then the economy would be destroyed in another way: it is a dynamic system which (like a bicycle) depends on forward movement to maintain its stability. This is the growth curse. The market economy is damned if it grows, and damned if it doesn’t. There are solutions to this, but they are very difficult ones, extending far beyond a reform of the financial system. The workshop will explore them. David Fleming is an economist, inventor of Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs), and author of Lean Logic: The Empowerment Dictionary (forthcoming).

Bike Maintenance for kids
Kids’ Space, 14:30-16:00
Learn some basic bike maintenance skills.

Training: How to use tripods
Field, 16:30-18:30
Learn how to climb a tripod – an iconic symbol of the camp for climate action, and handy for securing occupations and blockades.

The “Economics without Growth” one looks particularly interesting, and isn’t just some angry protester shouting about injustices in the world, but is a respected academic talking about his suggestions as to how to fix things.

Photo by Flickr user Bagelmouse

The Mystery Sundial

Anyone know where the mysterious sundial has appeared from?
Jo says “It’s near Vanbrugh Park – very nearby to Royal Standard area and pub. It’s on the side of the road where the number 53 and number 380 buses go towards the Standard”.
Is it GMT or BST? :)
Photo taken by twitter user @JoBrodie

Less of a Cornish Rebellion than a Welsh Outsourcing

From WalesOnline news:

Welsh cops have been drafted into London to deal with up to 3,000 environmental protesters.
Nearly 30 officers from North Wales Police were sent to the Climate Camp at Blackheath in east London, overlooking the capital’s Docklands and Canary Wharf, earlier this week.

Dafauxdils photo by flickr user Zimpenfish

Cinema in Blackheath?

Sort of… There is a strange brown tent in the Climate Camp, with a van poking out of the front of it, furnished with two solar panels! It appears to be a mobile cinema, showing various eco-movies! Sunday 9.30pm Doctor Strangelove anyone?

The optimists

A couple of much more upbeat pieces in The Times:

Giles Hattersley: Why we are all climate camp followers now
(which wins the Bugle award for least imaginative headline).

As I walked up there, I did hear a load of people shouting “get a job” from the safety of their cars as they drove past the camp… Didn’t hear anyone reply “get a bike” though. The article also mentions the number of planes over Blackheath.

Jonathan Leake: From margin to mainstream
Claiming that the protest gives the government the “political space” that they require to get tough on climate change.

A Better Class of Nutter

Well written analysis of the Climate Camp in the Torygraph, obsessing over class again.

It might appear typically British to obsess about class while the earth burns..

Yes, it does, now you come to mention it actually…

…but what seems to distinguish the colourfully attired protesters at the Climate Camp set up in south-east London from previous revolutionaries is the overwhelming dominance of posh, upper-middle-class white people.

And on on Mayor Bullock:

Bullock, a former van driver, neatly represents the class conflict between green campaigners and the working class, who tend to be apathetic about political protest of any sort, and especially the tree-hugging variety.

Interesting description on the tensions between the “Spikys” and the “Fluffys”. I definitely saw a few “Spikys” on the first day, but fewer today.

Already, however, the coalition had splintered. After Drax, the “spikys”, the more anarchic wing of the anti-capitalist movement, left in disillusionment at the pacifism of the “fluffys”. Last week, a “spiky” outfit known as the Whitechapel Anarchist Group – “the Wags” – objected to the Camp’s “fluffy” leaders meeting “the pigs”, as anarchists still call the police.

And then back to class again:

Yet the children of the privileged have often formed the nucleus of radical protest movements, from the student demos of 1968 back through the Suffragettes and the Chartists. Even the Peasants’ Revolt was not called that at the time (rather, “The Mad Multitude”), and its leaders were “middle-class” by today’s standards.

There does seem to be a competition running between the Mail and The Telegraph to see who can attract the most mental comments at the bottom of their articles…. Not like the Buglers of course…

Wind Turbines Talk on Blackheath

I’ve just been to the wind turbines talk at the Climate Camp on Blackheath. It was really well attended. The organisation who ran the talks are called v3power.co.uk. They often run courses explaining how to build your own wind turbine, but they’ve never held one in London. If anyone is interested, they would need to find some workshop space for a 3 day course… It sounds great to me.

Anyway, below are my notes from the talk:
All the hand made turbines at the camp were based on Hugh Piggott’s books. He is seen as the master of handmade wind farms. His book costs £12. Older versions of his book are free to download as pdf files from the website.

More maps of the Climate Camp

Looking at the ad-hoc maps of the climate change camp in Blackheath is really interesting – here are some overlays of the hand-drawn maps versus the GPS trail that I made yesterday:

Here’s the hand drawn map overlaid onto Google Maps:

And here it is overlaid onto the GPS trail that I made yesterday: