A few weeks ago at the G20 summit in the UK I went to Bishopsgate (a street on the fringes of the financial centre of the City of London) to see what was happening with the ‘Climate Camp’. This was set up primarily as a demonstration against the immoral exploitation of carbon-offset schemes by big corporations, but was also designed to be a celebration of simple (and low cost) ways of respecting the earth. A stall of homemade cakes and allotment vegetables was set up, a mobile compost toilet installed. The street was decorated with bunting, banners and flowers. People brought tents and musical instruments on the back of their bicycles. But the prospect of these village-fete/campsite dwellers confronting Big Money provoked a heavy response from the police who barricaded them in.
I arrived late and was on the outside of the barricades, waiting and watching for several hours. I did not take my camera, but there were lenses everywhere. Documentation, gathering evidence, instant internet posts have become an integral part of this kind of political activity.
But what struck me most forcefully was that these mostly young people (and some older stalwarts) were in some sense the true guardians of the earth and were in a protective rage about it.
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