Thoughts on climate activism

Solve Climate has a fascinating article detailing the growing activism across the world. This is similar and related to activism on fair trade, wildlife protection, iraq, water privatization etc. There are several important things to notice here about this kind of activism:

1. It is global. The level of coordination in terms of scale is high. Roughly 9M people signed up to tcktcktck campaign.
2. It is relentless. Everyday and hour there is something or other somewhere.
3. It is strategic in terms of methods and timing.
4. It is in visible. It is in your face and you cant miss it. Roughly 20K people are gathering in Copenhagen, and there are four parallel events happening.
5. It understands money. While they work the politics, they are working on altering the economics as well.
6. It understands communication. They are bringing the best of strategic communication to the table which make it hard to fight.

The challenge to global political and economic decision makers has never been higher, I think. People have talked about information and knowledge societies for a long time now. We are beginning to what it looks like and can see power structures being altered in real time.

I think at the core is a desire in people for change, and people are using their knowledge and skills to shared problems outside the government and business context. They see too much of wars, greed, destruction of life and property, concentration of power, rights violations etc. They are participating whenever there is an opportunity. I myself worked on a campaign to get Coke to control its water usage and education in India. I was surprised by my own 'reach' in the system.

Climate Activism Soars Planetwide

At Ambrose's office on Wednesday, another group of protesters was drawing attention to the tar sands industry's contribution to global climate change, Kinder said. A youth-produced video out of Canada this week, The Tar Sands Blow, also urges Harper to stop the expansion of the tar sands, or oil sands, which it calls "the greatest mistake we've made."

In Australia, 200 climate protesters blocked the entrance of parliament, calling for deep cuts from the Rudd government before 130 of them were arrested by police and taken away.

In Indonesia, protesters from Greenpeace chained themselves to four cranes at a paper mill on the island of Sumatra. Their goal was to highlight the role that deforestation plays in global warming.

The Washington, D.C.-based 1Sky campaign is organizing what its calling a "creative action" on Dec. 4 in front of the White House with images reflecting the urgency of the climate challenge.