Climate Camp to target the City in summer protest

Protest group aims to throw spotlight on carbon trading
Bibi van der Zee
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 February 2009 15.18 GMT

The organisers of Climate Camp, a protest group that has previously demonstrated at coal power stations and Heathrow airport, have chosen London's financial centre as the target of their main summer protest this year.
The decision to target the City is aimed at throwing a spotlight on the carbon trading system, one of the central planks of the EU's attempts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from businesses. Carbon trading in the US is also being pushed by the Obama administration, but the activists say they want to highlight the failure of the mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The precise form of the protest and where it will take place are yet to be decided, although a spontaneous snowball fight that broke out between environmental activists and bankers after the heavy snowfall on 2 February may have inspired the group to target the City. The action may also strike a chord with public anger at huge public bail-outs of the banks.
"We've chosen the City for our target this summer because unregulated markets and an endless pursuit of economic growth are harming people across the world," said a spokesperson for the camp. "We should remember that nature doesn't do bailouts."
Climate Camp is organised by consensus, so there must be unanimous agreement about the final decision. So far, no decision has been made about where exactly the camp itself will be or when it will take place, although rural locations in and around London are being considered, along with London parks. The group is organising a separate protest in the City on April Fools' Day on the eve of the G20 leaders' summit in London.
Schemes that allow companies to compensate for higher emissions by purchasing credits from other companies that have made emissions cuts, are a central plank of climate policy in the EU. But they have been severely criticised by campaigners.
In an interview with the Guardian in January, Vincent de Rivas, chief executive of EDF, called carbon credits "a new type of sub-prime tool". The price of European carbon credits has slumped in the wake of the financial crisis, as power companies sell off their excess carbon allowances for much-needed cash. This has meant there is little incentive for companies to invest to reduce their carbon output.
James Hansen, the head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has argued that carbon trading will not deliver the emissions cuts required and that a carbon tax would be more effective.
"Yet somehow it's being talked about as a solution to climate change, when in fact it's just another way to make money," said a Climate Camp spokesperson. "We need to stop climate change at its root causes by refusing to go through with carbon-intensive projects like Heathrow and Kingsnorth ... People across the world want fair, real solutions to climate change – not more economic bubbles waiting to pop."
This will be the Climate Camp's fourth year of protest. In 2006, the group targeted Europe's biggest coal-fired power station – Drax in north Yorkshire. On the main day of action about 600 activists tried to shut it down. In 2007, the group set up a camp next to Heathrow airport to highlight the issue of aviation, and last year, a camp overlooking the proposed site of Kingsnorth power station in Kent was visited by similar numbers.