Radical and Reformist Activism against Climate Change

The next speaker in this ECREA 2012 session is Julie Uldam, who shifts our focus to the climate change debate, in the context of the UN climate change conferences. When the conference came to Copenhagen in 2009, it generated a substantial amount of activity by the climate change activists who are based in London, but the same cannot be said for the 2011 conference in Dublin.

There is a difference here between the radical and the reformist end of climate change activism – the former performs a wider critique of global capitalism, while the latter is seeking to effect change through existing global systems, and it is the radical activists who remained unengaged during the 2011 conference. Julie focusses in her discussion especially on two groups which are representative for either end.

The UN conferences push climate change up the media agenda, creating opportunities for mediation; at he same time, they also generate an opportunity to discursively position the conferences themselves as part of the problem; finally, there is opportunity to galvanise networked action in the context of such conferences, allowing for an argument for action which builds on the logic of numbers.

During 2011 in Dublin, for example, the Campaign against Climate Change attempted to organise a march on parliament in London – but with only a few thousand protesters participating, a critical mass was not reached. The march, and its target, construct parliament and politicians as part of the problem, and attempt to lobby it to change its stance in the negotiations; for radical protesters, however, marching on parliament is seen as legitimising it as an agent in the process, presumably leading them to stay away from the protests.

Other forms of protest take place at a distance, for example through online media. For radical activists, however, this is insufficient unless it disrupts the process; to do so, activists require substantial technological skills, which limits their ability to engage in online actions which are successful from their point of view. This means that online media privilege reformist rather than radical online actions.