Swindon Climate Action Network - The Wave, 5th December 2009

A coach load from the Swindon area joined The Wave in London ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. SCAN regulars marched alongside others from Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, church groups, Green Party and others. Wiltshire Wildlife and the Co-op also laid on coaches from elsewhere in the county, Marlborough Climate Pledge were there too, as was Climate Friendly Bradford on Avon.

Somehow, four from SCAN got priority passes and after the march went to a Q&A session with Ed Miliband, Minister for Energy & Climate Change. Poppy from SCAN even got to ask a question!

Before the march, different groups held a number of events. As well as speeches in Grosvenor Square, the Wildlife Trusts held a rally in Berkeley Square, the Campaign Against Climate change held a rally in Hyde Park, at which SCAN regular Simon shot these videos, and many church groups met for a service at Methodist Central Hall.

And these 10 minutes of edited highlights

From around 1pm all the diverse groups of blue-clad campaigners converged on Grosvenor Square to form a huge human wave, washing through the streets to surround the Houses of Parliament at 3pm.

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Back page of The Wave newspaper

Kate Robinson of Wiltshire Wildlife Trust said

With a full coach of 50 people from Swindon, we had a very enjoyable day and it was great to travel with old and new friends, sharing a common cause – a great team bonding exercise! Great to see that we were the first item on the News at 10 when we got home too. I’d like to thank Viv Dipper for all her hard work organising people for the Swindon coach. She did a fantastic job in creating a robust registration system that made it very easy on the day to count people onto the coach, relieving much potential stress!

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Carbon cuts not welfare cuts

Gary Mantle of Wiltshire Wildlife Trust had this to say about the day:

Its hard to guess numbers. The official number was 40,000 but it seemed very much more. The march past Parliament was meant to end at 3pm. Kate & I was in the front section with a couple of others representing the Wildlife Trusts and the front of the march arrived at Parliament at 2:30. Even at 3pm the rest of the Trust was a mile away on Lambeth Bridge! At 3:40 as I was heading off to meet Ed Miliband with about 50-60 others we had to cross the march which was still streaming down Whitehall heading for Parliament. It was maybe 20 or 20 people abreast and this went back up as far as you could see towards Trafalgar square!

At the end of the rally, we heard the news that Gordon Brown had met with some of the people walking past 10 Downing Street and had invited about a dozen in, to talk about Climate Change and what he hopes to achieve in Copenhagen. This was unscheduled and took everyone by surprise. What followed must have been staged managed to some extent, as there was a TV crew allowed in, but it resulted in the PM making a public statement about his commitment to seek the best deal possible and commenting unfavourably about climate change deniers.

At the same time, a group representing many of the different organisations taking part in the march met with Ed Miliband for a question & answer session. I was fortunate enough to attend this on behalf of The Wildlife Trusts. The session was fairly informal - call me Ed, not Minister. Questions ranged from finance & support for developing nations, to getting the UK to agree to over a 40% reduction in CO2 by 2020, to the role of UK companies in overseas deforestation & mining, to the need for urgency, to giving local councils a carbon budget as a means of stimulating better public transport. I asked him a question about how the Government was preparing for the actions that would be needed after Copenhagen. His reply reflected earlier comments about it not being the role of Government to dictate to people what they should do, but to offer information and encouragement, showing how going green can improve quality of life. He recognised there was a big challenge to address public transport and the existing housing stock. He went on to comment on how the leaked e-mails from East Anglia were being used to try and create roadblocks and wasn’t a surprise because some hard decisions are about to be made and some people are doing all they can to prevent this. The scientific community, he said, was bemused by much of the media reaction and that there remained a firm conviction in the science. He saw his biggest job in the immediate future was to get the EU to move from its present commitment of a 20% cut in CO2 to 30%. This was, he felt, essential. It was great to learn that President Obama has changed his plans and now intends to attend Copenhagen on the final day. But as Ed Miliband commented, we should not underestimate the battles that the President is facing in getting any agreement through back home – he needs our support not misdirected criticism.

What struck me about this whole session was how came across as honest, committed, good humoured and pretty frank about the realities of what needs to be done and the difficulties faced in achieving this. Undoubtedly he is a talented politician, but he has got the message and I believe he will do all that is in his powers to achieve a good outcome in Copenhagen.

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