Campers and Conferencing

After far too much silence I’m back – the itch you can’t scratch and all that…

Check out the ‘Just When’ page for details of this year ‘Inconvenient Truth’ session at the annual ‘British Geographers’ conference. More information will be posted soon -fingers crossed- about upcoming events exploring and engaging in the ‘Geographies of Transition’.

And in case you thought I’d been having a snooze or a holiday… have a look at Climate Camp Cymru

Also happening this week the UK Climate Camp

Happy Camping!

More Inconvenient Truth

For more information on the proposed session for this years RGS-IBG conference in Manchester please go to the ‘Just When’ page.

This will be updated as the session develops but please feel free to add comments.

Thanks

Intellectual Tescos

Hello hello – back from being radicalised or at least considering radicalisation & feel rather heavy with the words of Marx:

That the point is not to understand the world but to change it… but no one has ever changed a world they don’t understand.

I have spent the last week learning about capitalism in its various and current guises, learning with ‘non-academic’ people in a ‘non-academic’ setting, but learning and pushing ourselves further than I often do in the university. And most importantly, we have been sharing the things that we are doing to create and push forward life despite capitalism. Of course we are always faced with the question of whether we could really live despite capitalism, and if we could actually replace capitalism, but the most important thing for me was the opportunity to push my mind, my dreams, off the the page that normally holds possibility.

Today I have returned to what Terry Eagleton  calls the ‘Intellectual Tescos’ where I have been quickly been reminded that “the ambition of advanced capitalism is not simply to combat radical ideas or even discredit them. It is to abolish the very notion that there could be a serious alternative to the present.” (Terry Eagleton, The Death of the Intellectual” Red Pepper 162, 16-17.)

On being pissed off

Of course being pissed off doesn’t have to lead to direct action like the protest on Monday – it can be about creating alternatives and working out how to do things differently.

I’m going to Escanda next week to find out more about alternative currencies and a different approach to economics http://escanda.org/actividades/economics_seminar.php

What other stuff are people doing?

We will rock you

Well Tamsin seemed to reckon that we rocked… have a look at the photos http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/amelias_blog/2008/10/climate_rush_we_rock.php

and for those of you that ain’t too keen on discussing militant tendancies I wondered if you had any thoughts on a comment someone made to me yesterday regarding “posh people feeling that they need the masses into action…”

Why do certain people feel the need to stand up and shout???

Is everyone else burying their head in the sand?? 

As the slogan goes: if you’re not pissed off your not paying attention…

Rushing for Change

Just back from the climate rush www.climaterush.co.uk  celebrating the achievements of the suffragettes 100 years ago & following their call to take direct action for the cause of today –  climate change.

Explaining why she was prepared to risk jail for her beliefs, one of the organisers refered to Emmeline Pankhurst’s statement from 1913

 -There are degrees of militancy. Some women are able to go further than others in militant action and each woman is the judge of her own duty so far as that is concerned. To be militant in some way or other is, however, a moral obligation. It is a duty which every woman will owe to her conscience and self-respect, to other women who are less fortunate than she is herself, and to all those who are to come after her.

If any woman refrains from militant protest against the injury done by the Governemnt and the House of Commons to women and to the race, she will share the responsibility for the crime. Submission under such circumstances will be itself a crime. –

Clearly she isn’t the only one prepared to take such risks to call the Government to account over their current emissions targets and plans to build new coal power-stations and airport expansions.

What do you think about this? Where you would put yourselves on this scale of militancy & why?

Duncan

Although the void-like ether of the web might seem like an odd space-

I wanted to say thanks here to Duncan.

Duncan Fuller was part of the inspiration behind getting off our arses and doing a conference session that was a bit different. Duncan  was one of the people that made us feel like we could actually say what we thought – and that we bloody-well should! Duncan was someone who showed the way in conducting participatory research and research that was about doing something useful – beyond adding to the accolades of our CV’s … but doing something you believe in and want to change for the better.

Duncan made me feel brave and comfortable and laugh…

We will all miss you.

Welcome to the site!

As promised we have our very own site for geographers and non-geographers alike to discuss what they’re doing to tackle the inconvenient truth of climate change…

 

The site is a follow up to our conference session -which discussed these issues- at the recent Institute of British Geographers annual conference. Video footage of this event will be available here soon …