6.4 Climate Activism and Climate Change as a Structural
them to see climate change as also a social structural issue when their political practices are built upon the assumption that there are such things as social structures. To be successful as climate activists, they would have to make the connection and understand the interdependencies between different structural issues and injustices such as race, gender, sexuality, workers’ rights, anti-capitalism, poverty, social class, indigenous rights, and climate change. But many unmixed climate activist strategies more directly linked to climate change also only make sense from the structural point of view. They can become more mixed in time.
Consider this example from the United Kingdom:
The campaign against a proposed third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport represents a campaign to stop the
construction of carbon-intensive infrastructure, or as a spokesperson for the group Campaign against Climate Change (CaCC) put it: ‘This is not just about Heathrow, this is about drawing a line in the sand against big investment decisions that are locking us into a headlong plummet into climate catastrophe’ (in Vidal, 2008). The expansion of Heathrow Airport would result in increased flights, and research at the time found that growing aviation emissions could hamper attempts to mitigate climate change. Local campaigners mobilized around various local issues including air and noise pollution as well as the demolition of houses and other buildings. At the same time, a key figure in the campaign also encouraged climate change activists to mobilize against the airport expansion plans, which resulted in sustained direct action that generated unprecedented levels of media attention. Campaigners were able to convince the major opposition political party to oppose the third runway, which resulted in political jousting during the election cycle.
When two opposition parties formed a coalition government in 2010, they put an end to the threat of the third runway at Heathrow... for the time being.” (Nulman 2015, 3).
There is an inbuilt assumption in the tactics of CaCC that the world works in a certain way. They assume that there is a possibility of “drawing a line in the sand”
by opposing one particular action. Some actions are like levers that can force social changes much larger than their immediate local effects. The rationale might be that
if there is a risk of similar action whenever a big greenhouse gas-intensive project is proposed, investors will be less willing to consider such projects. This rationale is based on assumptions about economic structures and the behavior of investors and other stakeholders, but it is not the whole story.
There is an implicit interpretation of what kinds of actions are important and worth protesting and taking direct action against. One aspect of the action is that protesting against an airport expansion is also a protest against the carbon- intensive life of a mobile society (cf. Urry 2011). However, CaCC is not trying to stop individuals going on Sunday drives or promoting web conferencing for international organizations but “protesting investment decisions that are locking us into a headlong plummet into climate catastrophe.” The activists understand that in capitalism investment decisions have causal power both in making new things happen and in keeping existing processes going. An investment decision is an action of a very different kind from the decision to go for a drive or even to buy a car. An investment binds together many individuals, groups, technologies, patents, plans, and other financial and emotional investments. The investors want return on investment from the airport expansion. This requires thinking about the investment as an ongoing process, and the CEOs and other managers of the different corporations associated with the airport must remain committed to this process or fail in their roles. By attacking the investment decision at the crucial point in time, or kairos, the activists are trying to stop a process at the start, when it is still easy, as opposed to a point in time when many more individuals and corporations have a stake in keeping the process going, and the process has become a crucial infrastructural factor in the economy at large. This is a prime example of how a structural understanding of climate change affects the form that political action takes.
Eric Godoy (2017) argues that for structural reasons the divestment movement is exemplary of the sort of climate activism needed. The divestment movement aims to influence big investors, such as banks, foundations and often universities,81 to divest their fossil fuel investments. In my view, protesting and disrupting harmful investments is just as central. Protesting fossil investment and promoting divestment are of course not mutually exclusive strategies. They can reinforce each other. Investors who divest are less likely to make new investments in climate-
81 Universities may not be the largest investors, but it makes sense for many student and academic activists to target universities. Their university is their immediate environment and the collective with which they identify, so they feel responsible for them. Universities also have symbolic power in addition to their economic power, so if a university divests, that may have additional symbolic value beyond the purely economic effect.
threatening projects, and divestment sends a signal that being a fossil fuel investor is no longer acceptable to many people. However, divestment activists and investment protestors may have different relationships to the investors and thus the financial capitalist elite. Divestment activists may have to enter into dialogue with the investors, try to understand their point of view, go to meetings, and socialize with them. Protesting investment may not require such dialogue. The investors need not be the primary audience of the activists’ communications, and investments may be thwarted by direct, non-communicative action and civil disobedience.