A few months ago, the Avaaz community decided on a crazy goal – the largest mobilisation on climate change in history – and on Sunday, around the world, it actually happened.

NYC – 300,000 people… 80 blocks of the city!

This radical event opens a new chapter in global mobilisation. Via both the internet and on-the-ground organisation Avaaz succeeded in uniting and co-ordinating action that involved organisations from around the world and right across the political spectrum. It was a bold venture and what came to fruition was way beyond what was expected.

It’s amazing that an estimated 300,000 thousands people marched in New York while tens of thousands people in over 2000 other communities around the world took to the streets to make there voices heard. I roped in on the London protest which stretched from the Houses Of Parliament back to Temple and had an estimated 27,000 people of all ages who care about passionately about the future of this planet and they don’t like a Government that sanctions dubious and devious practices like Fracking!

London!

It was a beautiful expression of our love for all that climate change threatens, and that love was reproduced in major cities like Paris, Berlin, Sydney, Bogata, Delhi, Melbourne alongside scores of smaller more localised protests. The vision that we can save this world and build a society powered by 100% clean energy is realistic but like one NYC broker who declared the protest to be “Bullshit” we have an army of politicians who back the multi-national corporations and simply don’t have the will to invest in change. Basically, we’ll have to wait and see what comes out this summit… but I’m not holding my breath.

On the one hand I would love to have solar panels on our roof but there’s no financial support… why not? There’s a whole industry that could be created to do that. C’mon… you can buy solar panels in IKEA  now…so,  if the Swedes have got them, they must work. However, while planning for our solar panels it falls upon us to organise campaigns that boycott and cause financial stress to those businesses who profit from fossil fuels. And then of course there’s the two nations not at the UN climate summit, the breadbaskets of modern industry – India and China, the latter of which promotes qi gong and taijiquan for good health while smothering their cities with deadly smog. Like my good friend Swifty, I think I’ll have any future books printed here in the UK. Fuck the 50% saving.(See Bad News footnote!)

Papua New Guinea

I say, big thanks and respect to the Avaaz crew. You can check them out along with lots of other heart warming pics + newspaper headlines from the day at:  https://secure.avaaz.org/en/climate_march_reportback/?bnyyXfb&v=46379

Final reflections: As I watched the BBC news on Sunday evening I waited and waited for the Climate Change protests to come up. Instead the headline was a dry report from a Labour Party conference that’s trying hard to sell Milliband as a radics who’s got bold plans for this troubled nation…. well, having chatted to the people on that march neither he’s nor his Party are on their radar…. like the rest they are simply ‘Fiddling while Rome burns!’

BAD NEWS: I just googled the printers were planning to contact re. future books and found Butler Tanner & Dennis in Frome has gone into administration with a loss of 100 jobs. That’s a lot for a town the size of Frome + no more apprenticeships etc. From the Printweek forum it seems that they are latest in a succession of UK book printers to go under. This is England!