00:00 Speaker: We're reaching a turning point on climate change. Activists are already beginning to ask for a "climate Seattle", something to kick-start the global movement in a way that the Seattle protest in 1999 inspired new widespread resistance. But how do we do that? Well, at Campaign against Climate Change we've got an idea. The UN climate talks in December in Paris next year are meant to produce a binding
00:31 global agreement that will start off in 2020 and last till 2030, possibly till 2035. But indications already suggest that it will not be good enough, that it will set us on a path that will mean a four degree centigrade temperature rise globally. And I'm sure many of you already know in this room what that means, but I still think it's worth emphasising. It will mean famine, it will
01:02 mean war, it will mean refugees, and it will mean millions of people dying. The danger is that after Paris we lose hope. It's happened before: after Copenhagen, most NGOs, environmental NGOs, put a huge amount of work into lobbying governments, and there was 80,000 people on the streets of Copenhagen, and there were
01:32 numerous direct actions — but still, on the last day, leaders from the US, from China, from Brazil and from India came up with an agreement that was far worse than what we already had, and as a movement we took an enormous blow which it's taken years to recover from. But we are recovering. So if Paris is like
02:05 Copenhagen, then quite simply we are screwed. You know, we are screwed. I mean, it will mean catastrophic climate change; all those horrors that we see, that will be reality. We will have a massive demonstration, but that will not be enough. We will have direct action; that will not be enough. We need something bigger. We need
02:35 something that says to the world: Paris does not accept this, the world does not accept this, we fight on. We need to make it unbelievably, abundantly clear that humanity will not accept anything less than an agreement that fully addresses this crisis. Anything short of that is simply
03:07 not good enough, and that is putting it very, very mildly indeed. So how do we achieve this? Well, what we're asking for really is, we're asking for the world to be ready — the world to be ready to rise up if we don't get the deal that we want. I mean, I'm sure like everyone else in this room I really do hope, I really do believe — well, *want* to believe, I think [that]'s putting it better —
03:38 want to believe that governments will come to this agreement on their own, that they know, like we do, the reality of the situation, they know how little time we have, and they will come to that agreement. But if they don't, we need to act. We need to be ready to rise up and show overwhelming opposition, and to continue on the fight, [so] that it doesn't end at Paris. And we've got an idea of how this could be
04:09 done. Paris, the city, stops. Shops shut, universities and schools don't open, there are no trains, no cars, no buses. The city stops. We're not suggesting that protesters come in and occupy Paris — we want the people of Paris, and people all over the world, to occupy their own cities for the sake of the
04:41 planet. Now, this is fairly radical, and it is unlikely that this plan and this strategy, to big NGOs and to trade unions, will seem like something they can just go "yes, sure, we'll be involved" straight away. But many of them may want to; many of them, like myself and like everyone else in the room, will know that the situation has got to this
05:12 point. So how do we do that? Well, we need to begin with students. If students of Paris are occupying their universities and then go dancing out onto the streets and asking other people to join them, then we can go back to the unions and the NGOs and say we should join in, and they will be much, much more likely to join in. But the thing is, we can't expect the students of Paris — I can't go up to a student in Paris and go "I want you to occupy your city". They would look at me like I was
05:43 insane, and fair enough. So we need to do stuff here, which is why tomorrow we're actually having a first organising meeting for UK students about climate occupations at the time of Paris, with students from Reading, Oxford, Cambridge; students from Warwick are supporting it but can't be there because it's exam time; Essex, LSE, UCL. We're starting this ball rolling, because it's not enough to say it's in solidarity — we have to be doing it actively too, and students in Paris are
06:14 much more likely to take action if they feel part of a global network of action. Now, these plans are massively ambitious, but that's what's needed. This is the single biggest crisis we have ever faced. The future is unmanageable [?], and actually I do my best as an activist to try not to stare it in the face too much, because it is just so
06:49 terrifying. Paris might not give us the answers, and if it doesn't we need to be as strong as we can be, in spirit and energy, to come out the other side of it, to carry on the fight for the earth. And the more radical action that we do and organise for December, the stronger we will be. It's time to act.
## Corrections
- "**NOS**", "**Big Nos**", "environmental **NOS**" → "**NGOs**" throughout. - "something to **kickart** the global movement" → "to **kick-start** the global movement". - "the UN climate talks ... **aent** produce a binding Global agreement" → "**are meant to** produce a binding global agreement". - "it will mean millions of people **day**" → "millions of people **dying**". - "putting it very very **mly** indeed" → "very, very **mildly** indeed". - "show overwhelming **OPP oppos**" → "show overwhelming **opposition**". - "students from **war** are supporting it" → "students from **Warwick**"; "Essex **lsse** UCL" → "Essex, **LSE**, UCL". - "students **and** Paris are much more likely to take action" → "students **in** Paris". - "the future is **unmanageable [?]**" — kept as the captions give it, but marked: "unimaginable" fits the sentence that follows, about not staring it in the face. - The speaker is not named anywhere on the recording. The talk was given eighteen months before the Paris talks, and the "climate Seattle" framing and the plan to shut the city down are recorded here as they were put at the time.