soulchaser

When will the organisers of events such as the Stop Climate Chaos meeting at Trafalgar Square realise that pop music won’t change the minds of shareholders or politicians, nor will it activate the general public.

 I strolled through a very green, very leafy Green Park on my way to the demo, with the sun strangely warm on my skin, and the pavement strangely free from beautiful, crunchy, autumnal leaves. The significance of the warmth of the day, a perfect backdrop to the surely undeniable truth that the planet is warming (why am I still seeing ice cream vans everywhere?) was apparently lost on the presenters of the demo. Instead we were forced to listen to Simon Amstell spend half of the show trying to amuse the crowd with his completely irrelevant and self-impressed slanders, and the other half defending himself against the crowd by attacking it.

I don’t want to draw attention to the horrendous choice of MC who - had it not been for a patient crowd with a sense of occasion that chose to suffer him instead of marring the event - would have been booed off stage for his failure to understand that the platform was not there for him, but vice versa. Well actually I do.

I know that the image of the die-hard activists who flock to these demos like religious fanatics is one of uptight, humourless conspiracy theorists, and I agree that humour and irony are wonderful weapons against tragedy, but I’m sure the organisers didn’t imagine for one second that Simon was going to call Sir Cliff Richard a vagina hunter in front of a crowd of families on a Saturday afternoon.

So I don’t blame them for his antics, but I do blame them for wasting a brilliant opportunity for public exposure on people who are fat on it already. If we want to see Simon Amstell, we can watch him on telly, if I want to hear Razorlight or KT Tunstall then I can turn on the radio, watch the telly, or even pay for a CD or a gig ticket.

Being repeatedly told that I’m doing a great thing by these people did not make me feel like I was doing a great thing – it made me depressed. There were, according to the Sean Penn lookalike, 30,000 people there yesterday. 30,000 who turned up – some from very far away, some probably tourists who were caught up in the excitement – to support environmentalism, and in the 2 hours that they were there, no more than 15 minutes were dedicated to the environment, the most proactive of which was spent by Miss Tunstall telling us all to turn off our TVs and change our light bulbs.

There was a very moving speech from a lady from Kenya who spoke about the plight of the Masi people who have had no rains for three years. The Bishop of Liverpool was impassioned and spoke brilliantly, as did the Director of the Stop Climate Chaos partnership, but none had more than 2 or 3 minutes to talk.

The name of the campaign – i count (yes, with a small i) ended with the crowd being told to chant “I count, we count”, and then being told again that it’s been a great success, and that we all count, and I can’t help but wonder how.

What have all these people learned? If I put my name to this campaign how will it be used? Can I put this issue to rest in my mind, safe in the knowledge that the Stop Climate Chaos coalition, with the help of my signature, will save the day? It’s terribly easy to be cynical about these events, and perhaps that is what angers me the most, because not only is the cynicism justified, but because they are so easy to criticise they reinforce backward logic in the minds of people who do not yet understand climate change and enjoy the comfortable position of the disbeliever.

I don’t want to think that the organisers believe that we are all celebrity obsessed, simple minded minnows with short attention spans who can only ‘count’ through them, but that is unfortunately the message that came across.

Please can we help them realise that we do not need to be lured into these demos by the chance to see famous people, but that we come because we care about the issue. Don’t patronise us with meaningless assurances that we count, because frankly, unless I know what I can do to make a real difference, I don’t count. Inform us of the issues, educate us on the science, teach us to be proactive, then we can count.