The term ‘climate refugee’ is used by more and more activists to connect environmental and anti-racist politics. Here, STEPH DAVIES argues that the term isn’t as unproblematic as it seems.

We live in exciting times where we face the very real possibility of building a global movement capable of engaging with climate change on a different terrain, yet if we are to realise this movement we must recognize the antagonistic subjectivity that affiliates us.

So it’s three days before the camp and I’m sitting here, debating why I’ve spent the past couple of weeks tatting bits of wood and old carpets, making posters, organising workshops and the hundred of etceteras that come with holding a Climate Camp. What is it I’m (we’re) creating, beyond being one of the most beautiful, heart in mouth and weird events in my calendar? Is, or could the Camp be, a vehicle which offers a potential challenge to capitalism in any meaningful, relevant way?

The 2009 Climate Camp, sited this year in Blackheath, London, saw continued debate over the future direction of the struggle against climate change. As a part of this, anarchist and libertarian communist activists hosted a debate on what we saw as a growing trend towards Green authoritarianism within the movement. Key concerns discussed included the assumption within some sections of the movement that the state can be used as a tool in combating climate change, and the general danger of the state co-opting the green movement and stripping it of its radical potential. While the ecological crisis is a pressing and potentially catastrophic issue for our class, it should also be understood as one in a series of crises, economic and political, that are created by the very nature of the capitalist system.

Anarchists are communists too. The question of climate change cannot be adequately dealt with by a philosophy, but to inform how we organise ourselves to stop the causes and deal with the political effects of climate change, we must look to communist philosophies. For us, this is the challenge of Red-Green: not to provide a Marxist or Anarchist reading of climate change, but to eke out the strategies and tactics where we can in order to progress our politics.

In terms of environmental politics the anti-capitalist left is nowhere. Climate change has gone post-political. The only debates left at COP-15 are over the finer points of the carbon market which will be implemented, a market which will produce new forms of structural violence.

Picture the scene. The setting sun is glinting off the visors of the police lined up in front of me. It’s the second or third day of the weeklong Camp for Climate Action - already I’ve lost count - and for the second or third time since I last slept it looks as if the cops are about to invade.

The climate camp this year will be at Kingsnorth Power Station in Kent. On the obscure Kentish peninsular of Hoo, a profoundly important struggle over the future of how we respond to the twin problems of climate change and the evolving energy crisis will start unfolding this summer…

It’s always something of a fish/barrel/firearms combo going for Spiked and their writers. But given the scandalous denial of the facts and complete absence of research in one particular piece, I’ll do it anyway.

Given that the December 2007 Campaign Against Climate Change demonstration in London had, on a generous estimate, less than half the feet on the street of 2006, then our adversary - dubbed the ‘pollutocracy’ by George Monbiot - are hardly likely to be scrapping their high-carbon futures.