Nathan Thanki

If the circus of #COP27 has you feeling?, you’re not alone: it’s a total information and sensory overload. And if you do make it past the World Climate Fair into the negotiating rooms, complete gibberish. So what’s going on?

The issues being debated in the UNFCCC are recurring and best seen in the context of a long-term struggle between the Global North and Global South over who should take responsibility for tackling climate change and its impacts, which plays out at political levels as well as across all the technical negotiating items.

COVID-19 and climate breakdown are interconnected crises. They are the unintended consequences of a 500-year history of territorial expansion, conquest, resource extraction and industrial growth as a by-word for progress that has seen carbon pumped into the earth’s atmosphere at a rate that carbon sinks, compromised by industrial-scale deforestation, can’t contain.

But by playing host to COP26, the movement has a chance to push for the country to redefine its relationship to the rest of the world in the post-Brexit era. Those who refuse to let imperial nostalgia become the accepted goal for the UK can and should put forward an alternative vision of international solidarity and cooperation…

To truly step up to the plate and play their part in a resurgent, ecologically-minded global justice movement, groups in the North will have to put meat on the bones of the system change slogan by articulating clear alternatives.

In this talk Nathan points out some flaws in the organising culture of the climate movement and suggests that the way to build better movements (because the idea of “winning” in the climate crisis is laughable) is to embrace contradictions and engage in a battle of the imagination.