As far as novelty protesting goes, Greenpeace are so often the masters. Cornering the market in trendy protesting techniques, Greenpeace have done it again by scaling the Houses of Parliament and pinning up a banner that read ‘Change the Politics, Save the Planet’, in a general political-environmental statement that was designed as much for its soundbyte appeal, certainly, as its underlying message.
Though a general statement, the stunt itself was related to the specificities of on going Parliament talks in relation to Trident, the project so named in conjunction with the Trident Missile, “a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle submarine-launched ballistic missile…which is armed with nuclear warheads and is launched from nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines“(definition from the ever-accurate Wikipedia), and the discussion of further creation of the nuclear submarines.
Changing the politics in this case related directly to the creation of further nuclear capabilities in the British Armed Forces, of which Greenpeace is fervently opposed. Indeed, the group are opposed to the use of nuclear power in Britain in any capacity.
Greenpeace ended their protest upon the closure of the discussions on Trident in Parliament. Of the talks, and Greenpeace’s own protests, one volunteer stated that,
“Trident is a cold war relic designed to destroy Russian cities…If MPs buckle under pressure from Tony Blair and vote to renew it, the repercussions will be felt around the world. We can’t oppose proliferation of WMD if we’re building them at home“.
Certainly one point on which Greenpeace and other groups have attacked the creation of further Trident missiles and submarines is on this hypocrisy of the condemnation of nuclear weapons in a number of Middle Eastern countries and Asian countries.
But the Greenpeace message was designed surely as much of a general statement as one related simply to the Trident discussions. ‘Change the Politics, Save the Planet’, it read, and this applies to a plethora of areas from renewable energy and green energy to sustainability, carbon emissions reduction, recycling and reuse.
In fact the general universality of the message in relation to environmental issues – and perhaps wider political themes – should not be undermined, and nor should the importance of the implications of the statement; politicians across the world are couching the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December in terms of ‘last opportunities’, and ‘defining momenets’, but that opportunity will not be seized for its full effect if those words are not matched with a change of political outlook.
Indeed it seems that what we’re talking about when we talk about this opportunity, is an opportunity for a new environmental paradigm, and that will require – as the Green Party in the UK have argued for many years – a fundamental change in political attitudes and practices.
