US President | >Re-PHOTO

*Climate March 2005 – people meet at the start in Lincolns Inn Fields*

Twenty years ago on Saturday 3 December 2005 the Campaign Against Climate Change organised a march calling for urgent action over climate change. Among groups supporting the march were the Green Party, Friends of the Earth and socialist organisations.

But in 2005 there was no interest from the major charities and mainstream organisations that have since supported some major London marches pointing out the dangers of climate change and global extinction, like most governments they had yet to wake up to the very real dangers facing the future of human life on our planet.

The Campaign Against Climate Change was one of the first organisations in the UK to serilsly begin organising against global warming – and I remember photographing them back in 2002 pushing an attractive ‘Tiger’ on a bed from the Esso headquarters in Leatherhead to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, Westminster. US President George W Bush had put the interests of climate-denying US Oil and fossil fuel companies, notably Esso, above the survival of our species with with his rejection of the Kyoto protocol, agreed in 1997 but only due to come into force in 2005.

Back in 2005, we needed governments to act with urgency, but they failed us and the world. One of those failing then was Tony Blair, whose New Labour government had also betrayed us over the invasion of Iraq as well as over climate change. And now in 2025 we have another Labour government, now under Keir Starmer, pressing ahead with new climate-destroying road schemes, oil exploration and extra runways rather than facing up to the need to change our assumptions and way of life in ways that would reduce CO2 emissions and slow global warming.

Saturday 3rd December 2005 was an international day of climate protest but the march to the US Embassy in London achieved little media coverage – the billionaires who own and control most of our media have little interest in the subject (and probably large financial interests in fossil fuels and other drivers of climate change.) Even the BBC had been a hive of complacency, and have given a totally unwarranted level of coverage to those who continue to refuse the overwhelming scientific evidence. Though now they are perhaps beginning to realise that you cannot have ‘balance’ over scientific fact.

*The ‘Statue of Taking Liberties’ was at the Front of the march to the US Embassy*

Here – with minor corrections – is what I wrote about the march back in 2005 – and a few of the pictures I took at the event – you can see more on My London Diary at the link at the bottom of this page.

Kyoto was the first attempt to at least recognise the problem was global and take some concerted action, even if less than half-hearted. Thanks to George Bush and the oil companies he represents, the ineffectual has been made even more so.

Problems related to growth and pollution are inextricably linked with industry and trade. It is hard to see any possibility of their solution without the imposition of tariffs on the exports of countries that continue to pollute – such as the USA. It’s equally hard to envisage this happening while the USA is so dominant in the world bodies and conferences that set the rules on trade.

There were around 10,000 of us on the streets of London on Saturday, and many more around the world in demonstrations elsewhere, all part of the International Day of Climate Protest, the march in London organised, as previous climate marches and protests, by the UK Campaign Against Climate Change.

*A sit down in pouring rain in Parliament Square is not a good idea*

Here in London the climate smiled on us for an hour or so, then the rain came as the march entered Parliament Square. It was pouring rain rather than the police that persuaded the students who sat down in front of the Houses of Parliament that it was a good idea to get up and move on.

My camera also began to suffer, and I needed to move inside to dry it out. My injured knee was beginning to hurt too, so I decided it was time to take a rest and go home.

More pictures begin here on My London Diary.

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Four years ago, on 20 Jan 2017, London was protesting against another inauguration, that of Donald Trump. Commenting on those protesting outside the US Embassy – still then in Grosvenor Square I wrote:

All were appalled at the thought of a president who is a climate change denier, has a long history of racist and Islamophobic outbursts, has boasted of sexually assaulting women and has downplayed the severity of sexual violence.
Crowds protest Trump’s Inauguration

The four years that followed have confirmed most of our worst fears and in some ways gone further than we imagined, for example with disastrous polices in the Middle East and in particular over Israel and Palestine.

There will not be significant protests in London today, and even if police were not enforcing Covid restrictions particularly rigorously against protests I don’t think there would have been. We may not have any particularly high hopes for Biden and Harris, but at least they are almost certain to be better than Trump.

At least the US seems certain to re-engage with climate change – although probably still intent on keeping the US as the world’s largest polluter and allowing US companies to plunder the world for resources. And though it’s good to have a slightly saner finger close to that nuclear button it seems unlikely that the US will stop supporting corrupt fiefdoms in the Middle East and elsewhere and desist from supporting coups against popular governments that attempt to regain control over their own resources in South America and elsewhere.

Though I do hope for some positive surprises in the first hundred days, and there have certainly been rumours of some. Perhaps we will see the cancellation of some of the more environmentally damaging projects given the go-ahead by Trump. Almost certainly there will be fewer racist rants and tweets and there could even be some real progress on civil rights.

But while we may have some hopes for the United States of America, the future for our United Kingdom remains depressing. Suffering under the burden of Brexit and Covid, with a government that continually proves itself both corrupt and inept and an opposition which is ineffectual and sycophantic – and currently outclassed, outgunned and outplayed by a young footballer.

And that ‘United’ is less and less than ever appropriate; Brexit divided the country, and most of us now realise it was a terrible mistake – even increasingly more of the 34% who voted for it. It has created a border between the mainland and Northern Ireland and exacerbated the gap between England and Scotland. Even Wales seems more distant, though it has protected our relationships with those tax havens that make us possibly the most corrupt country in the world.

There is one small glimmer of hope, apart from the vaccinations that may just eventually allow us to gain some accommodation if not exactly control over Covid. Last Sunday saw the inauguration of the Project for Peace and Justice, founded by Jeremy Corbyn, an international campaign which describes itself as “a hub for discussion and action, building solidarity and hope for a more decent world.”

F**k Trump
Crowds protest Trump’s Inauguration

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Tag: US President

Climate March 2005

Inauguration Day