Wanstead climate action campaigners, who have been quizzing fellow residents for the past few weekends, are gearing up for big protests in central London over the weekend.
More than 100 organisations including Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are staging the lawful, peaceful protest this weekend. Wanstead campaigners are focusing on calling on the Treasury to cancel global debt for poor countries so they can respond to climate change. On Saturday there is a march for biodiversity. Wanstead campaigners are leaving from Wanstead Tube at noon on Saturday. More details can be obtained from Wansteadclimateaction@gmail.com.
Having watched these “activists” in action the only people who took part were those interested, the vast majority just walked past
You are right Peter, it wasn’t conducted on the same basis as the recent government ONS poll, but the response to the question on one of our boards ‘how concerned are you about the climate crisis?’ echoed the government’s findings that 75% of UK adults are worried about it.
If you are worried about climate change, taking action with others is a healthy, positive outlet .
Many of those “activists” are joining over 30,000 people to raise awareness of what respected scientists agree is a climate crisis.
A recent government poll showed 75% of the British population are concerned about this crisis. Many are dedicated enough to try and make change, including these caring individuals of Wanstead.
More than 200 organisations, many respected and knowledgable, are joining together to make a stand at “the big one”, maybe some have other motives, but this is better than making pointless negative comments and pointing fingers at those trying to make the world a better place.
Firstly, as a member of Wanstead Climate Action who was out doing the survey over three Saturdays, thank you to everyone who stopped to express their opinion and chat or sign-up. The four days of demonstration in Westminster that we were highlighting have started out very varied and colourful and interesting, expressing the urgency of the climate crisis and equitable solutions to it. Tomorrow’s march for biodiversity, and Sunday’s demonstration against new fossil fuels, welcome everyone to come and make connections and get inspired. Please come with, or look out for the WCA patchwork banner shown in the photo.
In response to Peter Hucker, we didn’t claim this was a scientific survey. Our sample was to an extent self-selecting, and obviously many people out shopping on the High St didn’t have time to stop or had their hands full. On the other hand, several people who didn’t stop said they appreciated people taking climate action; and we didn’t necessarily mention the subject we were inviting people to answer three questions about. In fact when a few people expressed feel that other issues were more important to them than climate and environment, it was almost a relief from the majority indicating they were at least very worried. There were three or four people who when we asked said they didn’t believe in climate change or vaccines, but did believe in ‘chemtrails’, who then mostly declined to place dots but concluded the conversation cordially. The results do need some thought: if Wanstead residents were representative of the UK population, it would seem there would be far more than 100,000 people on the streets this weekend, but then most of the UK population may not have heard about or considered joining ‘The Big One’.
I do think this was a useful exercise. If you want more methodical opinion surveys, the BEIS Public Attitude Trackers in Winter 2022 continued to show 38% of UK ‘very concerned’ and 44% ‘fairly concerned’ about climate change. Even in the polarised (and misinformed) US, Yale’s ‘Six Americas’ shows a majority ‘alarmed’ or ‘concern’. The fact is people naturally care much more about nature and long-term sustainability than you might gather from politicians in the media – perhaps look at all the community volunteering through Wren, Wanstead Society and so on and all those people who would do something if they found something right for them. One recent study was Sparkman et al (2022), ‘Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half’. Our simple boards demonstrated that the majority are not alone in their worries, hopefully overcoming too much fatalism about government inaction. Most people we spoke to want climate action to scale up, sometimes themselves eg buying an EV or solar panels even if they don’t feel street protest is the right outlet for their concerns. (I’d also like to mention that street action is only one string to WCA’s bow, as we campaign on clean air, fuel poverty and housing energy efficiency retrofits, pension divestment and much more.)