the Wave

On Saturday I went to the Wave demonstration in London. The fact that such a demonstration took place was a really good thing and I fully support it. It was a huge demonstration with a police estimate of 20,000 marchers and the organiser’s estimate of 50,000.

What I eventually realised was that the demonstration was too huge. Looking around protesters at the Wave I was disconcerted to see an old neighbour who I remember as having driven a 4×4. Looking a little further there were organisations such as the RSPB. The RSPB opposed a wind farm on shetland island on the grounds that it would somehow harm birds. That justification can be seen in many other groups opposing wind farms and I have reason to believe that it is a lie: a study showed that between 500 million and 1 billion birds die each year in the United States as a result of collisions with man-made structures, when compared with the paltry 4,700 or so which die each year at California’s Altamont Pass wind farm it seems almost trivial.
Edit: As a commenter called Nik pointed out below I’ve been hard on the RSPB. In fact I was wrong to say that they don’t support wind farms: they do, and for that I apologise. But I still believe that most opposition to building of wind farms is unjustified… including the argument that they could harm birds.

As for Christian Aid, CAFOD, Christian Ecology Link, Church of Scotland, the United Reformed Church, the Episcopal Church, the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Islamic Relief, Jewish Community Center for London, Operation Noah and the Salvation Army I’m sure they do a lot of worthy work but I personally wouldn’t go too close to them due to their peddling religion.
Another organisation called Carplus supported the Wave. Their motto is “Rethinking car use” and I can’t help but point out that car use doesn’t need to be ‘rethought’ as much as wiped out.

Even Gordon Brown showed his support for the demonstration. This is when the little alarm bells went off in my head. He likened it to the PR spin disaster that was the Make Poverty History campaign. I sincerely hope the environmental movement avoids this path. His government won’t hesitate to do the same and throw greenwash all over their policies while collaborating with big business to destroy the planet. Remember that this is the government which killed the Vestas wind turbine plant in cold blood.

This all seems a little hypocritical after my having criticised the left for not being united and that we shouldn’t reject those on our side who fight for a common cause. Except this common cause has been muddled down to a broad rumbling that ‘something should be done’. At the Stop The War national march our cause was clear and although there were few of us and everyone there didn’t agree politically, all bar none were absolutely committed to the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. This demonstration was riddled with small radical groups and could be easily dismissed as extremist.

Here’s the conclusion you’ve been waiting for:
There must be a balance between the views of organisations/participants at a demonstration and the integrity of it’s aims.
Opinionated participants champion strong causes – and sometimes fall outside public opinion into extremism.
Indecisive participants champion weak causes – but are popular.