Video: Capitalism vs the climate

In the run up to Saturday’s Time to Act demonstration, Jonathan Neale spoke in Carlisle about climate change and revolution. Video of Jonathan’s talk is below, and Stephen G also reports from the event.

Carlisle rs21 staged its first public event by hosting an evening of debate on revolutionary approaches to tackling climate change with guest speaker Jonathan Neale.

Around 50 people attended the Capitalism vs The Climate event, which took place on 27 February at the University of Cumbria.

Carlisle rs21 set up the event in order to bring together various anti-capitalists and environmentalists from across Cumbria and to help mobilise people in preparation for the Time to Act! climate demo in London on 7 March.

In the build-up to Jonathan’s talk, the Carlisle branch worked with networks of activists and parties from across the county in an effort to break down some of the barriers which have formed between groups on the left locally, whilst at the same time maintaining the centrality of our revolutionary message. To help foster a sense of inter-organisational solidarity, various organisations were invited to have stalls at the event, to bring along newspapers and flyers and to highlight any campaigns they were working on.

The openness of this approach was reflected in the diversity of the audience on the night: rs21 comrades from Carlisle and Scotland were joined by representatives of a number of environmental transition groups, along with members of local branches of the Green Party and the Socialist Party. These were complimented by a number of anarchists, feminists, students and various unaligned individuals.