In a pleasant grazing meadow outside Strood, the Climate Camp is open for business and I'm here for a couple of days to see what's going on, cover it for the blog and, more importantly, get involved.
It's difficult to talk about the camp without touching on some of fractious actions of the police. Fortunately, nothing much happened and, after a frustrating period when we could all have been doing something more constructive, the police withdrew.
Now, everyone seems keen to get on with the aims of the camp - discussion, education, building on a social movement for climate action and working to stop a new coal plant from being built at Kingsnorth, whose emissions would equal that of the 30 lowest emitting countries in the world combined - rather than spending too much time debating how to handle the police.
One of the sessions that did take place was a debate with Arthur Scargill - yes, that Arthur Scargill – about what he and others in the National Union of Miners perceive as a lack of thought given by environmentalists to the social impacts of a reduced or non-existent coal industry. Unsurprisingly, he wouldn't be too pleased to see the proposed new stations ditched but what was interesting was his vision that, ultimately, solar power would be providing our electricity. It's a bit unlikely but at least he acknowledges we can't burn fossil fuels forever, even if his tub-thumping delivery brought on a severely unpleasant Eighties flashback.
Tuesday should see everything back on track. Several sessions have caught my eye (all scheduled at the same time of course) and I'm down to help in the 'What the hell next...?' tent, providing suggestions for post-camp activism. Plus I have some more podcast interviews to do, so hopefully there'll be no more rude awakenings.
We'll be posting regular Climate Camp updates on our site (see all), and keep checking the Climate Camp website for the latest news.
