Just Do It

Just Do It

The world of eco activism has rarely been seen on film due to its underground nature, but director Emily James was allowed unprecedented access to a couple of the groups involved for more than a year in order to shed some public light on the secretive world of environmental direct action.  Embedded within activist groups Climate Camp, Plane Stupid and Climate Rush, James follows these groups across the UK and also into Denmark to show these groups in action and bring to the fore a couple of modern day outlaws.

James films the various groups as they attempt to attack coal power stations and and glue themselves to the trading floors of international banks as well as an unsuccessful attempt to create a stir at the G20 conference held in Copenhagen. These are spread throughout the film but the one constant is the attempted blockade of the Vestas factory on the Isle of Wight as a group of activists look to support the sit in by workers in protest at the loss of 425 jobs within the complex that was making wind turbines, part of the newer green technologies. This was something to support rather than protest about. And ever present was Marina and her kettle, always friendly and always with a cup of tea on the go. Marina, as with some of the other activists presented, seems a bright and intelligent person who seems nice enough and someone you could probably get on with if you followed the same politics.

The problem here is that everything is fluffy cloud based, there's no real conflict. This is markedly noticed at the start with mention of the Police and how they had to change tactics with the death of Ian Tomlinson.  Despite seeing some touchy-feely tactics from the female Silver Commander at one protest and another policewoman getting quite cosy with Marina on the Isle of Wight, we don't really see or hear the activists real feelings about the Police,  good or bad. The nearest we get is when Marina and her friends are evicted from their site outside the Vestas complex where she is oddly surprised that her policewoman friend arrested her for not decamping quick enough. Maybe the best I can say is wellmeaning and nice enough, but hopelessly naive...

That would also apply to some of the actions taken by the activists during the film. The most hopeless I could see was the attempted storming of a coal power station in order to stop it from burning fossil fuel.  The justification for the action was simply that burning fossil fuel was bad but no solutions were provided by any of the participants. Sadly they succeeded, but at what cost? The power station was off-line for three days, so what was the implication for the national grid or consumers - private or business? What about the costs for damage or policing? Or lost wages for those who were unable to work during the outage? Not mentioned at all. Others I had more sympathy with such as the campaign to stop Heathrow's third runway or the attempt to superglue themselves to the trading floor of RBS to try and persuade the bankers to invest in more sustainable energy. Certainly from what is shown on screen, the activists seem harmless enough and their tactics seem to be non-confrontational in the main, working alongside local residents quite happily.

But questions do remain. All I could think of throughout the time I was watching was 'just how do these people support themselves?'. It was never really made clear as to the backgrounds of any of the participants but they seemed to live comfortably enough and certainly had the time and funding to travel the UK and abroad for some considerable time, these are not weekend warriors. My impression was these were full time activists who didn't have an occupation, which lost them some sympathy with me. Their politics was never really explained either, a few statements here or there but no real arguements to be chewed over by the viewers, despite there no being some real doubt over the validity of man made climate change research.

Let me be clear, I believe that climate change is real but doubt whether man actually affects it that much. If it could be proven beyond doubt, and these activists certainly believe this to be the case, it's pretty pointless in my mind demonstrating against European companies or Governments. The real targets should be the major pollution producing countries like China, the US or Asia/Africa. Trouble is, it's clear from the protest in Copenhagen that the activists don't really understand the local or national laws of Denmark and scream illegallities at the Danish Police, who try patiently to explain that they don't actually have to explain themselves and can enter and seize what they like. No later commentary to prove or disprove this either, which is quite amateurish.

So overall, we're presented with a cuddly version of eco activism that most people watching this would feel some sympathy with, the people are nice and polite in the main. This isn't the whole picture though, not by a long shot, and I'd like someone to do a proper expose on the more hardcore groups and some of the things they get up to. Still, whilst I'm pretty sure I could quite happily share a cup of tea with the likes of Marina, I doubt I could agree with most of their views. Worth a watch though...

**NOTE** The disc I recieved for review was a DVD-R and so missing the Deleted Scenes and Behind The Scenes featurette promised for the retail version.