Dorothea Hackman on campaigning about climate change

First, identify the aspect that motivates you most. This might be reducing air pollution  - which leads you to reducing road traffic and construction; or perhaps water pollution, which is not just about stopping the water companies from releasing untreated sewage, but also agricultural chemical runoff ruining our rivers.

Although it is way too late for individual actions to be enough, they still help and are part of the adaptation we need to make to plant-based food and a plastic-free future.

Tackling local government is for those with determination and tenacity as there is a massive gulf between supposed climate action policy and aspirations and the reality of planning permission for intensive high-rise construction and destruction of green spaces and trees.

Dorothea Hackman suggests to identify the aspect of climate that motivates you most (Image: Archant)

Central government is equally baffling, with commitments to reducing carbon emissions as per for example the Paris agreements, yet doubling down on fossil fuel development, signing off new oil exploration licences and allowing the big energy companies to rake in record profits.

But in the shadows are a network of companies and organisations that are profiting from government contracts and subsidies. Think of Drax, paid for from our taxes to import and burn trees, or the Rosebank contracts in the North Sea.

Further, there are the advertising companies greenwashing the big companies by promoting tiny inadequate actions as if they compensate for the massive harm and eye-watering profits.

Insurance companies and law firms enable fossil fuel exploration and exploitation to continue. And of course, arms manufacture and military activity are massive contributors to the climate catastrophe we are now facing, with energy companies profiting from war, to the terrible cost of civilian populations.

These are all worth protesting about, and it is incomprehensible when it is urgent to curtail and stop all this that measures are being implemented to criminalise peaceful protest.

There is yet another category of enablers besides the media, who contribute to climate denial and complacency, and that is privately-owned companies who are not scrutinised by shareholders at annual general meetings.

Take for example Perenco, which aside from polluting Poole harbour from an end-of-life BP refinery, has been exploiting Moanda in the Democratic Republic of Congo, old Total and Shell sites in Gabon and Cameroon, the Amazon in Peru and Ecuador, extracting oil and gas in Columbia and Guatemala. The independent French news site MEDIAPART (mediapart.fr/) reported in December 2023 on these and 70 worldwide ecologically important areas for biodiversity at risk.

So there are many campaigns to support, to whatever extent you are able, to encourage all these background organisations to cut the ties to fossil fuels.

• Dorothea Hackman is chair of Camden Civic Society.