About Us

Climate Camp Scotland are an autonomous group organising nationally against fossil fuels and for climate justice in Scotland.

OUR MISSION

• To prevent the expansion of Scotland's oil & gas industry and ultimately shut it down.

• To see a just transition for workers in the fossil fuel industry.

• To build bridges between workers, front-line communities, and the climate movement.

• To normalise mass direct action for climate justice.

OUR APPROACH

• Solidarity with workers and communities in Scotland and across the world impacted by fossil fuels and the climate crisis.

• Migrant rights, open borders and the payment of climate reparations.

• Replacing inequality and corporate greed with common ownership and social justice.

• Challenging ableism, racism, patriarchy and transphobia; for the dignity of people of all ages, classes, genders and sexualities.

• Breaking down barriers that stop marginalised people from participating, valuing different levels of participation, and looking after people.

• Organising to limit and challenge hierarchies of power whilst ensuring accountability.

• Promoting peaceful methods for change whilst challenging the police and the criminal justice system.

OUR HISTORY

Scotland has a strong tradition of using protest camps to block serious environmental harm. In the 1979 the fields South of Dunbar were occupied to protest against the construction of Torness nuclear power station. The Peace Camp at Helensburgh was first established in 1982 and has been taking regular direct action at the gates of the Faslane nuclear base ever since. And in 2002 the anti-by-pass Bilston Glen camp was established in Midlothian.

Such tactics were first used against the fossil fuel industry in Scotland in 2009 at ‘Climate Camp Scotland’. Held at Mainshill Wood, South Lanarkshire, the camp bolstered the struggle to stop the site being dug for open cast coal. Mainshill Wood was occupied for most of the year, and likely contributed to the eventual collapse of Scottish Coal (read about the occupation in their excellent zine).

While Scottish activists were living in the trees in Lanarkshire, climate campers in England, who’d had a series of successful camps targeting coal power plants and Heathrow Airport, were drawing up plans to hit fossil fuel financiers for their 2010 camp. Their chosen target was RBS Gogarburn, Edinburgh, and so this became the last ‘UK’ climate camp.

Following the demise of coal the gas industry and fracking emerged as the next threat. ‘Reclaim the Power’ rose to fill the gap left by Climate Camp UK, and a Scottish chapter organised for several years in Edinburgh.

Who Are We