The Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow has been hailed, rightly, as one of the most important protests of our time.
Climate change is not simply one of the greatest threats facing future generations of humanity, it is one of the greatest threats facing the people of the Global South, whose homes and livelihoods are being destroyed today - as a consequence of the power and greed of Western corporations and states, and the apathy and irresponsibility of Western consumers.
Well there is an answer to power, greed and apathy, and it has been demonstrated at the Climate Camp: informed dissent, nonviolent disobedience and creative, participatory democracy.
Those of us who live in the West have enormous privileges, enormous freedoms. This has been demonstrated again - starkly - by the fate of an environmental camper in another European nation: 21-year-old Ilya Borodaenko, brutally murdered by neo-nazis on 21 July at the anti-nuclear protest camp in Angarsk in Siberia, Russia.
Inspiring people
Mindful of our privileges and our freedoms, we choose our actions and our lives, often inspired by the examples around us. Peace News is honoured to be associated, for example, with our Youth Page editor, Sonia Azad, whose latest initiative is reported on page 5.
We are also very glad to celebrate in this issue the contributions of Richard Crump, whose 16-year weekly vigil for Iraq is marked in these pages, and Chris Tomlinson, whose commitment to the environment in an urban setting we find challenging and encouraging.
Peace News aims to be a newspaper of inspiration. As we move through our next phase of development, we also aim to provide the hard information our readers need - in a readable, compact format - and the reflections, evaluations and debates within and around the movements our readers are part of - conducted in a fair and generous manner.
An apology
We are still learning. You may notice that there is not in this issue the promised second part of our interview with Derrick Jensen, the environmentalist author.
Derrick Jensen was offended by the tone and content of the interview published in the last issue, and asked us not to proceed with the interview. We have agreed to his request, and offered him an apology for the ungenerous tone of the article. The interview as published did not foster the mutual respect that we seek to develop between ourselves and others who sincerely seek justice.
We aim to be a paper of inspiration. We will draw on the astonishing examples of people like Barbara Deming and projects like the Camp for Climate Action to help guide us onto that better path.