Science and ethics in the post-political era: strategies within the Camp for Climate Action

Abstract

Despite a peak in activism against climate change in the UK, new environmental direct action networks have not yet received much academic attention. This article takes as a case study perhaps the most prominent of such networks – the Camp for Climate Action – which held several high-profile protest events between 2006 and 2011. Using a theoretical framework which understands society as being distinctly ‘post-political’ in character, we ask questions about the knowledge claims that form the foundations of radical environmental politics. Drawing on published statements and press releases, as well as from our insights as active participants in the Camp, we analyse the strategy of environmental protest where climate change has become its focus. The Camp for Climate Action was a contested political arena. We argue that this contestation existed over the Camp’s strategy in the context of a ‘scientised’, ‘post- political’ politics which operated
 within an ethical framework that prescribed individual responsibility as the primary basis for action.