The Climate Vigil has been maintained every week since November, 2000, the day the Hague Climate Talks broke down, due to the intransigence of the US in refusing to do their share in the fight against climate change. Already at this stage it was clear that the US was the greatest obstacle in the way of globally coordinated action to avert impending climate disaster - but the situation soon got much worse with the election (or appointment by the Supreme Court !) of George W Bush as the most tranasparently special-interest-dominated and overtly anti-environmental US President in history.

The vigil started as a 2 week 24 hour-a-day protest and was inspired by the first ever mass climate-protest that took place just previously at the Hague Climate talks. After that it became a weekly vigil/protest, first on Saturdays and then on Monday evenings. The vigil/protest has always taken place at the US embassy- though it included 'leafleting expeditions' into Oxford Street from early on - apart from 2 weeks after September 11th when we moved it to the ExxonMobil offices, on Aldwych.

The vigil has been instrumental in catalysing bigger protests at the US embassy including an 'Inauguration Day' protest in January 2001, and the protests that followed Bush's dumping of the Kyoto protocol in March of the same year: the vigil was expanded into a 60-strong protest just 3 days after the news, and this acted in turn as the catalyst for our bigger 'Kyoto Rally' a month or so later.


The start of the vigil, November 2000: a 2 week 24 hour-a-day protest against the US sabotage of the Hague Climate Talks.

Early days at the Vigil.