Gas flaring contributes to just over 1% of the world’s CO2. It’s where you set fire to the combustible vapours emitted by an oil well. An illegal practice in Nigeria since 1984, there’s overwhelming evidence of its continuing employ by oil companies like Shell. So much so that it can be seen from space.

The film officially launches at midnight tonight, but you can have a preview of it here.

A few years ago, a woman approached me with some evidence of nasty worker treatment by another oil company that drafts in foreign workers [Koreans mainly] to take care of jobs local Nigerians could handle. The locals were left to take care of work along the pipeline. Most of the locals employed were illiterate and couldn’t read the warning and hazard signs. As a result, a few of them died when the pipes occasionally went boom. If you want to know more, drop me a line.

For something a bit funnier, it seems Shell have halted Nigerian offshore drilling in a visionary new remediation plan.

The Gluts are Gina Birch, Kaffe Matthews and Hayley Newman. Gina’s a founding member of The Raincoats, I once lay in Kaffe’s sonic bed in Aarhus, and Hayley’s a polymath live artist. They call their style “eco-electro. George Monbiot meets Lady Gaga and her twin sisters.” Whether I’ll be treated to a neosocialist knees-up or a trio of women screeching their way through their forties remains to be seen. But as a fan of pre-grrl rock punkstress tunes of the The Raincoats and having once dabbled in sound art, I’m erring on the positive.

Also on the bill are: John Jordan’s Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, The People Speak (and their Planetary Pledge Pyramid), Question Time, photographer and great Dane Kristian Buus and filmmaker Emily James. Hosted by Mikey Weinkove, people will get to take home a live-press zine, designed and printed on the spot by The Ladies of the Press.

Of course, I did not attend the demonstrations in Copenhagen. And my cynicism behind environmental pressure groups remains the same, if not reinforced by my recent trip to Haiti. This doesn’t preclude me from engaging with the issues – it just means I’ll most likely be found at the back with my arms crossed mocking the I Only Fly To India brigade. Like the middle-class art-school wanker I am.

“Film it. Present it. You can do it,” I think is what she said to me. My head was rushing with all sorts of fears based around fucking up.

A few months on and the taster for the film was selected for the Branchage Film Surgery session as part of the London Short Film Festival. Got some amazing feedback. James Mullighan and his surgeons took a potato peeler to my eyes and have given me a clearer idea of how I should take this project on.

Claire Lewis has agreed to Executive Produce my film. Less than a week after its taster was first screened.

I now need to find a cameraman with kit who believes in the project and is willing to work for deferred pay.

So I’m standing naked over the precipice but can see a nifty boutique at the other end.

Watch the taster here: Dirty White Gold

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Am a heartless bastard. Let me use this space to thank everyone who has helped so far (and has yet to be credited). This includes all at Pants to Poverty (inc Ben and Cecilia), all who attended the Branchage, those at the Frontline Club who’ve aided me so far (you know who you are), Mike Cupcake, those at Frith St with whom I share a space (again, you know who you are), Suzan Keen…lots more but I’ll save that for the Oscars speech I’ll give in the shower ok?

Over 50,000 members of the “I Only Fly to India” militia will descend on Copenhagen over the next week to demonstrate over a shopping list of demands longer than J-Lo’s rider. Attendees are an international who’s who of the best-branded campaign groups from Oxfam to Action Aid to superglue and D-lock specialists Plane Stupid. Lesser-known groups like Brazil’s Land Reform Movement will be there to boost everyone’s ethnic credentials.

Developed countries like the USA and the UK have pledged to cut carbon emissions (on their terms) by 2020 alongside developing nations like China and India cutting their carbon intensity (on someone else’s terms). The finer points over who does what by how much and who’s going to police 192 countries will also be debated.

A sore point has already come up with the leak to The Guardian of the ‘Danish text’ – a leaked draft agreement that gives rich nations more power, marginalises the UN’s role and abandons the Kyoto protocol. All the jaw jaw about making a difference to the world’s global temperature becomes hot air in the cold Copenhagen wind.

The feeling that a potentially powerful global movement is being hijacked by some very slick PR is keeping me away from Denmark. The talk around and within the conference seems to be an exercise in appearing to make a difference without actually changing a damn thing.

Initiatives like the 10:10 campaign (who recently accepted missile makers MBDA onto their scheme with the lines “Of course arms manufacturers can reduce their emissions by 10%. What they do with the rest of their time is a different matter, on which we couldn’t possibly comment”) ask individuals and companies to pledge to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. I had a recent Twitter debate with one of their worker ants, @malchadwick, who failed to see the hypocrisy in cosying up with a firm whose business it is making things that kill people.

If it makes you feel better about yourself turning off a few lights and flushing the loo only for solids, just be aware that the bandwagon you’re joining broke down a long time ago and your cooperation is helping corporations wash their sins away in the green haze of a well-run publicity campaign.

This weekend and next week will see a range of so-called direct action protests. How direct and effective will sitting in a street getting water-cannoned be if you’re an Indian farmer considering suicide to get out of debt because your crops failed?

What’s needed is justice. Fair rights and fair pay for workers and bold international policing of commerce and corporate structures. Grass roots movements that tackle tangible goals, not semantic abstract concepts. Proper justice and action directed at those who use and exploit. Not branded climate justice and a spectacle only likely to achieve hypothermia.

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This article was originally published in The Guardian, 11 December 2009, and republished on The Comment Factory.