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BBC Radio 4

New in Understand: Ten Fights That Made The Green Movement

The modern green movement has been shaped not only by protest, but by conflict within the ranks. Shared ideas are forged through friction - battles over tactics, solutions, or who gets a voice. Justin Rowlatt goes to the heart of these battles - to learn about these dramatic moments from the people who were there. Friends, or sometimes enemies, hashing out big ideas that help define what it means to be green.

Understand from BBC Radio 4 - unravelling the complexities of the biggest stories and subjects that really matter right now.

Understand

Facing climate fatigue and denial, a backlash against green policy, and increasingly urgent warnings from scientists, the green movement is shifting into a new era. 

Two environmentally-minded politicians spell out their opposing visions for where the movement should go next. 

Zack Polanski is the leader of the Green Party, preaching a message of ‘eco-populism’. John Gummer is a Conservative Lord and former head of the Climate Change Committee; he thinks the most powerful tool to make change is the free market.

What is the future of the green movement?

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt
Series Producer: Ellie House
Editor: Matt Willis
Sound Design and Mix: James Beard
Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck 
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke 

Archive: 
Doechii at Glastonbury, Glastonbury and Doechii filmed by BBC, 28/6/2025
Green Party Hustings at Glastonbury Speakers Forum, The Green Gathering, filmed by Zoe Broughton, 8/7/2025
Margaret Thatcher speech to the United Nations General Assembly, C-SPAN, 8/11/1989

Ten Fights That Made the Green Movement: 10. Rival Visions

Just Stop Oil is “hanging up the hi vis” after three years of throwing soup at paintings, interrupting theatre performances, and blocking roads. It’s 2025. They’ve been racking up arrests - and opponents - and now, the UK government has passed a string of new laws cracking down on disruptive protest. 

They say they’ve achieved their aims - a ban on new oil and gas licenses - but were they policed to extinction? With their hardcore campaigning for the climate, did these activists prompt a change in law that made all green activism harder? 

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt
Producer: Alix Pickles
Series Producer: Ellie House
Editor: Matt Willis
Sound Design and Mix: James Beard
Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck 
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke 

Archive:
‘Just Stop Oil is Hanging up the Hi Vis’, Just Stop Oil, 27/3/2025
Just Stop Oil Louise M25 protest, Just Stop Oil, 7/11/2022
Lord Deben on Just Stop Oil, ITV Robert Peston, 5/7/2023
Rupert Read talking about The Climate Majority Project, Some Dare Call It Conspiracy podcast, 24/4/2024

Ten Fights That Made the Green Movement: 9. Crackdown

There are competing protests on either side of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. It’s 2023, on the eve of the final shutdown of the country's last three remaining nuclear power plants. 

On one side, anti-nuclear campaigners and politicians celebrate their victory. This is a new, clean, dawn for the German power grid, they say. 

On the other side of the gate, a small but vocal group of pro-nuclear greens condemn what they believe is a grave mistake. And as other countries pledge to increase their nuclear energy capacities, this group is playing the long game. They believe they may have lost the battle here in Germany, but they will win the war. 

How did the green-on-green struggle over the German energy system go nuclear?

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt
Producer: Rachel Naylor
Series Producer: Ellie House
Editor: Matt Willis
Sound Design and Mix: James Beard
Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck 
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke 

Archive:
Saubere Energien kämpfen gegen schmutzige, Nuklearia, 13/5/2023
Footage of Fridays For Future protest in Berlin, @digitalwerber and Nuklearia, 24/9/2021

Ten Fights That Made the Green Movement: 8. Shutdown

Mountain gorillas are thriving in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. The formerly ‘critically endangered’ population has blossomed, hailed around the world as a conservation success story. 

But to save the gorillas, humans were shut out of the forest. An indigenous community who for centuries called this area their ancestral homeland was evicted - they say, illegally. And now they are fighting to go back. 

 This struggle over land, resources, and who has a voice in conservation will go all the way to Uganda's highest court.

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt
Series Producer: Ellie House
Editor: Matt Willis
Sound Design and Mix: James Beard
Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck 
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Ten Fights That Made the Green Movement: 7. Impenetrable

“Helicopter” - an activist yells. Then gun-wielding agents in balaclavas abseil down, onto the Greenpeace ship, to tow it to Russia. 

This is the story of a campaign against oil drilling in the arctic that takes a dangerous turn. And the debate it sparks within the movement - should the organisers have better anticipated the risks of their campaign? Who is responsible for activists’ safety?

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt
Producer: Alix Pickles
Series Producer: Ellie House
Editor: Matt Willis
Sound Design and Mix: James Beard
Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck 
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke 

Archive:
Prirazlomnaya Gazprom Oil Rig Protest in the Pechora Sea, Russian Investigative Committee, 18/9/2013
Other archive footage provided by Greenpeace

Ten Fights That Made the Green Movement: 6. Arctic 30

Hundreds of world leaders are gathered in Copenhagen, 2009, with high hopes of securing a historic climate deal. And the Chinese premier has gone missing. US President Obama rushes through the corridors of the conference centre - on a mission to gatecrash China’s secret rendez-vous with its allies.

This is just the final day of a two-week conference that has felt more like a thriller movie than an exercise in diplomacy.

How did one global conference expose the faultlines in international climate collaboration that are still seen today?

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt
Producer: Rachel Naylor
Series Producer: Ellie House
Editor: Matt Willis
Sound Design and Mix: James Beard
Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck 
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Ten Fights That Made the Green Movement: 5. Brokenhagen

A pair of radical activists drives east, from the West Coast of the US to a quaint skiing town in Colorado. They’ve watched as local environmental groups tried - and failed - to prevent the expansion of a ski resort into pristine forest land. And they’ve had enough. Their plan? To burn the resort down. 

This group will go on be named the number one domestic terror threat in the United States. And the green movement is split about whether their actions went too far.

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt
Series Producer: Ellie House
Editor: Matt Willis
Sound Design and Mix: James Beard
Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck 
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Ten Fights That Made the Green Movement: 4. Terror

It’s the 1990s - and in a tiny office in Charing Cross, a group of big thinkers is publishing some radical ideas…and about to have a very public falling out.

This is the story of an influential green magazine and the man who created it: Teddy Goldsmith. He believed the cause was so grave it stood outside of left-right politics. Not everyone agreed.

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt
Producer: Rachel Naylor
Series Producer: Ellie House
Editor: Matt Willis
Sound Design and Mix: James Beard
Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck 
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke 

Archive: 
Margaret Thatcher speech to the United Nations General Assembly, C-SPAN, 8/11/1989

Ten Fights That Made the Green Movement: 3. The Ecologist

Somewhere in the North Pacific, 1971. A ragbag crew of environmentalist hippies sets sail on a rickety fishing boat in a last ditch effort to stop a nuclear weapons test. Their tumultuous voyage would birth the modern green movement. The men on board wanted to save the world, but spent much of their time at each other’s throats. 

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt
Producer: Rachel Naylor
Series Producer: Ellie House
Editor: Matt Willis
Sound Design and Mix: James Beard
Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck 
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke 

Archive: 
Irving Stowe announcing Greenpeace concert, provided by Robert Stowe
‘The birth of Greenpeace’, CBC Radio Canada, 11/10/1971
Argument on Greenpeace boat, AM925 , City of Vancouver Archives

Ten Fights That Made the Green Movement: 2. The Greenpeace

We follow Extinction Rebellion on one of its first ever actions. Before the rebels shut down London, before they became a household name, they occupied an office building in Islington. Their target? Not a fossil fuel company or government, but Greenpeace - perhaps the world’s most high profile environmental campaign group. 

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt
Series Producer: Ellie House
Editor: Matt Willis
Sound Design and Mix: James Beard
Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck 
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke 

Archive: 
‘Extinction Rebellion occupy Greenpeace HQ’, Real Media, 18/10/2018
‘LONDON Walk TOUR - Extinction REBELLION Protest PINK BOAT at Oxford Circus - England’, Walking Tour, Walking Tour, 16/4/2019

Ten Fights That Made the Green Movement: 9. Crackdown

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