ABSTRACT
As the United States and its allies in the war on terror prepared for war in Iraq in early 2003, millions of people took to the streets all over the world on 15 February in what is probably the largest simultaneous protest event in human history (Walgrave and Rucht 2010; Walgrave and Verhulst 2009). But to no avail. The United States chose to ignore the chorus of protesters and proceeded to invade Iraq. Almost 7 years later, in December 2009, thousands of activists descended on Copenhagen to pressure the world’s political leaders to take decisive and legally binding action on climate change. For a week, activists of all stripes turned a winter-cold Copenhagen into a hotspot of activism (Reitan, this volume). The climate deal that emerged from the COP15 meeting was, nevertheless, a disappointment for activists who had hoped to make a difference there.
