Extinction Rebellion

As temperatures reach 40°C in the UK for the first time ever, I look at the failures of politicians, the media and ourselves to take the required action necessary to keep the earth habitable, and particularly ask why, after the COP26 climate summit in November, we’re not seeing any efforts to implement the 7% cuts in emissions that are necessary to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030, a target that we are all supposed to have agreed to.

For my birthday, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published what scientists are describing as the “bleakest warning yet” about the perils of catastrophic climate change, and the need for urgent action now to try to prevent global temperatures from rising by more than For my birthday, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published what scientists are describing as the “bleakest warning yet” about the perils of catastrophic climate change, and the need for urgent action now to try to prevent global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, in an effort to keep the world habitable.

My report about Extinction Rebellion’s fortnight of actions in London, primarily targeting the City of London, and demanding an immediate end to all investments in fossil fuels — the minimum that is required to tackle the alarming and irreversible climate change that is already underway, but whose worst effects can be mitigated if we act now — and not, as politicians like to think, by 2030 or even 2050. Included are some of my photos from the last two weeks, plus a detailed account of how awareness of a looming environmental catastrophe has grown, and information about the banks and other organisations targeted by XR — as well as others who only escaped attention because two weeks isn’t long enough to expose all the climate crimes of our banks and other financial institutions.

In the year of unprecedented wildfires and flash flooding, we seem to be at a tipping point when it comes to dealing with catastrophic climate change, and yet our leaders, the nature of capitalism and our own apparent inability to deal with the enormity of the crisis have left us, if not in denial, then largely in a state of paralysis.

Today marks the 36th anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield, when the police, under Margaret Thatcher, destroyed, with unprecedented violence, a convoy of vehicles containing men, women and children, as they tried to make their way to Stonehenge to set up what would have been the 12th annual Stonehenge Free Festival. Despite the trauma caused that day, the Tories continued to persecute Travellers, passing punitive legislation in 1986 and 1994, and now, under Priti Patel, are seeking to outlaw the entire nomadic way of life through a draconian clampdown on “trespass” in the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

My assessment of the first year of Covid lockdowns, and how, on two occasions — last June, and last weekend — political protests have erupted, regarding racial oppression and women’s rights, when the logical limits of strict lockdowns have been reached. Plus a much more critical analysis of the parallel world of Covid denial.

My response to the police violence at the peaceful vigil for Sara Everard on Clapham Common, and its curious timing, coinciding with the second reading of home secretary Priti Patel’s horribly authoritarian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021, which seeks to legislate meaningful protest out of existence.

An interview about my activism — involving Stonehenge and the Battle of the Beanfield, Guantánamo, the housing ‘regeneration’ industry in the UK, and the currently unfolding environmental crisis — as published in Gonzo Weekly and International Times, based on questions from the publisher and activist Alan Dearling.

Promoting the release of ‘This Time We Win’, the new single by The Four Fathers, which I wrote last year, inspired by Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion, and which we recorded in December with Charlie Hart, who also plays Wurlitzer piano on it. Ironically, the arrival of the coronavirus has led suddenly to seriously reduced emissions, although our leaders are desperate to restore “business as usual” as soon as they can, a delusional position that we hope as many people as possible will resist.

One year ago, Extinction Rebellion activists (myself included) occupied several sites in central London, bringing traffic to a halt, in an environmental precursor to what the collapse of “business as usual” looks like under the coronavirus lockdown. How can we make sure that, as the crisis passes, we don’t simply return to the suicidally irresponsible culture that existed until just a month ago, which was speeding us towards environmental destruction.