‘We Can’t Trust the Weather Any More’: My Speech at ‘The Big One’, Extinction Rebellion’s Four-Day Protest in London
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On April 21, the first day of ‘The Big One’, Extinction Rebellion’s four days of arrest-free, family-friendly protest in Westminster, backed by over 200 other organisations — which I wrote about enthusiastically here, while berating the mainstream media for not taking the climate crisis seriously enough — I also made my first ever public speech about the already unfolding climate catastrophe.
I delivered my speech, written the night before, to a crowd of about a hundred people outside 55-57 Tufton Street, which I described in my article about ‘The Big One’ as being “home to a number of opaquely-funded right-wing ‘libertarian’ think-tanks that are actively committed to maintaining the murderous status quo, defending unfettered big business, and denying the reality of catastrophic climate change.”
Earlier, XR Writers Rebel had held a prominent event featuring Ben Okri, Zadie Smith and many other writers, which was followed by a kind of open mic session, where I followed a great performance by the West Country political collective Seize the Day, who first emerged from the road protest movement of the 1990s.
Photos and Report: Extinction Rebellion and 200 Other Groups “Unite to Survive”, Building a Movement Despite Mainstream Media Indifference
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On New Year’s Eve, Extinction Rebellion (XR), the disruptive but non-violent climate activist group that did so much to propel the climate crisis up the political agenda in October 2018 and April 2019, occupying bridges, and, perhaps most memorably, occupying Oxford Circus with a pink yacht bearing the message ‘Tell the Truth’, directed at politicians and the media, announced a change of tactics.
“We quit”, they announced in a press release, stating that they were making “a controversial resolution to temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic”, in an effort to build a bigger and more inclusive movement “beyond traditional divides.” As they explained, “No one can do this alone, and it’s the responsibility of all of us, not just one group. It may be uncomfortable or difficult, but the strength of all social, environmental, and justice movements lies in working together.”
It was a bold move, although there was also a certain logic to it. After the actions of October 2018 and April 2019, tolerance for the group’s disruptive tactics had waned after a group of protestors blocked a morning rush hour commuter train at Canning Town, and the Covid lockdowns had then thwarted efforts to mobilise further.
Cop-Out at COP27: Still No Agreement to Even Reduce the Use of Fossil Fuels, As the 1.5°C Target for Global Temperature Rise Fades Away
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It’s been a while since I last wrote about the most pressing crisis that any of us have faced in our lifetimes — the ever-increasing fossil fuel emissions that threaten the very viability of life on this extraordinary planet, where, uniquely in the universe, as far as we know, the chemical balance of the atmosphere has allowed an extraordinary abundance of life, including our own, to blossom over tens of millions of years (or, in our case, the last 300,000 years).
In summer, as, for two days, the UK baked in the hottest temperatures ever recorded, I wrote two articles, Our Climate Crisis Paralysis: How, in the Face of Unprecedented Signs of Climate Collapse, We’re Still Being Failed by Politicians, the Media and Ourselves, and “Human Kind Cannot Bear Very Much Reality”, Doing Nothing While the World Burns and Extinction Looms, in which I added my voice to the many other concerned global citizens trying to wake people up to the unique gravity of the crisis we face, whereby the emissions caused through our profligate use of fossil fuels are already beginning to turn the earth from a generally bountiful garden into somewhere inhospitable.
This year really ought to have been a wake-up call — not just because of 40 degree heat in the UK, but also because of similar record-breaking temperatures around the world, leading to rivers drying up, wildfires on an unprecedented scale, and widespread drought, which has involved vast areas of agricultural land being rendered useless.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
