XR’s “Big One” rocks London

by New Worker correspondent

Tens of thousands of protesters descended on Parliament on Saturday as part of a four-day action, billed “The Big One”, designed to “highlight the environmental failures” of government. Environmental group Extinction Rebellion (XR) kicked off the event on Friday, promising less disruption and more inclusion than the sit-downs and transport disruption that are its usual trademark. This time the climate change campaigners focused on street theatre, open-air debates and forums and protest pickets outside government departments in London “to highlight the environmental and social failures across them all”.
    Saturday’s protest, which coincided with Earth Day, focused on nature and biodiversity. It started from Westminster Abbey with protesters and their children, wearing animal costumes and masks. Many had made banners for the occasion, with one reading: “We defend the climate but police arrest us” and another “Extinction is forever”. Others warned that a third of UK birds were “at risk of extinction”.
Some XR supporters took part in the London Marathon in Sunday while others organised “people’s pickets and forums throughout the heart of the capital.
    They were joined by household names such as top film actor Juliet Stevenson, White Teeth author Zadie Smith, legendary producer and composer, Brian Eno, human rights advocate, Bianca Jagger, and indie band She Drew The Gun. The long weekend of climate change action was also supported by PCS, the main civil service union and a number of leading environmental and social justice movements.

XR returns to London!

by New Worker corrrespondent

Ecology campaigners were on the streets of London again for a “Weekend of Resistance” led by the Extinction Rebellion (XR) campaign as part of a month of protests called by a number of movements to draw attention to the environmental crisis which they say could trigger mass extinction across the planet.
    On Friday two young Just Stop Oil protestors poured tomato soup over Van Gogh's Sunflowers painting in National Gallery and then glued themselves to the wall beneath the frame while another sprayed yellow paint on the walls of New Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Police’s headquarters, to protest against police and state repression of activists.
    The Van Gogh masterpiece was fortunately shielded in glass and suffered no damage. Enraged art lovers called it vandalism but this suffragette-style protest was defended by one of the protesters who said "Is art worth more than life? More than food? More than justice? The cost-of-living crisis is driven by fossil fuels—everyday life has become unaffordable for millions of cold, hungry families—they can't even afford to heat a tin of soup.
    "Meanwhile, crops are failing and people are dying in supercharged monsoons, massive wildfires, and endless droughts caused by climate breakdown," the activist added. "We can't afford new oil and gas, it's going to take everything. We will look back and mourn all we have lost unless we act immediately".
    The next day the climate change warriors gathered in Trafalgar Square on Saturday for a march on Downing Street to show “this corrupt, unelected government that we refuse to be pushed around”. Some burned their energy bills outside the Prime Minister’s residence while others held sit-down protests in other parts of central London to draw attention to their demands and disrupt traffic throughout central London.

XR blocks London bridges

by New Worker correspondent

Climate change campaigners shut down four major bridges in London over the Easter weekend as part of a wave of actions across the United Kingdom demanding an end to fossil fuels. Protesters across London played bongos and waved banners that demanded an end to fossil fuels as they blocked roads that caused queues of traffic in the centre of the capital.
    Extinction Rebellion (XR) campaigners blocked the Blackfriars, Lambeth, Waterloo, and Westminster bridges. "Rebels are swarming across London, part of a global wave of civil disobedience as people wake up to the fact that our leaders are failing to tackle the climate crisis," the group tweeted. "They promise BuildBackBetter -- but all they do is pour oil on the [fire]."
    The climate change activist group vowed to keep demonstrating until the British government aligns its policy with climate science. They highlighted that globally "we're on track for a catastrophic 3°C warming!" That is a full degree higher than the less ambitious target of the 2015 Paris climate agreement for limiting global temperature rise by 2100, relative to pre-industrial levels.
    "As long as our government fails to act now on the climate crisis, disregarding expert advice, licensing more drilling for oil and gas, locking up scientists, we have no choice but to disrupt," XR added.
    Blackfriars Bridge was held up by a single 76-year-old woman who lay in the road and refused to budge. Lucy Harding said she had first learned about climate change from her stepson in 1976. "That's a long time to know that we are in danger and it has been really frightening to see it coming closer and closer, seeing tipping point after tipping point pass," she said. "It's awful to be 76, to actually see the end of my life coming, and knowing what has been left behind."
    About two dozen officers from the City of London police surrounded Ms Harding, who said she was determined to be arrested. However, she voluntarily ended her blockade after officers refused to pick her up and threatened to call an ambulance to take her away.
    On Good Friday the city's Metropolitan Police tweeted that "we are seeing pockets of protest which are causing delays and disruption across central London" and "officers are on scene and working to manage the impact."
    On Saturday veteran environmental activist Daniel Mark Hooper, known as ‘Swampy’ , scaled Marble Arch along with a fellow climber to hang a giant banner across the monumental gate by Hyde Park in London’s West End to the cheers of hundreds of supporters who blocked the junction at Marble Arch. Seventy were later arrested.
    The banner drop marked the close of a week of Extinction Rebellion actions in central London which have seen the convergence of environmental groups around a demand for an immediate end to all new fossil fuel projects. The Just Stop Oil Coalition, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are among those who have been calling for an end to fossil fuels, as well as intergovernmental organisations such as the United Nations and the International Energy Agency
    Extinction Rebellion believes it is a citizen’s duty to rebel, using peaceful civil disobedience, when faced with criminal inactivity by their Government. XR’s key demands are:
    

• Government must tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency, working with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change.
• Government must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.
• Government must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice.

Climate Crisis can't be ignored

By New Worker correspondent

Climate change activists are disrupting traffic and public transport throughout central London this week to demand action to halt ecological disaster. They’ve been denounced by Tory ministers and business leaders for causing chaos and disrupting business, but Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, Caroline Lucas the Green MP, and Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich, have all publicly supported the protests.

Several thousand protesters have set up camps and road blocks in Westminster whilst others glued and chained themselves to government buildings and lorries as part of a 14-day environmental protest in 60 cities throughout the world. Some 600 demonstrators have been arrested and the police have called on reinforcements from the provinces to deal with the protests that are planned at City Airport and other high-profile centres in the heart of the capital.

The London protests were called by Extinction Rebellion (XR), a green campaign that was set up last year by a number of academics and veteran ecology campaigners to use Gandhi-style civil disobedience to take the movement to the streets and fire a common sense of urgency to tackle climate breakdown.

In April they brought London to a standstill with a wave of protests that caused traffic jams and grid-lock across the capital. Now they hope to do the same as part of an “International Rebellion” to shut down cities and disrupt business through peaceful protests calling for urgent action to tackle the ecological emergency facing the planet.

At the protest camps young eco-warriors were heartened by the news that seasoned campaign Daniel ‘Swampy’ Hooper has, once again, joined the fray. ‘Swampy’ spent a week living in a tunnel in a bid to halt the re-routing of the A30 in Devon in 1996. Hooper now lives in West Wales and he’s just been fined for attaching himself to a concrete block during an XR blockade of the big Valero oil refinery in Pembrokeshire last month.

Speaking at the launch of yet another book about Margaret Thatcher on Monday evening, Prime Minister Boris Johnson labelled Extinction Rebellion protesters as “unco-operative crusties” who live in “heaving hemp-smelling bivouacs”, and said his security team didn't want him to attend the event because they feared he might be hit by eggs from the climate change protesters. But his father, Stanley Johnson, who openly supports the ecological campaign and says he’s “very impressed” by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, has agreed to join an XR panel for a climate change debate in Trafalgar Square this week.

Jeremy Corbyn says the next Labour government will create thousands of jobs in windfarms as part of a new green agenda for Britain. The Labour leader unveiled plans to create around 70,000 jobs in offshore windfarms part-owned by the public this week. Thirty-seven new offshore windfarms would be built under a 10-year plan for clean energy to reduce emissions to net zero and keep global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees. Wind energy would increase fivefold and benefit from an £83bn investment.

The project would be a joint venture between publicly owned Regional Energy Agencies (REAs) and existing offshore wind developers.

The REAs would hold a controlling 51 per cent stake in all new windfarms, with 20 per cent of their profits being invested back into coastal communities and 80 per cent reinvested into decarbonising the economy and tackling climate change.

Jeremy Corbyn said: “The full scale of the environment and climate emergency cannot be ignored. As scientists and activists have made clear, we need immediate and radical action to have any hope of keeping temperature rises to a manageable level.

“We know the big polluters and banks won’t take the necessary action. So the next Labour government will kick-start a Green Industrial Revolution, protecting our planet and creating hundreds of thousands of high-wage, high-skill unionised jobs across the country and delivering investment for communities that have been held back for decades.

“Labour’s 10 year plan will provide the massive public investment needed to radically reduce our emissions and secure a future for our planet.”

Global warming: Are we the last generation?

protesting across London last week

By New Worker correspondent

On Good Friday around 15 youths – all aged under 17 years old – held a large banner with the words “Are we the last generation” on the pavement outside Heathrow airport in London. A heavy police presence stopped the teenagers from standing on the road.

“I’m Felix, I’m 14 years old. I’m doing this because when I have children I want to be able to tell them I did everything I could to protect their futures.”

“I’m Samar Faraj, I’m 14, and I’m doing this because there are things that need doing that aren’t being done, and in 30 years time, I don’t want to be looking back on this and regretting not doing everything I could do to help prevent the disasters we’re facing.”

Extinction Rebellion Youth is a network for everyone born after 1990: “We are a generation that have never known a stable climate and that will be defined by how the world responds to the climate and ecological crisis.”

“I’m Mia, I’m 13. I’m doing this because something has to change, I’m being told to make decisions about my future when it can’t even be guaranteed the Earth has one.”

“I’m Maya Rivett-Martinez, I’m 15, and the constant fear for my future is what gives me the need for change.”

The campaigning teenagers at London airport were part of the wave of climate change protests that paralysed parts of central London last week in demonstrations called by the Extinction Rebellion movement to attract attention to the ecological catastrophe they believe is imminent if nothing is done to halt it.

The global aviation industry produces two per cent of all human-induced carbon dioxide emissions. If global aviation was a country, it would rank in the top 10 emitters. Unfortunately, the emissions from this industry continue to increase at a truly alarming rate. Parliament has approved a policy for airport expansion. The Government is moving in completely the wrong direction.

Last week the godfather of climate science Dr James Hansen, the American space scientist who first alerted the world to the dangers of climate change more than 30 years ago, sent an open letter to the British people: “I write in recognition that citizens throughout the UK, led increasingly by the young – those who stand to lose most – now are rising to demand that national leaders develop and adhere to a viable path away from calamitous global warming.”

To every parent, and every grandparent, “I urge you in particular to take a stand, so as to not let the full burden of responsibility befall our children. Arm yourself with information of the highest quality, think for yourself, and then exercise your full intellectual and moral capacity to help your nation and our planet survive.

“I have no doubt that the era of fossil fuels is drawing to a close. But questions remain as to the speed of the coming transition and, in direct consequence of that speed, the nature of what will be left in its wake. I cannot answer, in particular, whether our civilisation will survive in any recognisable form the assault on nature and the human dislocation attending loss of our planet’s great coastal cities that we of necessity will confront with continued unarrested climate change.”

In his letter Hansen sets out the truth about the ecological emergency: “The foregoing, accordingly, constitutes my best brief effort to explain our present, serious, global, climate crisis. I will have failed if, upon its review, the reader decides to shirk his or her fundamental responsibility. Now, more than before, we need to bring to bear our full acumen, time, and resources so as to demand and forge a viable future.”

This week, the words of the world’s most respected climate scientist were echoed by wild-life broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough: “If we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade we could face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies. What happens now and in these next few years will profoundly affect the next few thousand years.”

Tell the Truth on Climate change!

By New Worker correspondent

Climate change protesters disrupted transport throughout central London this week in street protests calling on the government to "tell the truth about climate change" and reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025. Hundreds of activists have been arrested in the protests that began on Monday, organised by the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement, aimed at shutting down the capital.

Earlier this month a group of XR supporters stripped in parliament during a Brexit debate and glued their hands to the glass of the House of Commons' public gallery to highlight the threat of climate change.

This week’s protests have caused traffic jams and grid-locks across the capital. London Underground services have been disrupted. British Transport Police say they’ve restricted passenger Wi-Fi connectivity at Tube stations in the interests of safety, and to prevent and deter "serious disruption" to the London Underground network. A senior police officer said: "Ongoing demonstrations are causing serious disruption to public transport, local businesses and Londoners who wish to go about their daily business.”

John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn’s No 2, tweeted his support for the activists. He said the disruptions “will be worth it” if it “moves us all a step further in tacking climate change”.

But fellow Labour member Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, says that although he "shared the passion" of the activists he was "extremely concerned" about plans that some of them had to disrupt the Tube.

Young activists who’ve set up tents in Waterloo Bridge, Parliament Square and Oxford Circus have put up road blocks on major roads and bridges whilst others have even glued themselves to lorries and trains to cause disruption and attract attention to the ecological catastrophe they believe is imminent if nothing is done to halt it.

Protesters targeted Shell’s London headquarters, gluing themselves to windows and smashing the glass revolving doors of the big oil corporation, and some 500,000 people were affected by the diversion of 55 bus routes as a result of the disruption on the roads.

Four climate activists even glued themselves to the fence outside Jeremy Corbyn’s house in north London. They said they were all Labour supporters but wanted the party to go much further on the issue. One of them, a 60-year-old man who walked from Stroud to take part in the London actions, said: “We are here because we are supporters of Jeremy Corbyn and he is the best hope this country has got to get us out of this. But we need system change and a transformation of our consumer economy, and we know he is a person who has the authority and power to deliver that.” Parliament is in recess and the Labour leader was apparently not at home at the time.

The protests are not just limited to London. Other demonstrations have taken place in 80 other cities around the world. In The Hague in Holland activists swamped the International Criminal Court building; and police made 29 arrests when over a thousand climate change campaigners blocked one of the main roads into Edinburgh's city centre.

The British-based ecology movement plans to go ahead around the clock with its acts of disobedience until the end of the month. “Climate breakdown and ecological collapse threaten our existence. Another world is possible, and it’s just within reach. It’s going to take everything we’ve got to get there. So we’re pulling out all the stops and rising up in a full-scale Rebellion against this twisted system to save ourselves and the natural world from extinction,” they say in a statement released this week.

Extinction Rebellion was established following a call from a number of academics and veteran ecology campaigners last year to set up a movement that embraces Gandhi-style civil disobedience to take the movement to the streets and fire a common sense of urgency to tackle climate breakdown.