We should all be supporting Extinction Rebellion

Brexit, even hard Brexit, is trivial compared to the climate crisis we are facing. There, I've said it. Why? Because the recent report IPPC report gave us twelve years to reduce our carbon outputs or face potentially catastrophic climate change. Just think about that - twelve years! A few years ago I went to a talk by the respected climate scientist Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre. At that meeting, he said that the UK had to reduce its carbon emissions by eighty per cent in the next ten years to avoid a global temperature rise above 2 degrees centigrade. So we now have just seven years left to do that. Add to this that we now know that climate change and human activity has already caused a massive loss in biodiversity which threatens our future.

So, we are on course for a catastrophe if we don't take action, and we need to take that action now. We need a massive programme of de-carbonisation, including investment in renewables, battery storage, and energy efficiency. Some of the actions we can take have already been planned and are ready to be taken off the shelf such as the Green New Deal and One Million Climate jobs. These programmes have been thought through and fully costed - we need to get on with putting them into effect. We also need to reform agriculture, reducing the input of chemicals which damage wildlife and focus on growing local food sustainably and organically.

Extinction Rebellion protesters in London

All of this can be done but only if we have a government which faces up to the truth. Labour has been moving in the right direction for some time, too slowly for my liking, but it is getting there, and we know that a Tory government cannot deliver the changes we need. So we need to spread the word and encourage everyone we know to vote Labour, and in the meantime - before a Labour government -  we have to take every action we can at a local level - through Transition groups for example - and a national level by using peaceful direct action. That is why I think we should support, and where possible, participate in actions by Extinction Rebellion. This is something worth going to prison for. So please check out the actions they have planned and spread the word as far as you can!