XR protests are back in the UK & are bigger and stronger

The past week has seen the UK born climate and social justice movement, Extinction Rebellion, launch a mass scale campaign to demand that the UK government put an end to all future development of tyrannical fossil fuels.

The data is in… our governments are not set to meet decarbonisation targets and a plan for tackling climate change remains a vague and conceptual load of political jargon and false promises. There is no excuse. Whilst there are a multitude of engineering issues that decarbonising presents, we really should have been asking these questions a decade ago.

A new movement, called Just Stop Oil, has started to gain traction in the UK. They have been recruiting extensively over the past couple of months. Starting with small-scale protests, such as storming the UK BAFTAs and pitch invading of the British Premier League, they laid groundwork for media attention on their big action, which began earlier this month. As of April 1^st, Just Stop Oil have been blocking UK oil refineries every day, in collaboration with Extinction Rebellion, and over 800 arrests have been recorded.

On the 9^th of April, Extinction Rebellion took to the streets with numbers of around 8000, making arrests incredibly difficult. On day 2 of the central London protests, doctors and scientists have been recorded amongst arrestees, standing in solidarity with the movement as a risk to public health. Disruption in London is likely to continue for weeks.

Vegans are well-represented by the sub-group, Animal Rebellion, and all food donations are requested to be free of animal products.

If there were ever a time to get political, it has perhaps already passed. What this means for all of us in 2022 is that we have to act NOW to avoid some of the worst consequences of the climate crisis. Ecocide will be the greatest destruction of human history, killing more living creatures than any one corrupt government. We are standing by whilst our people, plants and fellow animal companions lose their homes and die in real-time. And all for the sickest of reasons, profit.

Will those comfortable enough to eat and heat their homes, join the fight, or will they be complicit in proliferating the planet’s destruction to fuel a failed capitalist dream of economic growth and consumerist greed? Perhaps we should all be asking ourselves if the civil liberties that may be taken from us by the law can match the loss of liberty we will face for climate inaction.

Article written by Aisling Geraghty- United States