We’ve been waiting a while for this one to come. And here today, summer silly season has arrived.

On transparency

A cursory scan of Google brings up much about the lack of transparency around everything to do with Policy Exchange, the ‘think tank’ who ‘asked’ Richard Walton to do his ‘deep’ research.

Policy Exchange doesn’t reveal who sponsors their thinking. It is unclear what vested interests are behind this report, and we call on our media to robustly question this. We are concerned that those pushing for ‘business as usual’ to continue are sending the planet hurtling towards record levels of heating. Who might gain by trying to undermine efforts to face the climate and ecological emergency?

Extinction Rebellion is a movement of mass civil disobedience with the principle of nonviolence at its core. Ordinary people of all ages and backgrounds from across the political spectrum have come together, united in our commitment to ask the government to act urgently in the face of the biggest existential threat our society has ever faced: global heating and ecological collapse.

The system as it stands is propelling us all towards a bleak future of food shortages, drought, sea-level rise and mass civil unrest. This July is set to be the hottest month ever on record and follows the hottest June ever recorded. Evidence that something is urgently, desperately wrong. 

Extinction Rebellion is transparent in its funding, its aims and its principles – we have nothing to hide. Our Demands are proportionate to the crisis we face: 

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

If we are to have any chance of leaving a livable planet for the next generation, the existing system needs to change and Extinction Rebellion is determined about its aim to make that happen by whatever non-violent means necessary. It is time to break the spell we are living under.