Dundee campaigners vow ‘dramatic action’

Extinction Rebellion campaigners in Dundee have promised a “dramatic action” this weekend as part of protests across the UK.

Members of the local group will take part in a sitdown protest in the city to remind Scots of the “deepening crisis in which we are living”.

The group says they will act in support of “courageous climate rebels across the UK” who are putting themselves at risk to highlight inaction on climate change.

Protests planned across the UK will see hundreds of people step into roads and sit down in front of traffic.

Five female rebels and an 11-year-old boy will join the “solidarity action” in Dundee.

The group said: “We will sit in pedestrian areas to highlight the roadblock actions taking place elsewhere.”

One said: “This is especially important in the run-up to the Scottish parliamentary election to focus attention on the most important issue on our planet, ever.”

One of the protesters elsewhere in the UK added: “We are all terrified at the multiple impacts of the climate crisis, but we each also have a particular sadness, personal to us, which impels us to act.

“For some, it is the irreversible destruction of ecosystems and extinction of living species. For others, it is the disproportionate and deadly impact on Earth’s most vulnerable communities, the knowledge that we cannot, in all conscience, have children despite our visceral need to do so, or simply our despair at powerful people’s greed for profit.

“On Saturday, our most personal terrors will be written out for all to see in an act of selfless sacrifice.

“People, we know, are beginning to understand. Just last week a jury in London acquitted six climate campaigners of criminal charges for taking action at Shell’s headquarters, despite instruction from the judge that there was no defence in law.

“The jurors understood that the suffering and death caused by climate change are the serious crimes, not the painting of a message which tells that story.

“We all need to have serious conversations, helped by honest and principled media outlets, about the deepening emergency and the need for immediate action.”

Seven Extinction Rebellion activists were recently convicted of occupying an oil rig at the Port of Dundee.

Three of the protestors used ropes and climbing equipment to scale the 300ft platform of the Valaris rig during high winds in January 2020.

Sentence was deferred on the activists and they warned to be of good behaviour during the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow.

Sheriff Grant Mcculloch said: “In November there’s an international climate conference in Glasgow and my concern is that you will use COP26 as another opportunity for action.

“In my view that would be inappropriate. I intend to defer sentence until a date after COP26.”

“We will sit in pedestrian areas to highlight the roadblock actions taking place elsewhere

PROTEST: Extinction Rebellion activists scaled the 300ft platform of the Valaris oil rig at the Port of Dundee during high winds in January 2020.