Activist toured world in diesel 4x4 before joining XR
AN INSULATE BRITAIN activist jailed after blocking traffic had spent more than two years driving across the world in a diesel 4x4.
As she was jailed for four months, Emma Smart announced that she was going on hunger strike as she insisted that her actions were “morally right” and “in my heart I know I am on the right side of history”.
But the 44-year-old, who has been arrested several times for her protest activities including a previous charge for blocking a highway, has been accused of hypocrisy after she drove more than 81,000 miles across 52 countries in a diesel Toyota.
A blog post by Smart said that she and her boyfriend had returned to Britain to earn money and were planning to continue their travels in the 25-year-old four-wheel-drive vehicle, but they put the adventure “on pause” to join Extinction Rebellion (XR) and engage in climate activism.
Smart, from Dorset, told the Royal Courts of Justice yesterday that she could not afford to pay the costs of the prosecution as she has been working as a volunteer in wildlife conservation and climate activism.
She told National Highways’ legal team that they were “claiming more for postage than I have earned in the last three years”, and asked them to sell her clothes as “that’s all I have”.
Before becoming involved in XR – of which Insulate Britain is an offshoot – Smart and her partner, who describe themselves as “valiant adventurers whose dream is to circumnavigate the planet”, drove across Europe, the Western Sahara and central and southeast Asia.
Their travels between 2012 and 2016 included trips to Spain, Italy, Mongolia, Russia, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Iran, India, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia.
They returned to the UK in order to get jobs and earn money, Smart said, and after two-and-a-half years they had saved enough to ship their Toyota Hilux to South America and begin what they described as “phase 4” of their travels.
But in their latest blog post on the website detailing their travels, the former biologist said that the couple decided to put their plans on hold because they were filled with “love and rage”, which she says inspire the XR protests.
After she was filmed setting out the reasons for blocking the roads earlier this year, Smart’s round-the-world
‘A major consideration for us will always be that our love for travelling doesn’t cost the earth’
adventures were described as “hypocrisy at its very finest” on social media.
Addressing some of the apparent contradictions in an earlier blog post, Smart said that “frustration” of climate change was “a huge motivation for getting out and seeing the world’s wild places … while they were still there”.
She argued that driving around the world in a diesel 4x4 was actually better for the planet than living in the UK, stating that they had calculated that they produced 62 per cent less CO2 per day travelling the world.
Smart added that they had decided not to have children “primarily for environmental reasons” having compared the amount of CO2 they would save by living child-free or living car-free. But she admitted: “This isn’t a game of trade-offs, carbon budgets are not something to be played with – put simply, if we can reduce our carbon footprint then we have a moral duty to do so.”
The blog, posted last year, says that the couple have not yet decided if they will travel to the Americas, but during their time in the UK they have been investing in upgrading the Toyota – which they have named Bee-bee.
Defending the sustainability of “overlanding”, a form of self-reliant long-distance travel, Smart added: “A major consideration for us will always be that our love for overlanding … doesn’t cost the earth.”