Climate change activists to try negotiations
● Demonstrators offer to stop chaos for deal with London mayor
Climate change protesters are to “pause” demonstration which have brought traffic chaos to London and other parts of the UK, in order to achieve their political aim.
Extinction Rebellion said they are switching disruptive tactics for negotiations as they enter a second week of campaigning in their efforts to get the UK government to declare a climate emergency.
The Metropolitan Police said 963 arrests had been made in connection with the demonstrations.
Climate change protesters who have stopped traffic in a series of demonstrations across London will “pause” their rebellion in an attempt to achieve their political aims.
Extinction Rebellion (XR) said they are switching disruptive tactics for negotiations as they enter a second week of campaigning in their efforts to get the UK Government to declare a climate emergency.
The Metropolitan Police said that 831 arrests had been made in connection with the demonstrations and 42 people charged as of 10am yesterday.
Farhana Yamin, the group’s “political circle coordinator”, said: “Today marks a transition from week one,
which focused on actions that were vision-holding, but also caused mass disruption across many dimensions – economic, cultural, emotional, social.
“Week two marks a new phase of rebellion focused on negotiations where the focus will shift to our actual political demands.”
She said: “We want to show that XR is a cohesive, longterm global force, not some flash in the pan.”
The group hopes to negotiate with the mayor of London and the police to agree that it should be allowed to continue its disruption at Old Palace Yard, in Westminster, and leave other sites. Over the past
week protesters have blocked traffic in Oxford Circus, set up camp in Marble Arch and created a temporary garden on Waterloo Bridge. A skate ramp, cooking tents and much of the XR infrastructure at Waterloo Bridge was removed by police yesterday.
Members would commit to not disrupting other areas in exchange for London mayor Sadiq Khan speeding up the implementation of the Declaration of Climate and Ecological Emergency and considering setting up a London citizens’ assembly.
Neither the Met nor the mayor’s office would say whether they were considering the proposals.
Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said the policing operation had been unlike any she had experienced in almost four decades of policing.
Mr Khan said more than 9,000 police had been responding to the protests.
He said he shared activists’ passion about tackling climate change but added: It simply isn’t right to put Londoners’ safety at risk like this.”
The teenager who inspired the climate change school strikes, Greta Thunberg, joined crowds yesterday. The 16-year-old Swedish activist addressed protesters in London.
“Week two marks a new phase of rebellion focused on negotiations where the focus will shift to our actual political demands” FARHANA YAMIN Extinction Rebellion
Is the human race about to become extinct in the next 50 years? Really? Last Wednesday London, Edinburgh and other UK cities found some of their city centre roads closed and traffic brought to a halt by demonstrators. The intention was to alert us to an escalating peril where the combination of a growing world population, finite resources and a change in the climate will lead to the extinction of not just many animals we take for granted – but mankind.
The call for action would see the way we go about our lives change beyond all recognition and consign to distant memory the standard of living that has been achieved for the masses. Without uber-green policies are we really about to become extinct?
Ever since I developed any political awareness, or sense of community and history – going right back to watching the news of President Kennedy’s death on television and how upset my parents were by that, or being taught Scots Wha Hae in primary class along with hymns and psalms – I have heard and lived through warnings of our impending doom. Today’s demonstrators appear to think it is something new, but I can assure them it is not. The regular testing of police box air raid sirens would remind my generation when still in our shorts how we might all be turned to ash if Soviet nuclear bombers or intercontinental ballistic missiles dropped the Bomb on us.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was still fresh in my parents’ minds, and as I became a teenager only North America and Australasia did not have the presence of Soviet troops or their proxies seeking to gain the upper hand. Film and television were replete with harrowing movies such as Michael Crichton’s
The Andromeda Strain or BBC’S Doomwatch warning of ecological disaster or unexpected catastrophe. These put the fear of death into us while later the introduction of SS-20 missiles by the Soviets and Nato’s response of Pershing II and Cruise missiles naturally raised the temperature. The result was the growth of CND with its marches and encampments of the ’80s.
There were famines, droughts and natural disasters being beamed by satellite directly into our living rooms – all while the world’s population kept growing. No wonder that talk of a Malthusian end to mankind was a regular topic. I don’t know how we held our nerve, but we did.
And thank goodness for that; because by holding out for open pluralistic societies governed through democracy rather than the centralist planning of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes – or “world government” as it was euphemistically called – we have surprised all the doom merchants and achieved what might be properly called a miracle.
I am indebted to the work of my old friend Marian Tupy, editor of Humanprogress.org, for reminding me this Easter just how fortunate we are. In one of his regular bulletins of how we are doing better, he lists how only 150 years ago life expectancy in Europe was 36 years and for the rest of the world only 30. Today it is 81 and 72 years respectively. Two hundred years ago in 1820, some 90 per cent of humanity lived in extreme poverty, but today less than 10 per cent does.
If we go back further to 1800 we can compare some amazing facts with now. In 1800 some 43 per cent of children died before their fifth birthday, but today, less than four per cent do. In the same year 88 per cent of the world’s population