Rebels march to highlight ‘inadequate’ climate targets
Extinction Rebellion protesters took part in a series of slow processions as part of their campaign for action on climate change.
The campaigners, from the Marches Extinction Rebellion (XR) group, carried out the events in Ludlow, Kington and Hereford.
They marched to the offices of local politicians with many wearing all-black costumes featuring hourglasses, and stretcher-bearers carrying a sickly bandaged ‘Earth’.
The group delivered letters to politicians calling on them to ‘admit that the UK government’s 2050 target for net-zero carbon emissions will be far too late’. Before delivery, each letter was read aloud to the public by a young local constituent. The action was timed to coincide with release of the annual report from the parliamentary Committee on Climate Change (CCC).
Ludlow MP Philip Dunne, chair of parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee, has spoken of the need to accelerate investment on climate adaptation and cutting emissions, as has his colleague, Hereford MP Jesse Norman.
'Inadequate'
A spokesman for the Extinction Rebellion group said: “XR Marches welcomes the words of MPs Dunne and Norman and today’s latest recommendations by the committee.
“But it should alarm everyone that there’s still insufficient action even towards the government’s inadequate 2050 target. Recent research and the evidence of events in the Arctic, Antarctic, Siberia, Australia – even here in the Marches – with recent floods, all serve to emphasise that aiming for net-zero by 2050 will be far too late to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown.”
Extinction Rebellion is an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience in an attempt to halt mass extinction and minimise the risk of social collapse.
Branches of the campaign group have popped up all over the UK in recent years.
Extinction Rebellion also joined anti-HS2 groups last week to walk 125 miles on the proposed high-speed route, from Birmingham to London, over seven days. The ‘rebel trail’ aimed to highlight the damage both groups claim HS2 will do to wildlife and woodland.
