A Gedling activist is one of three Extinction Rebellion (XR) members holding sit-down protest today (November 10) at locations across Nottingham city centre.
Jeannie Thompson, 71 carried out her protest near the Boots Library on Shakespeare Street.
The grandparent from Gedling said: “I am sitting in the street because I want my granddaughter and you to have a happy secure life.
“I am worried that you won’t because of climate change. It will bring floods, heatwaves, droughts, famine, and terrible storms. Millions of humans and animals will die.”
The three protests began at 11am,coincide with other actions all over the UK today, some of which will be disrupting traffic.
All protesters in Nottingham today chose to use pedestrian areas to bring their messages to the public’s attention.
Karunavaca Lake, 71, a retired psychotherapist, sat at the junction of Clumber Street and Long Row,
She said: “I’m sitting here because I’m scared and desperate and furious. COP26 is a disaster, I see world leaders failing us, betraying us on a huge scale. I can’t trust or rely on those leaders, or a system that is all about profit and exploitation. But I do still believe in people – people all over the world – in their millions, having the courage and confidence to come out and act together. In support of life, of all our futures we have to act now.”
Sitting near the Portland Building at the University of Nottingham is Etienne Stott.
The 42-year-old sports coach and London 2012 Olympic Champion said: “I feel angry that the future which young people are facing is bleak. They are being cruelly disenfranchised as the can is kicked down the road into their adulthood, where they will be left dealing with the consequences.
“2050 targets sound good, but they are too late given the remaining carbon budget to keep to the 1.5 degree limit. I hope they can find a way to make their voices heard and their feelings known.”
Despite the UK hosting the COP26 negotiations, the government’s own Climate Change Committee (CCC) has said the government is failing on its targets. The committee’s report has called the current government’s actions so far as “disappointing” and that the UK will miss climate goals by ‘huge margin’ without new policies.
A statement from XR Nottingham said “We plan to continue to use peaceful civil disobedience methods to highlight the failures of politicians at local and national level to create appropriate policies to tackle the climate and ecological emergency. Without strong leadership and solid promises of action from COP26, emissions are projected to keep rising which put the world on a dangerous path to disaster on a terrifying scale.”
These people are voicing something that lots of us are feeling. The more you learn about the science, the more impossible, infuriating and mind-blowing the total inaction by the government looks! They call a climate emergency and then carry on building roads, opening coal mines, subsidising plane fuel…. utter and wilful neglect for our health and wellbeing.
Tremendous actions by these three. It really speaks volumes that a 71 year old is willing to sit down to stand up for her grandchildren and future generations. I wish you all well, it’s a brave and uncomfortable thing to do for the rest of us, thank you.
Couldn’t agree more, Peter Ecker!
Fantastic, thank you for doing this on behalf of all those that couldn’t join you.
We need a total and complete reverse of our cultural thinking that rewards, enables and promotes the destruction of our environment and the lives of both humans and animals in the pursuit of profit.
And punishes, devalues and criminalises anybody that seeks, or tries to live an alternative.
Well done Extinction Rebellion for achieving more than 26 COPS ever have.
For being beyond politics, left or right and simply being part of positive human connection.
Great awareness raising….thank you all who took part.
Sadly COP 26 still hasn’t gone nearly far enough to secure human futures.
The science is now quite stark and we need to be acting way faster than we currently are. ..climate scientists have been warning about this for over 30 years and we are now actually seeing the floods, fires and extreme weather events they predicted. …. there’s no time to lose so everyone needs to do their bit, especially those with the money and power to do the most.
The solutions are out there if corruption and greed stop and human ingenuity and compassion prevail.
Hysterical nonsense. People wish to believe they are living in an important period, that the end is nigh. In the future we will look back on this period and wonder what madness posessssed us to wreck our culture and society trying to prevent sdmething that does not exist.
David, What do you know that 99% of scientists don’t know and are clearly getting wrong? https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966
I applaud the courage of these people who step outside everyday expectations to speak their truth. The science is clear – even if the promises of COP26 are backed by action we are heading for 2.4 degrees of warming- we’ve seen the fires, floods and famine in the wake of a 1.1 degree rise. The fear of these protesters is justified: it is a fear I share.