The things that our government say and do, are very far apart

Whipped up a quick op ed for the Express yesterday – on the subject of climate protests – sparked by what XR are doing in London.

Here’s the directors cut:

On the Climate Crisis – the things that our government say and the things that they do, are very far apart. Too far apart for it to be tolerable by anybody that understands the magnitude of the risk we face.

We have decent zero carbon targets and word leading rhetoric, literally and figuratively… but at the same time we have a new coal mine being opened, new exploration in the North Sea for oil and gas we can’t afford to burn, airport expansions all over the country, more fossil fuel power stations and an incredible £27 billion committed to new roads. Set against that our budgets for fighting the climate crisis are fractional and meaningless. It makes no sense, we know we have to avoid the worst of climate change, we know that it’s more economic to do so than to not do so – better for us economically. We have the technology, we know what we need to do.

And we’ve had a taste – we’ve seen what 1.5 degrees of warming looks like this year, catastrophic global weather; floods, droughts, wild fires – 100s of thousands of deaths millions displaced from their homes. The future not just for us, but for our kids and grandkids – will be bleak.

And that’s why we need to protest. We can’t allow the status quo to continue, there is too much at stake. The business practices that are legal today should not be and sometimes the only way to bring the kind of systemic change we need is to protest and to disrupt.