A panel of members from the eco activist group Extinction Rebellion spoke at the university of Lincoln today.
Extinction Rebellion are a protest group founded in October of 2018 with the purpose to draw attention to the climate change crisis.
The group say that we have 12 years to make a change to our carbon level emissions before it becomes too late and irreparable damage is made to the planet where it could very well mean the extinction of Humanity.
Rosemary Robinson of extinction who was on the panel said in an interview afterwards that this statistic comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
She said that “XR has gone one step further though and said that 12 years is too long, and we should actually aim to reduce all carbon emissions to net zero by 2025.”
“That’s an exceedingly big ask we know but we feel that if we don’t push the government into seeing how urgent this is then they will just prevaricate until 2030 and then nothing will have happened.”
Their use of non-violent direct action has also drawn attention, particularly in their most recent protest in London last week where hundreds of arrests were made for civil disobedience.
Members of the group have said that arrests are necessary in order to make the government listen to Extinction Rebellions message.
One panellist who was in London protesting at the time said, “In London yes people did try to be arrested but I believe this action is necessary and the founder of XR Roger Hallam says that arrests are essential if we are going to make the government listen”.
He went on to say that “I’ve been protesting for over 30 years now and in the past, I have been scared of being arrested or even sent to prison. But now I think that the climate crisis has become so dire that I would prefer going to prison if it meant the government enacted some change.”
When asked if any more action has been planned for Miss Robinson said, “Not at the moment, after London we are reflecting on what has happened and seeing if anything more comes out of it as we have already attracted some MP’s to talk to us.”
Jeremy Corbyn has also said he will bring attention to Climate change in parliament this Wednesday.
