No Daily Telegraphs so far today (Debate)

Wed 9 Sep 2020, 17:53

I hesitate to jump into this ring, but feel it’s important we don’t lose sight of what we, or most of us, can agree on.

First, that we are facing a huge challenge to pull round the global oil tanker of fossil fuel dependence, and that this will involve wide-reaching changes that will impact all of us (many with immediate benefits like less air pollution, others that may ask us to reframe what we think we need to live well).

Second, that time is not on our side – we have a decade to turn round the tanker if we have any hope of preventing catastrophic global warming.

Third, that human activity is leading to widespread species extinction and environmental degradation – in the UK, for example, a quarter of our native species of mammal are in imminent danger of extinction if we carry on as we are, https://www.mammal.org.uk/2020/07/one-quarter-of-native-mammals-now-at-risk-of-extinction-in-britain/.

Fourth, that the UK government has no coherent plan to get us to carbon net-zero by 2050 – see https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publications/net-zero for an indictment of this failure, produced by the Institute for Government (an independent think-tank whose trustees include Lord Sainsbury of Turville, ex-Conservative MP and Cabinet minister Sir John Lidington, Baroness Valerie Amos and Sir Ian Cheshire). Hence the Climate and Ecological Emergency (CEE) Bill https://www.ceebill.uk/, which is something I urge everyone to support and to lobby our MP to support.

I’d also like to ask those who are criticising Extinction Rebellion – which, by the way, has members of all ages and backgrounds including, in the XR Charlbury group, someone in their 80s and many of us in our 60s and 70s – to consider what they themselves can do to counteract the `trance’ in which we are collectively moving towards the cliff edge. Protest marches and petitions haven’t worked (remember the huge demo opposing the UK’s invasion of Iraq? If only our government had listened...).