An environmental activist and Extinction Rebellion member, named Sarah here, was convicted in court last week of the following offences Section 14 of the Public Order Act.
This is the result of Sarah’s arrest during the XR rebellion last August, during which activists blocked a London intersection with a large pink table and publicly invited everyone to “come to the negotiating table” Crisis talks on action to prevent climate collapse.
This article was first published in Human and Nature.
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Here’s the mitigating statement she read in court:
In my arrester’s statement, I had a hysterical remark that I didn’t want the world to burn down. At the time of my arrest, fires were burning out of control in Algeria, France, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Lebanon, Jerusalem and Canada.
In the United States, more than 100 fires are burning at the same time, including the Dixie Fire — the second largest on record in the notoriously fire-prone state of California. Firefighters and park rangers are fighting to save giant redwoods that have stood for more than 2,000 years. The largest fire on record has engulfed Siberia.
The images of these fires are all I can think of as the police walk around the protesters and tell us we’ve “expressed our views” and are “too destructive”.
People around the world are losing their livelihoods, homes and lives. Wild animals are being destroyed. Ecosystems are being destroyed. In central London, hundreds of protesters blocked an intersection, calling on our government to take action against climate collapse – devastation we cannot accept.
I don’t want to be arrested. I don’t want a criminal record. I worry about my job, which is very important to me. For the past 16 years, I have worked in protection, working to protect children at risk of harm to ensure they have a future.
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But it’s all in vain, because if we as a species don’t do anything to change the trajectory we’re on, none of our children will have a future. There has never been a greater security risk than climate collapse.
I joined XR because I was afraid of the predictions of leading climate scientists in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which I now know is a conservative estimate of what we are facing.
Over the past three years, I’ve seen our government not only fail to act to make things better, but actively make things worse. Instead of focusing resources on preventing runaway climate change and promoting the transition to green energy and jobs, our government continues to subsidize fossil fuels and even support new oil, gas and coal extraction projects.
