Dear all,

The message conveyed by last month’s climate protests in central London seems to have struck a chord with the public, not just in Britain but also around the world. This is rather surprising given that protestors mobilised by a movement called Extinction Rebellion parked their big pink boat on Oxford Street and caused considerable disruption in this central London shopping street.

The police and London authorities were, obviously, unhappy by the disruption caused and commuters -- including hundreds of BBC staffers, tourists and shoppers -- faced several days of transport chaos.

Despite this the protestors’ message seems to have touched a nerve and it has gained the backing of several well-known personalities. The actor Dame Emma Thompson joined the protestors and told them, "We are here in this island of sanity and it makes me so happy to join you all and add my voice to the young people here who have inspired a whole new movement".

The famous naturalist and TV presenter Sir David Attenborough in an interview said that the protests were "encouraging" and praised the activists for their vision, "they…. have clear sight. They can see perhaps more clearly than the rest of us who have been around for some time. We older ones should take notice." Attenborough, who will turn 93 this year, told the interviewer, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, that his generation "had done terrible things" and that people should not try to write off the activists as twits who "don’t understand the world and how it works".

However, some of the initial media coverage displayed just the sort of condescension that Attenborough said was unwarranted. On Sky TV Adam Boulton likened the protestors to fascists, accused them of "fascistic disruption" and he told the group’s representative Robin Boardman in an interview, "I simply do not understand what you think you’re achieving". He then went on to tell the activist that the group seemed to comprise "incompetent, middle-class, self-indulgent people". Boardman walked out of the interview.

Boulton’s tone was not terribly polite and any understanding of the issues raised or the protestors’ message was completely overshadowed by what seemed to be the presenter’s own irritation with the disruption (which perhaps may have been due to a delayed taxi journey for him or some such thing…).

The London April protests took place in Oxford Street, Waterloo Bridge and Parliament Square before they were moved to Marble Arch. But they required a huge police presence to monitor them -- something for which the activists repeatedly apologised to police and public. They were also unprecedented in the huge number of arrests made: more than 1050 people were arrested and 51 charged. The Police Commissioner said that in her 36-year career she had never known a single police operation to result in so many arrests.

The protest continued with other well-choreographed protests, such as lie-ins under dinosaur skeletons in natural history museums in London and Glasgow. The activists termed these lie-ins as "die-ins" to "raise awareness for the sixth extinction". Apart from terms like the "sixth extinction", the movement has also used the term "ecocide" to warn of the impending extinction of the human species.

Extinction Rebellion’s view is that the governments must now take drastic measures as climate change is now a "global emergency". They say that the earths’ resources have been decimated and degraded, and that government policies need to address this urgently as well as be led by a "Citizens’ Assembly" on the issue. They want the government to recognise this as an emergency and act accordingly, something that governments are reluctant to do because of the financial repercussions of having to take appropriate measures.

The protests and any measures to halt the climate change situation may disrupt the creature comforts of life under capitalism as we know it, but not acting could well end life on this planet. The younger generation, represented by the likes of the 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and the activists of Extinction Rebellion, want to work towards a world that is not depleted of its resources or torn apart by drought and strife. The message -- that it is the responsibility of all of us -- is one that resonates around the globe.

So perhaps a little "inconvenience" today is wiser than suffering the ecocide of tomorrow….

Best wishes,