Whilst I'm all for psychedelic science - I think it's fantastic - I don't think we necessarily have time to wait for the science to tell us these medicines are useful. The indigenous cultures have already shown us the ways.
Whilst I'm all for psychedelic science - I think it's fantastic - I don't think we necessarily have time to wait for the science to tell us these medicines are useful. The indigenous cultures have already shown us the ways.
Given the scale of the ecological crisis we are facing this is the appropriate scale of expansion. Occupying the streets to bring about change as our ancestors have done before us. Only this kind of large-scale economic disruption can rapidly bring the government to the table to discuss our demands. We are prepared to risk it all for our futures.
We want an economy that grows health and wellbeing, not debt and carbon emissions. An economy that prepares and protects us from shocks to come, rather than making them worse. An economy that shares resources to meet all our needs, regardless of background. An economy that lets us live.
It sounds like an extremist thing to say, but what do people think is going to happen to human beings when there's not enough food?
Human extinction in our children's lifetime, it should be your top news item every single day, what's happening, you should be holding politicians to account.
What happens if you stand passively by the side of the road with a placard saying, you know, 'Stop climate change' is you just get ignored. When you get on the street and block it, people start to have a conversation about this existential situation that we're in.
My dad was a miner at South Kirkby colliery. He went on strike but he didn't go to the picket line, he just put his feet up and got in my mum's way.
I have a humble background. My dad was a coal miner. My mum worked a receptionist. I was one of the first people in my family to go to university.
We have to be bringing carbon out of the atmosphere, and we can't wait for these magical technologies that are somehow going to suck the carbon out of the atmosphere in the future and mean we can do business as usual. And so, what we have to do, what we're going to need to do, is really work with nature to repair the climate.
One of the tensions in XR are people who want to slow down and be strategic and then people who think it's an emergency, let's get out on the street now. There have been conflicts and disagreements.
I've always been interested in how things change, in social change. I was involved in the animal rights movement as a young woman, I've been involved in thinking about gender and issues around racism and so on.
It is not a campaign. It is a rebellion. We are in active rebellion against our government. The social contract is broken, the governments aren't protecting us and it's down to us now.
This is not a slow movement of change. It's a shift in the consciousness of each of us. It is a collective shift. It involves facing grief and trauma and undoing our numbness and our narcissism and our indulgence that we have in this privileged western society.