Activist

Nothing is being done of any real significance. Our demand is the government must tell the truth about the crisis we're in. And that includes working with communities to build resilience... We want to go to net carbon zero emissions by 2015 and reduce our consumption levels.

The UN has given us until 2020 to change the course of humanity. If that doesn't happen human extinction in my children's lifetime is a possibility.

I'd been focused on trying to start civil disobedience since 2010. I'd tried many things and they hadn't worked. So I went on a retreat and prayed, with some psychedelic medicines. It was really intense and I prayed for what I called the codes for social change and within a month my prayer was answered.

I do have a rebellious spirit.

I'm horrified to have been alerted to anti-Semitism showing up in a Facebook group I'm associated with. As a busy mum I don't have time to monitor everything.

Change comes when people are willing to commit acts of peaceful civil disobedience.

If they come at us with tear gas or batons or mass arrests then you get a kind of upswell because they become repressive of people demanding what the public actually want.

I always had a desire to see change and be part of it.

I want the planet protected for my children.

I am no longer a scientist as I stopped in 2000. Science was quite a testing place to be as a working-class woman.

I want to live in a beautiful, nature-filled world, and, if we get shot on the streets fighting for it, so be it.

I was in India as scientist doing post-doctoral research for about four months. I fell in love with India.

We are killing life on Earth, we're in the sixth mass extinction event and it's possible that human beings will go extinct. We're in a culture that doesn't want you to think about that.

We need to go to net zero carbon really quickly. And we're also asking for a people's assembly so people can decide how the change happens. We'll know when governments are doing different things, it could feel like a war, a beautiful war.

For years I have engaged with this ecological crisis on an intellectual level, the mounting evidence, the science... but now I have engaged with the potential destruction of this world on an emotional level and there is a fundamental difference. There is huge feeling of grief, of loss.

We need a revolution in consciousness to overturn the system we live in, to strengthen our democracy, to find courage and give hope to our children.

When you say 'no' and you get on the streets and you do an act of civil disobedience, it changes your psychology.

Some people see protesting as a bit of a dirty thing, and certainly the idea of getting arrested was not on people's radar.

We're not just being dramatic talking about a human extinction - that's the pathway we're on. We have to look at the bigger picture. If your child had cancer and it was unlikely they were going to survive, you'd do everything in your power to fight it.

I also personally think - as do many others - that a shift on consciousness is needed toward one where we understand that we are in a relationship with the earth and all living beings, that we have agency. That life is worth fighting for.