Day 5

I didn't sleep so well last night.  I woke up around 3am wondering how to respond if I was asked "What about China?"  I was due to do an interview on Radio Sussex breakfast show at 7:40 that morning.  So between then and getting up I worked up three coherent reasons why we shouldn't wait for China to act before we acted ourselves.  And all the other questions that I might be asked...

This was my first time on the radio.  The funny thing with an emergency is that you end up doing things you never thought you would be able to do.  A lot of what I do in Extinction Rebellion (XR) is in my comfort zone: making placards, setting up systems, giving tech help.  But there's a great big pile of things I wouldn't do unless I felt I had to: fasting for seven days, getting arrested and giving radio interviews amongst many others.  The same is true for an awful lot of people in XR.

It's this sense of an emergency that I'd like to see in the my local council (and the government).  Not that they should all get arrested for direct action (though that would be excellent) but they should recognise the climate and ecological emergency for the paramount issue of our time, the one that will make or break us, the one that our society may not survive.  Once they recognise it, I hope they will find the courage to think outside the box and to put aside differences.  To find themselves doing things they never thought they could do.